Developer: Red Company/Hudson
Publisher: Hudson Soft
Release Date: March 1995
If you feel like I wrote about this game already, don’t worry this is an all-new review. Unless this is the future and you’re reading this same review again. I’m sure it’s a good one and well worth re-reading. Anyway, I never quite know what to do with games released on multiple consoles. If I want to truly rank every game on a specific console it’s something that I am going to have to deal with. There are probably at least 250 games that are essentially the same on Super Nintendo and Genesis. Which one do I focus on? Do I review them both at the same time? Can I write ten different essays on the game Zoop? Perhaps it is something I will confront in the near future, but the decision is easier when two versions of the same game are different. That’s what the case is here. I also wanted to get back to Sega CD. The only Sega CD game I have rated so far is Panic!, and I hate to leave things on such a sour note. I figured rating a game I already like on another console would be a good way to get Sega CD in the win column. So just how does Lords of Thunder’s odd Sega cousin measure up to the original?
Well, it’s a bit of a mixed bag. One thing the Sega CD versions has is an even more extreme rarity. This was one of the very last games released for the Sega CD, so it didn’t have a giant release in the first place. A boxed copy sells for over $300 these days, which is a bit high if we’re being honest. I have no idea why Hudson decided to port it to Sega CD two years after the original came out. They went from an extremely obscure console to a dying one. They should’ve just waited a few months and released it on PlayStation.
Despite the later release date, however, everything seems to be toned down in the Sega CD version. The graphics aren’t as nice, the music is too quiet, and it is slower in general. I can’t stand how you freeze for a few seconds when the TurboGrafx CD version was seamless. There is a tiny amount of voice acting in this version, but that’s the only thing that could really be seen as an upgrade and is seriously only a few seconds of voices. Cosmetic differences don’t necessarily damage the quality of a port, but there are a couple of things that really bug me in Lords of Thunder. In the TurboGrafx CD version, enemies would blink when hit in their weak spot. The game is full of unique enemies that take multiple hits, so it’s important to know what attacks are doing damage. They don’t always have a big red spot to shoot at, so you can’t really tell where to shoot just by looking. There were also some obstacles that can be destroyed and some that can’t be. Thanks for the no help, Sega CD. At least the bosses still flash when hit. It’s not a game breaker, but it is an annoyance.
The most shocking difference, however, is the lowered difficulty. I will admit that I was only playing on normal difficulty, but I was playing it just to try it out and ended up beating the game. I know that I had been practicing on the TurboGrafx CD version, so it wasn’t a completely blind playthrough, but I’m not eve good at shooters. If you are a big shooter fan than the lower difficulty is disappointing. It just doesn’t have the pulse-pounding lunacy of the original.
I’m still going to put this one slightly into the good column though. It still has the great level design and money system of the original. It’s a bit more laid back, but there is enough challenge for it to not get boring. It’s not so much “Lords of Thunder” as “People Who Somewhat Control Thunder”, that still makes it fairly powerful. Sega CD should be remembered for its great shooters and RPGs instead of cheesy FMV games and failed multimedia experiments, and while Lords of Thunder isn’t a great game on Sega CD, it’s still a worthy addition to the library.
I am going to rank Lords of Thunder at #64 just below the wonderfully kooky Ninja Golf. It’s just above Splatterhosue II which I don’t even remember playing. I must’ve enjoyed it, but I couldn’t even remember what console it was on. At least I will always remember Lords of Thunder was a Sega CD game. And you know what, being a Sega CD game isn’t a bad thing at all. Hopefully the console will have enough pleasant surprises to be worth playing.
Sega CD Quality Percentage: 1/2
Sega CD Rankings
1. Lords of Thunder
2. Panic!
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