PC Engine Duo Game Reviews
Lords of Thunder
Lord of Thunder for PC Engine Duo By Saibohmann: Lords of Thunder is a must play horizontally scrolling shoot-em-up or shmup. If nothing else it should be experienced solely for the infinitely excellent soundtrack, which consists of Yngwie Malmsteen style neo-classical shredding. The composer credited as “Groove King” is Satoshi Miyashita, one of the many unsung heroes of video game music composition. The version I am reviewing is its initial iteration for the PC-Engine CD. For those of you that are unfamiliar with NEC’s family of consoles the PC-Engine is what was known as the TurboGrafx-16 here in the states. It was marketed as the first 16-bit console but in fact had two 8-bit processors, which gave it a serious advantage over the NES and Master System but it couldn’t compete with true 16-bit processing such as with the SNES or Genesis. The cartridges for the console are rather interesting appearing less like a cart and more like a credit card, they were called HuCards. A year after the Turbo’s release NEC released a CD add on for the Turbo making it the first CD console. Finally a year after the CD units release NEC released a console with both units already together dubbed the Turbo Duo, or PC-Engine Duo. I could go on, but I digress. There are two ports of Lords of Thunder, one for the Sega CD (being one of the few good games for it), and a release on the Wii’s virtual console. So if you own a Wii, I highly recommend this title! In Lords of Thunder (LOT for future reference) you have your choice between 4 different Elemental Armors for your character to utilize all with pros and cons. Like most shmups you can power up your regular shot, in LOT there are 3 tiers of power for your regular shot. Wind: Decent 5-Way shot when fully powered, kind of weak. The bomb attack is a storm of lightning which easily hits all targets on screen. Water: Absolutely the most advantageous shot with two beams in front of you and two behind, you basically cover the entire screen while firing from the middle of it, because of this advantage it is weak. The bombs attack is a spherical water attack that bursts out of the player expanding off the screen. Fire: When fully powered its basically a short range flamethrower that moves up and down when you move, decently powerful. The bomb attack summons a flaming dragon that homes in on enemies on screen. Earth: Fully powered it shoots two bombs arcing out in front of you that explode into vertical columns that rush forward pretty...
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