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   Company Hudson Soft ESRB Rating E for Everyone Release Date US - October 8, 2007 Controllers Wii Remote Classic Controller Gamecube Controller Wii Points 800  Review by: Corbie Dillard ©2008 Virtual-Turbo |
There
are great games and then there are legendary games that go beyond any
type of numerical or alphabetic scoring systems. Gate of Thunder would
fit into the latter category. There have been outstanding shooters over
the years, but very few can come close to equaling the sheer level of
quality and intensity found in Hudson's Gate of Thunder. The sequel,
Lords of Thunder, was and still is a fantastic shooter, but it never
was quite able to capture the lightning in a bottle that Hudson managed
with this release. If ever there were a game to fully show off the
capabilities of the cd-rom medium in video gaming, this is one of the
best examples. Now, all these years later Hudson has chosen their big
gun to inaugurate the arrival of the TurboGrafx-16 CD titles on the Wii
Virtual Console. And they couldn't have picked a better title to kick
things off.
Gate of Thunder keeps things fairly simple when it comes to play control. That's not to say that there's not plenty to do and keep track of, but the game places more emphasis on the action taking place onscreen instead of forcing players to remember complicated button assignments. You can hold the fire button down to fire your primary weapon. The game features automatic rapid fire, which will likely save your thumb some serious wear and tear. You can quickly double-tap the fire button and your extended weapon pods will turn and fire behind your ship. This will come in quite handy in later levels when enemies begin to come at you from the rear. You can also use the other action button to cycle between three type of firepower, depending on which power-ups you've picked up along the way. Gate of Thunder takes a different approach when it comes to smart bombs. Instead of giving you access to several screen-clearing smart bombs, the game turns the power-ups themselves into a screen clearing force field. Once you've fully powered up a weapon, the next time you pick up a power-up it will cause a force field to wipe across the screen taking out any enemies that are on the screen at the time. You'll quickly learn to make use of these when the action heats up. As with most shooters, you'll face off against a huge boss ship at the end of each level. Every boss has a specific attack pattern, and beating them normally involves you locating their weak point and attacking it. Gate of Thunder starts off fairly tame, but the later levels in the game will test even the most seasoned shooter fan. I can't emphasize enough just how smooth and responsive the play control is in Gate of Thunder. It's the type of control that you dream about when playing some shooters that have a sluggish control setup. All of your firepower is easily accessible so you can focus on the game at hand instead of having to constantly remember which buttons to push. If only all games controlled this superbly. Visually there are few TurboGrafx-16 games that can hold a candle to Gate of Thunder. Not only are the backdrops extremely colorful and detailed, there are also multiple levels of parallax scrolling in every area, each more detailed than the last. Even the bosses in the game are huge and animate silky smoothly. The TurboGrafx-16 has become well known for having a huge onscreen palette of colors, but the developers of Gate of Thunder obviously pushed this palette further than any other game available on the system. Many will argue that some of the later Arcade Card releases look better, but it would be hard to contest that Gate of Thunder is one of, if not the best looking TurboGrafx-16 games of them all. There's nothing better than a hard-rockin' soundtrack to go hand in hand with the intense shooter action and Gate of Thunder rocks hard with the best of them. The music isn't quite as intense as the score in Lords of Thunder, but it's still one of the best shooter soundtracks out there. Another plus is that the music seems to follow the levels in the game as the more intense the levels become, the heavier and more up-tempo the music gets. The game also features some fantastic digitized speech used throughout the game to announce power-ups and other activities that are taking place around you. As with every other area of the game, the music and sound effects are top shelf all the way. One of the greatest video game soundtracks ever created and the perfect compliment to such an outstanding title. Gate of Thunder is not only one of the greatest shooters ever made, it's also one of the greatest video games ever made as well. It would be easy to go on and on about how phenomenal Gate of Thunder is but the bottom line is if you love shooters you absolutely must own this game. And if you're not a big fan of shooters, get it anyway. |
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