Thunder Force III

A spaceship hurtling against a torrent of enemies, parallax backgrounds the likes of which you had never seen on a console, and a soundtrack that would hold up even on a concert stage. Thunder Force III from 1990 was, for many, the moment when the Mega Drive proved it could do horizontal shooters better than anyone else.

Thunder Force III is a horizontal shoot 'em up in which the player controls the Styx fighter and gradually chooses the order of the planets to be cleaned up. A key mechanic is the weapon system, between which you can switch on the fly, plus the ship's controllable speed. The game is fast, visually rich, and offers a varied palette of environments from lava worlds to icy planets, each with its own boss.

Behind the series stood the Japanese studio Technosoft, masters of the genre who managed to squeeze the maximum out of the Mega Drive hardware. Thunder Force III astonished with multi-layered parallax scrolling, transparent water effects, and fluid animation. Together with a soundtrack that ranks among the most acclaimed in the genre, the game became a technological showcase for the console.

Success was such that the game received an arcade version under the name Thunder Force AC and later appeared on the SNES as Thunder Spirits. That is a rather unusual direction of porting in the industry, since games usually traveled from arcades to consoles, not the other way around. The series continued with further installments and its legacy can be felt even in modern indie shooters.

Today Thunder Force III counts as one of the best shmups of the sixteen-bit era and a mandatory stop for every fan of the genre. It is a showcase of craft at its peak, where technical virtuosity marries perfectly tuned gameplay and unforgettable music.

Why play: A top-tier horizontal shooter with breathtaking graphics and a legendary soundtrack, one of the technical highlights of the Mega Drive.