The Mega Drive Launch Title We All Forget

On October 29th 1988, Japan was introduced to the SEGA Mega Drive and its two launch titles - Space Harrier II and Super Thunder Blade (with Altered Beast coming shortly after). One, a sequel to a seminal arcade great and the other, not. Both games are what we would call “rail shooters”, meaning you are on a set course that you cannot deviate from and your enemies are coming towards you. You can move around the screen and the area in general sometimes (like these two games allow) but you can’t reverse, turn or move off course.

Why is that important along with this upcoming dip into history? Well, because SEGA at the time was an arcade powerhouse. Its bread and butter was what we call “super scalers” - a type of game engine that allowed 2D objects to appear as if they were 3D by making the images themselves scale their size at tremendous speed. There’s more to it than that and I’m sure if you’re reading this you have the power of a search engine to read more but the feel of three dimensional style at speed, compared to a space filled with 2 dimensional top, side or vertically scrolling elements was revolutionary and fun. This is what everyone wanted at home.

But even though mum told us we had arcade games at home, she lied. Many households had Nintendo's Famicom, which had a near 4 year foothold on the console market. Following a rocky start it had recovered ground on SEGA’s own good start with their SG-1000 and later Mark III consoles (known to the West as the Master System). Total figures collated online from Famitsu sources suggest that over the lifetime of the consoles, the Famicom outsold that combined generation of console nearly 10 times in Japan. Spoiler - The Mega Drive did not make a significant dent in that figure.

The offering from the Famicom was relatively scant on arcade conversions or at the very least, courageously inferior. When the Mega Drive was developed, it was with an eye to make it the most powerful home console that was developed for home gaming, which it was. It even had the technical edge in places over later developed rivals. Taking cues from its own previous systems and its arcade hardware, whilst maintaining a budget for development costs, the Mega Drive sought to do what the Famicom and the yet to be released Super Famicom didn't do, and for the most part it did.

At a cost of ￥21000 (which isn’t too far over what it would be in 2023 money) for the console and ￥5800 per game (around $53 today) the SEGA Mega Drive’s infamous journey to dethrone the market leader began. At its heart it was trying to recreate the arcade experience at home, which is why those arcade rail shooters with their sprite scaling were the perfect choice - except the Mega Drive couldn’t do it.

What we got was impressive, slower pre-rendered graphics to give the impression of scaling but in truth, the Mega Drive didn’t have the juice to do it justice, and really nor should it have given the price point they were going for. Which is one of the reasons why one of those launch titles never really achieved the success it could have.

If you want to know the reverence that SEGA treats Space Harrier with, you only need to see it in modern day releases. It’s in pretty much every arcade in the Yakuza games series that have them, several re-releases in collections, virtual consoles, remakes for other SEGA hardware and even mini consoles. The Mega Drive version, Space Harrier II which made up half of the launch line up, is less well regarded until recent M2 developments on SEGA's recent Mega Drive/Genesis II Mini Console. But overall, the series still survives and thrives despite not having a single wholly new iteration in its franchise since the late 1980s.

Super Thunder Blade on the other hand has been a bit of a victim of time.

Thunder Blade itself was an arcade game that is steeped in reverence as a natural successor to After Burner. Featuring the best of what the technology could do, the game flipped between top down and third person views for fast and aggressive super scaling gameplay. Something every version just wasn’t able to replicate either technically nor in spirit.

All of which highlights the choppy frame rate, poor graphics and more which have lived longer in the memory than the rest of the franchise. Compared to its arcade counterpart this game is sparse. Compared to other games, it’s apparent that it didn’t have the finesse needed. It was also bastard hard.

One of my own first experiences of the game however was on home computer, playing the ZX Spectrum conversion of the game which, as you can probably imagine was just an atrocious mess of 2D elements running so slowly that you could probably load the game at least three times off tape before you’d be able to complete the first stage. But… I liked it. Helicopter combat was fun and different to a 6 year old in 1989 on a screeching old soft drink stained computer. And when I first played the game on rental for the Mega Drive, I enjoyed it. Not as much as After Burner or Space Harrier though.

What should be a niche hidden gem of a game is sadly one of those that tried too much to be like its arcade self and suffered for it. Ironically, the top down sections on all consoles actually work brilliantly and are fun to play. If the home console version of Thunder Blade was exclusively top-down, this could be a game we put in the same bracket as Thunder Force and the Power Strike/Aleste games. Instead the solution to the problem of the scaling in those overhead stages was just to get rid of them.

As a decision it makes sense for the time but in retrospect, would 3D-esque have been better than a very competent 2D shooter for a new console? Who knows. But is this being too harsh?

Possibly. Seen through the modern eyes, the frame rate isn’t awful. The scaling effect is a bit ropey which is what makes it choppy and the colour palette is a little bland. The amount of fire going on makes it quite difficult to see what is coming at times but the auto aim of the missiles makes that a lot easier. Some of the levels are poor however, where things like caves are colour swaps and really immersion breakers and overall, the difficulty even on Easy demands multiple play attempts to learn its curve. You can beat the game’s high score before you’ve even finished the first level, it’s that kind of difficult. Someone knew many people weren’t going to get too far or might bounce off it without that score being that achievable to beat.

Thirty-five years on this is a game that probably sits in the lower end of console launch titles and really, it’s the challenge to complete it that is its charm but it wears thin rather quickly. And within a year it was graphically bested by Thunder Force, Super Hang On and completely usurped by After Burner’s cut down console version (After Burner II) within 18 months. It’s still worth a good 15-20 minutes if you get the chance to play it but in the grand scheme of iconic SEGA franchises, it’s a shame that one that started it all has not really found a place in the plans of those who dictate what our nostalgic memories should be remembering.