Thunder Force V, One of the Best Shoot’em Ups on the PS1

Thunder Force V is a side-scrolling shoot’em up released on the PS1 in 1998. It was developed by Technosoft, like the other games in the series, and was published by Working Designs in North America. This means it has an awesome-looking cover!

TLDR: It’s a spectacular shoot’em up despite transitioning the series away from pixel art.

Narrative

The manual details a story that spans decades. Although it is only two pages, it provides way more backstory than you need. This is one of those things I would’ve read once or twice and then forgotten after a few days.

It sets up who the bad guys are and why you’re fighting them. You’re fighting for the Earth Government, and the enemy is an A.I. called Guardian. Shockingly, the Earth Government created Guardian to build warships, and the A.I. became self-aware and declared war on Earth.

It shouldn’t surprise anyone who has watched a few sci-fi movies or read books that involve artificial intelligence. This is a common trope when sci-fi media is created. It gets the job done, but I doubt anyone cared about this much.

Gameplay

This is a straightforward side-scrolling shoot’em up that tries to do some 2.5D graphics. You move to the right and blast enemies as they appear on screen. At the end of a stage, you fight a boss.

Along the way, you collect power-ups and weapons for your ship. Here is a list of what you can get:

• Support weapons called CRAW. These are blue spheres that shoot.
• Power-ups for weapons
• Bonus for Evasion and Acceleration

There are five weapons in the game. Like the other Thunder Force games, you can swap between them anytime. This is done by using the L and R buttons. Here is a list of the weapons:

• Twin Shot
• Back Shot
• Wave
• Free Range
• Hunter

This is exactly what you should expect for an arcade shoot’em up. It can be difficult at first, but learning isn’t impossible. It relies on trial and error and fast reflexes. For a console game, it is a great distraction from other games.

Visuals

The jump from 2D sprites to 3D graphics was handled very well. This is a good looking PS1 game, which isn’t always the case when doing these retrospectives. Technosoft does a great job with the graphics.

This can be considered a 2.5D game as it is still a side-scrolling shoot’em up. It is like some platformers that used a shift in perspectives to fake 3D. I like the graphics quite a bit.

The screen can get a little busy at times, but that is to be expected with a shoot’em up. It doesn’t feel unfair like some other game in this genre. This is a worthy addition to the Thunder Force series.

8/10. Great graphics and gameplay. It is an arcade style game, so it is short and forces you to replay stages if you run out of lives.

Pros

• Good Controls
• Great Graphics
• Easy to Learn

Cons

• Arcade Game on a Home Console
• Limited Continues
• Difficult to Master

Conclusion

Hilariously, there is a contest in the game’s manual. This is a high score challenge; the entry deadline was February 15, 1999. You could enter this contest as many times as you wanted, and if you wanted a copy of the winner’s list, an address was given for you to request one. I’m assuming all of this is online somewhere.

I like these little contests. There seemed to be a lot of them over the years, and many have either been forgotten or are only known about by small groups of people. These are the types of things that someone looks up and then fakes outrage that no one has heard of.

Thunder Force V is a very good game in the series. You might be wondering where to find the other games in the series. Thunder Force II, III, and Lightning Force can be found on the Genesis/Mega Drive. The first game in the series was only released on personal computers in Japan.