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Thunder Force II is a 1988 shoot-'em-up developed by Technosoft for the X68000, and the second installment in their Thunder Force series. The following year, it was ported to the Sega Mega Drive as Thunder Force II MD (サンダーフォースII ＭＤ), and this version was released worldwide as simply Thunder Force II. It was the first Sega Mega Drive game in Japan published by a third party.

Story

After the events of the first Thunder Force, the defeated ORN Empire decide to attack the Galaxy Federation again. Using Plealos, their new battleship, ORN is able to destroy the planet Reda and take the planet Nepura as their own. Fortunately, the Galaxy Federation discovers Nepura is used to hold Plealos when it is not being used, and they set out to destroy Plealos with a new version of the powerful "Fire LEO" fighter craft, the Fire LEO-02 Exceliza.

Gameplay

and switch weapons. fires as long as you hold it. There are nine stages — four top-view stages and four side-scrolling stages, then a final top-view stage.

"Top-view" stages: You have free 8-way movement, and the screen constantly scrolls in the direction the ship is facing. The ship's weapon shoots in the direction the ship is facing, though other weapons and powerups fire in different directions. The objective is to find and destroy the four bases.

You have free 8-way movement, and the screen constantly scrolls in the direction the ship is facing. The ship's weapon shoots in the direction the ship is facing, though other weapons and powerups fire in different directions. The objective is to find and destroy the four bases. Side-scrolling stages: You can only progress forward, and the screen constantly scrolls from right to left; the entire stage doesn't fit on the screen, so moving up and down reveals a bit more of it. Reach the end of the stage and defeat the boss there to complete the level.

As you defeat certain enemies, they'll drop various weapon; losing a life takes all acquired weapons away. The two types of stages have unique weapons between them.

History

Release

The Swedish version shown below has an interesting story behind it. The distributor in the Nordic countries was Playmix/BRIO, famous for its classic wooden toys and unharmful playthings. This is the first and probably last time they used censorship on a game. The missiles on this early game's front were considered too violent and the picture was replaced by the ship from the Japanese version instead. After they mixed it together, they simple photographed it and printed it on Fujicolor paper (can be seen on the back of the inlay). This version is therefore fairly common in Sweden.

Production credits

Program: Izumi Fukuda, Takashi Iwanaga, Haruhiko Otsuka

Izumi Fukuda, Takashi Iwanaga, Haruhiko Otsuka Graphics & Design: Osamu Tsujikawa

Osamu Tsujikawa Stage Design: Takashi Iwanaga

Takashi Iwanaga Music Compose: Tomomi Ohtani

Tomomi Ohtani Sound Effects: Naosuke Arai

Naosuke Arai Wording: Kazue Matsuoka, Kikuo Tamichi, Fumio Sugano

Kazue Matsuoka, Kikuo Tamichi, Fumio Sugano Special Thanks To: Soichiro Hikichi, Kazuhiro Imamura

Source: In-game credits





Magazine articles

Promotional material

Physical scans

Mega-Tech version

Mega-Tech, Cover

Mega Drive version

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Mega Drive, US Cover Cart Manual

Mega Drive, EU Cover Cart

Mega Drive, SE Cover

Mega Drive, JP Cover Cart

Mega Drive, AU

Mega Drive, BR Cover Cart

Mega Drive, KR Cover Cart

Mega Drive, CA

Technical information

ROM dump status

System Hash Size Build Date Source Comments ✔ CRC32 9b1561b3 MD5 2cd56a01eef20b74ab7ea532f9b25a94 SHA-1 b81e7ebc4ceb6c1ae2975d27e0a78ba1e8546b5f 512kB 1989-04 Cartridge (US/EU) CRC32 e75ec3e0 MD5 5b134b597779c5d6c2783fe3ee401766 SHA-1 44b173b74225e5b562cdf3982926a051f05ed98e 512kB 1989-04 Cartridge (JP)

References



