Classic Game Room - GATE OF THUNDER review for PC-Engine

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Classic Game Room reviews GATE OF THUNDER, a rocking horizontally scrolling space ship shooter released for the PC-Engine in 1992. CGR Gate of Thunder KZbin review has Gate of Thunder gameplay recorded from Turbo Duo.
Gate of Thunder can also be found on Turbografx-16.

[@DanielLundh]

As I was watching this review Nolan Bushnell started following me on Twitter. My life is complete now.

[@mumboking]

He followed me a few months ago. He didn't follow me for long though. I'm not sure what's with that... You'll probably find he's not following you in a few days time...

[@FinalBaton]

That was a great review. Well done!

[@drseussisdeaddd]

Awesome game can never beat the last stage though

[@julianobitsgen]

I've used the slow-speed feat on the Avenue Pad to finish first time, to learn the patterns.

[@jakublulek3261]

Gate of Thunder and Lords of Thunder always sounded like name of metal band from '80s for me, these games also sound like metal album from '80s, and that is main thrust of these games for me, awesome music, gameplay-wise, R-Type is more compeling for me.

[@AdiSneakerFreak]

Top review as always pal

[@Acierer]

+1 for the Lords of Acid reference.

[@trexslapfight]

One of my favorite shumps of all time!

[@TheAxelay]

I've always known about the PC ENGINE-Turbo/CD however I live down under and we never ever had the console (much to my frustration!!) and we still didn't get it via virtual download either but I found a way lolz. While I do feel guilty over that method believe me, I've waited over 27 years to play this and I can't wait any longer so it's just that I suffer more playing this on a keyboard which makes it even more harder and insane but that's okay as I have been trained with the Thunder Force games which I did own but I'm sure if that's even enough for G.O.T. as it's SO tough. G.O.T. is to me T.F. III's backwards mirror complexion as it improves the concept beyond all comprehension!!!!

[@AirZonkWorldChamp]

Great review on a great shooter!

[@secretbootlegs]

Love this game, and I love how it's a 4-in-1 CD. I've never played Lords of Thunder though.

[@garrethohman6851]

Lords of Thunder is on PC Engine as well!

[@worsethanhitlerpt.2539]

Good background design esp. the CROWN level

[@Bongwyre2112]

Lords of Acid, wow. That brings me back.

[@Drinkabeerandplayagameofficial]

Another game I really want, would love to add some shooters to my small TG16 collection but the prices are nuts

[@blakecasimir]

Very proud to have a real copy of this, though in the "3-pack" edition with Bonk and another game that I can't recall off hand. Brilliant shooter, very Thunderforce in style as Mark says, great music. Nothing to complain about except that it should be on Steam / GOG.

[@DarthEquus]

Mark, I don't want to be a jerk, but you stated around 4:38 that the game has two player local co-op. Gate Of Thunder is a one-player game only.

[@only257]

Awesome 😈

[@whirlwind37]

Second best shooter for the Turbo Duo. Lords Of Thunder is the best. I got the version that came with the Duo that included Bonk 1 & 2.

[@ravagingwolverine]

Awesome game for the PCE with lots of neat graphical effects. I wish the music was louder during play. Winds/Lords of Thunder is awesome too. I look forward to that review as well. They should do another sequel and call it Gate of Lightening.

[@julianobitsgen]

Or Lightening Thunder. Or Winds of Lightening. Or Lightening Force. Or Thunder Force. Oh, wait.

[@Michirin9801]

"One of the best spaceship shooters on the PC engine" Which automatically makes it one of the best spaceship shooters ever ;3 This game is f***ing AWESOME! There's no other way to describe it, and it shows off the PC engine's capabilities too with all those big sprites and parallax scrolling, mind you, the system only had 1 BG layer, and this game pulls off an impressive amount of multi-layered scrolling! I LOVE IT!

[@julianobitsgen]

It looks almost like a Neo Geo game, that 24-bit, almost 32-bit 2D feeling!!

[@Michirin9801]

Juliano Bittencourt The term "24 bit" doesn't apply to processors, only to colour depth, a processor's "bitness" is always a power of 2. However I do understand where you're coming from, this game does feel more advanced than what was out at the time, that's due to the Super CD's RAM expansion of 256Kb, that's twice the RAM of the Super Nintendo! (And 4 times the RAM of the Genesis) That way they could store and handle more graphics and commands at once and meant that they could do more detailed animation and higher quality sound effects, which is very nice! Also, the CD quality music helps a lot.

[@julianobitsgen]

Yeah, I was referring to Neo Geo advertised as a "24-bit system". It was part of all that 90s marketing, many not being objective, others masking things, and other times just making things up. Nevertheless, the PC-Engine DUO was a beast back then, compared to Genesis and SNES. And it was capable of displaying some impressive games, sometimes better than their Genesis and SEGA CD counterparts.

[@Michirin9801]

Juliano Bittencourt To be fair, the Sega CD never had its full potential shown... But still the Sega CD is limited by the Genesis' low colour count, the PC engine could display more colours on-screen than the SNES and the Genesis combined, and the Super System Card had about as much RAM as both combined, if not more, however it's still an 8 bit system with 2 16 bit graphics processors and a single BG layer, it may be able to produce some amazing-looking games, but it's still quite limited in what it can do... But still, the fact that it is an 8 bit system with a single BG layer that is pulling off graphics and sounds this good is what makes it so impressive to me!

[@ravagingwolverine]

Definitely an excellent game for the PC Engine with very extensive and clever use of line scrolling all over to create the background scrolling effects, along with some other tricks. Very well planned game graphically and overall. I agree with your enthusiasm for this game. Agreed that the Sega CD was never pushed to its potential. Along with sales, it was, perhaps, overly complex as well as the PCE CD add on was very simple and not much different for the programmers. All those old systems were designed with low memory and to mostly fetch data as needed directly from carts/HuCards very quickly. Every ROM cart was a temporary memory upgrade, basically. The PCE RAM cards are there to take the place of a HuCard since accessing from the CD constantly would be impractical. Those systems didn't need that kind of RAM on board when a cart could provide game data quickly and in large sizes, but CD-based systems certainly needed RAM. There are limitations to both approaches, obviously.

[@SeekerLancer]

Legendary game.

[@kevincarrell9548]

The question remains, as it always does with Mark when it comes to spaceship shooters. Is it better than Truxton.

[@PaulBlaster]

PC Engine Super CD-ROM²

[@affansonicfan]

The best SCHMUP game of ALL TIME is Gaiares hands-down. Excellent story, excellent gameplay, INCREDIBLY hard. You need some huge balls to beat Gaiares without using any cheats. I've had this game since '97, and I can barely make it past level 3. You want a GREAT game? Play Gaiares!

[@bytex666]

I got this on the Wii virtual shop years ago. Found it almost impossible to play it was so fricking hard I couldnt even pass the first level. But the music was amazing.

[@Zinfidel1]

Lords of Acid reference

[@ZetZatar]

Why is the game music muted? KZbin licensing issues?

[@stucazzo2000]

I was going to say that I could barely hear the music, it's the best part of the game.

[@ravagingwolverine]

The music is there. The game's main flaw is the music is too low compared to the sound effects. I don't recall there being options in the game to adjust it. Still a great game.

[@julianobitsgen]

Mark, to easily beat the 2-giant arm boss, just stay on one of the sides of the screen(of course, use the backward shot if you're on the right). Then always go to the opposite side the boss is going. Repeat the process until he's finished. It's a piece of cake. Oh, and go for the Lords of Thunder(or Wings of Thunder, the japanese title) on the PC-Engine itself. It's technically more advanced than the SEGA-CD version.

[@ravagingwolverine]

I back up your assessment of Lords of Thunder. Also, the PC Engine version is more challenging, but in a fair way. The Sega CD version is fun, and the player hitbox is a bit better, but it's like a training mode for the PCE version.

[@julianobitsgen]

Although I haven't played the SEGA-CD version on a real console(just emulation), it did seem a bit too much on the easy side. Speacially the bosses; whenever I play it on my PC-Engine, they seem to have more difficult patterns. And the graphics and color palette are downgraded.

[@RutgervanDriessen]

Burned this rom the other day (original bit too expensive for my taste) for my pc engine duo and I must say I love it!! I can make it to the last stage... hope to beat it soon. The soundtrack really kicks ass 😎👌

[@XXTROB]

I miss my turbo duo 😭

[@theexcreeperpe]

Hey lord carnage! I have a question, what game should I get for my new gameboy advance SP? Zelda, mario, or pokemon? And which game in the series?

[@stephenobrien6983]

Mario Advance 2 or 4 are good choices & Zelda: Atttp or Minish Cap are both great too.

[@julianobitsgen]

Truxton. :P

[@theexcreeperpe]

+Juliano Bittencourt i didnt include truxton as a choice XD

[@CaptainRufus]

You never used Select to change ship speed!

[@DragonGrafx-16]

Is this where the devs for Tyrian got the idea for the green wave gun? If CGR hasn't played Tyrian/Tyrian 2000 you really should.

[@1080ike]

While Lords of Thunder is on the Sega CD, the Turbografx version is the superior version.

[@johneygd]

Gate of thunder is NOT on pv engine but on pc engine CD (eventrough it's still and can be counted as a pce game)because i CANNOT put the rom on a everdrive and expect to play it on my turbo express. My point is pce & pce cd games are on some download sites mixed together in the same catagory list making me very confusing. Yeah overall a great game you should have in your pce cd collection.

[@getdrinking]

I dont recall this being on psn. Certain countries only?

[@duketogo1300]

Pretty sure that is referring to Japan PSN.

[@julianobitsgen]

Yup.

[@lasafrog]

Couch co-op? Was that in the Japanese version? Because it definitely isn't in the North American release.

[@yjzep9922]

I've been playing this game for 25 years, and until today, had no idea why sometimes my options are facing backwards 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

[@fazares]

i bought it .D

[@bigdumer8997]

It's scary...I think I've memorized the names of all the Patreon contributors. And I've memorized Mark's delivery..."Jim Moooooriarrrrrrty"....

[@TheL1arL1ar]

You are not alone..my kids know some of it. My 3 year old the other day called me Sean zoltek to criticize.

[@kevinfishburne]

It's also extraordinarily well-engineered as a game with respect to the basic mechanics of a shoot 'em up, seamlessly blending it's technical excellence with the well-realized graphical and aural sonatas of a tired genre's best moments. It's a pleasure to witness.

[@gt1982mustang]

Review more PC Engine games please!

[@GalathNox]

Yeah. More Odell Lake, Number Munchers, and Oregon Trail. It is CLASSIC Game Room after all. lol

[@julianobitsgen]

More PC-Engine shmups, please!

[@gallitOo88]

Lord of thunder review plz!!

[@zanychelly]

PSN? What console?

[@jonathannosworthy7096]

It looks a lot like Gradius III to me. Why don't you talk about Gradius more?

[@MyRobotHand2000]

IT WAS MADE BY THE GUYS WHO MADE THUNDER FORCE!

[@HayabusaPaul]

GATE... OF... THUNDA!!!

[@Zoyous]

I'm impressed - I didn't realize the PC Engine could handle parallax backgrounds. This looks fantastic.

[@rpgymas7736]

mark broke game room😈

[@Old_Man_Jay]

Adding this to my rom collection. Sorry, game elitist. I've spent enough money on my collection as it is. I'm out of space and money for games. Gonna play this on my retro freak!

[@ItsYoYoHo]

The NES can never pull this off.

[@julianobitsgen]

Of course not, what made you think it could? Even the Genesis nor the SNES couldn't.

[@dan_loup]

Probably they can, but with an unhealthy dose of lag. It's quite hard to beat the little white box of lots of IPC, specially on things that use a frakload of sprites.

[@stucazzo2000]

Back in my day during the 8 and 16-bit era, we didn't call it lag, we called it "slowdown". Learn your shit sonny! ;) ;)

[@dan_loup]

Been so long i don't see this word i kinda forgot about it, but indeed its not just old term but the right one. Before the time consoles were powerful enough to deal with variable frame rate.

[@tenow]

Mark, you have to try Jets'n'Guns on PC (not engine) It's the greatest spaceship shooter on a platform, has kick-ass music, flamethrower, 'n' in a title and it's just an overall masterpiece store.steampowered.com/app/262260/

[@NitnerockBobarr]

I was curious about this game because of its mention in a french book that is basically a testimony compilation of players that played 8/16-bit games. I like the speed it seems to have so I'll sure try it out.

[@julianobitsgen]

I can't get enough of this game. Simply one of my all-time favorite shmups. And I could never decide which is better: Gate of Thunder or Lords of Thunder. Maybe I'll go with this one, just because is more Thunder Force like, compared to Lords of Thunder. 'Cause Thunder Force 3 and 5 will also be on my top ten list of best shooters of all time.

[@Rocky32189]

Swallow your pride and just say shmup instead of struggling to say space ship shooter every time.

[@DocRockIt]

But the actual shortening for space ship shooter is 'spshsh'. Sounds a little silly, don't you think? ;-)

[@Polecat666]

God of Thunder

[@tepswassda724]

gg

[@irondom]

I hope you will change your filming location because this looks terrible. Please film with a back ground of games and arcade machines like you used to.

[@IanRoughGuide]

R type is much better.

[@julianobitsgen]

It's different. If you're looking for a R-Typish game, look for Pulstar on the Neo Geo. Or R-Type itself on the PC-Engine. It's a great version.

[@IanRoughGuide]

+Juliano Bittencourt I only got the Atari 2600,Commodore 64,Sega Master System,Sega Megadrive,Super Nintendo,Nintendo 64,3D0 PlayStation 1 and 2 Xbox Xbox 360 I stopped playing games after buying Xbox 360 but I'm thinking of getting a Xbox one but I'm really not sure.The best side scrolling shoot em up I've ever played was Defender for Atari 2600 but this game is more like R type thier was a great side scrolling shoot em up for the super Nintendo a Japanese game but I forgot the name it was truly amazing but I forgot the name and bought it but just like a lot of my collection and machines they seem to have diassapeared over the years.

[@julianobitsgen]

Well, the closest to R-Type on the SNES(apart from Super R-Type, of course) is called Axelay. It's from Konami, and it's a good game. It's technically impressive, though R-Type was much more influential when it came out. And I think R-Type just plays better than Axelay. But I'd recommend you to give it a try again and compare both.

[@IanRoughGuide]

+Juliano Bittencourt No its not axelay it was just out in Japan but was a big hit on the Super Nintendo but axelay is a great game.

[@julianobitsgen]

Biometal. If not, you can look up here: www.shmups.com/xenocidefiles/snes.html

[@toonses4300]

Wow the graphics are very basic looking. Is this game any good?

[@Michirin9801]

Consider that this game is running on a 1987 8 bit game system with a CD attachment and a memory expansion, and that the system only has 1 Background layer and yet the game is pulling off multi-layered parallax scrolling... Yeah, the graphics may look basic now, and even compared to the Super Nintendo (which came out in 1990 in Japan), but considering the limitations, this looks friggin' awesome! And if you like spaceship shooters this game is a must-have! (In my opinion at least) But well, it's pretty pricey, so I'd just tell you to get it on the Virtual Console or PSN, or just emulate it...

[@peristrojka]

I am impressed of these graphics, some of the best i've seen on this system.

[@toonses4300]

peristrojka Is it as good as Thunder Force III?

[@julianobitsgen]

You must be kidding. Compare Thunder Force 3 to this(graphically).

[@julianobitsgen]

The game itself is ALMOST as good as Thunder Force 3, in terms of level design. Although the graphics are FAR better than TF3. As for the difficulty, Gate of Thunder is a little bit harder, in the sense that the last stages are far more difficult than the rest of the game, and in TF3 it feels more balanced(it's mildly difficult from the beginning).

[@cciinnrraamm]

R-TYPE