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Namco circa 1986 had some pretty nice arcade games under it belts - the most popular being Pac-Man and its variations, but also other classics like Pole Position and Dig Dug. While these were quite good games, they decided to branch out and attack the side-scrolling action game market. The result was Rolling Thunder, one of the most influential action games to hit the 80s arcades. Rolling Thunder plays much like Sega's Shinobi, even though Rolling Thunder predates it by two years. You spend most of your time ducking behind boxes and shooting it out with a variety of bad guys, while jumping back and forth between the two levels on the screen. However, Rolling Thunder ditched the idea of hostages and instead littered the levels full of doors. Not only would these provide precious bullets (ammo is limited) and extra weapons, but you could hide in them to momentarily take a breather from the fray. Which was almost entirely necessary - the Rolling Thunder games are also especially known for their brutal difficulty.
 The original game features a retro Buck Dodgers-ish hero codenamed Albatross saving the world from some weird green alien creature named Geldra, and saving his lady partner Albatross. The later games refine the look to be more in line with James Bond or other similar spy-themed movies. Of course, this was before everyone was into the stealth genre, so being a spy still equated to filling everything in sight with bullets.
 There are only three Rolling Thunder games, with the first two being for the arcade and the third beind a Genesis-exclusive. They all pretty much made the transition to the console fairly well.
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 Rolling Thunder Arcade
Rolling Thunder 2 Arcade
Rolling Thunder 3
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Published by Atari in America, the arcade Rolling Thunder was just kinda hard - it was massively, gut-puncingly difficult. The game gave you a life bar, but this was almost a cruel joke. Running into an enemy would decrease it in half, and getting shot would
kill you outright - and dying meant getting sent back to an earlier part of the stage. The game also had no problem tossing tons of bad guys at you, weird goons in brightly colored outfits and vaguely KKK-ish hoods, all wielding guns, grenades or other sorts of destruction. You, on the other hand, are confined to a single pistol and, if you're lucky, a machine gun. To counterbalance this, the game lets you select your level at the beginning, so you can at least see some of the later levels of the game. The controls are also a little dodgy, as you can't change directions mid-jump or fire vertically. This version was actually ported to the Playstation in the Namco Museum Encore collection - which never made it outside of Japan. |
 Rolling Thunder Arcade |
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American NES Cover |
Japanese Famicom Cover |
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The Nintendo port of Rolling Thunder, published in America by Tengen, was a pretty good
port of the original. While the reduced detail made everyone look even more like stick figures, the enemies lose their bright colored uniforms and seem much less goofier as a result. The level skip was also ditched in favor of the more standard password system. It is still, of course, maddeningly difficult. Incredibly enough, the American release of Rolling Thunder actually had a pretty cool cover that combined the two main selling points of the game (guns and saving hot chicks) into one great package. Rolling Thunder was also ported to the Atari Lynx.
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 Rolling Thunder NES |
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Arcade Flyer |
Rolling Thunder 2 Arcade
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Rolling Thunder 2 Arcade
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Rolling Thunder 2 was a massive improvement over the original in pretty much every possible way. While the game was still difficult, the amount of enemies that attacked were reduced a bit, and running into an enemy wouldn't damage you. They game also generously gave you life meter-extending power ups, and a new flamethrower weapon. The graphics are obviously several times better, as the game moves away from the drab futuristic underground lair setting of the original. This time, you get sent to a variety of locations, ranging from sunny resorts to Egyptian ruins. The biggest draw was the two-player mode - you could play as the old hero Albatross or the former damsel-in-distress Leila - who has blue hair in every anime artwork but is obviously a brunette ingame. Unfortunately, the control still retains most of the stiffness of its predecessor. MP3s
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 Rolling Thunder 2 Arcade
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American Genesis Cover |
Japanese Mega Drive Cover
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Rolling Thunder 2 Genesis
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Namco seemed partial to Sega in the 16-bit era, so Rolling Thunder 2 ended up getting ported to the Genesis. While it suffers from the usual hit in graphics due to the limited color palette of Sega's system, it's otherwise an excellent translation. They even added a few new levels and small storyline scenes inbetween stages.
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 Rolling Thunder 2 Genesis
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The Genesis version of Rolling Thunder 2 had a few wacky bits - the most cryptic was the sound test, where an alien band would play and jam to your chosen song. The password system was similarly innovative, compromised of stringing together seemingly random words to make the same type of nonsensically amusing phrases you'd only see in typing tutors. |
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Genesis Cover |
Rolling Thunder 3 |
Rolling Thunder 3
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Rolling Thunder 3 was the first (and only) console-exclusive of the series, and some changes were made to make everything seem more manageable. You now start with three life marks, so you can actually take more than one bullet before you die, and you now resurrect where you died rather than going back to a checkpoint. Even nicer, you can actually shoot diagnolly, the controls are much better, and you get a knife for close quarters combat. Naturally, the game is still quite difficult, especially with the bosses that the game occasionally throws at you.
 The arsenal has greatly increased now - there are nine weapons that you can arm yourself with at the beginning of the stage, though you can only pick one and you won't be able to select it in later levels. These include lasers, cannons and a variety of grenades. Unfortunately, the two player mode has been cut entirely, and Leila and Albatross are no longer the main characters. Instead, you can only play in one-player mode, with a not-quite-suave dork named Jay (although another female agent is playable with a code.) Even with this loss, it's still an excellent title.
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 Rolling Thunder 3
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NES Cover |
Code Name: Viper |
Code Name: Viper
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| Capcom graciously paid tribute to Rolling Thunder with its NES game, Code Name: Viper. Taking place in a time where the war on drugs was fought with machine guns, you play an agent who must infilitrate South American hideouts, kill all bad guys and save some hostages. The gameplay is almost exactly the same as Rolling Thunder, although the main character moves faster and controls a little bit better. Still, it's just as insanely difficult, especially when the enemies will quickly jump at you from below and cause damage without much warning. And in an ode to Shinobi, you NEED to save all of the hostages (hidden in the doors) before you can beat a level, making the going a bit more tedious than it needs to be. While it's slightly better than the original NES Rolling Thunder, it's still a bit too difficult for its own good. |
 Code Name: Viper
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Links Blood Serpent's Rolling Thunder Page Lots of cool scans and full enemy information. For as influential as it was, it's a little unfortunate that it doesn't command the same respect as other games of the era, like Shinobi or Contra. The Rolling Thunder games were the archetype of the 8 and 16-bit eras - tough side scrollers that demanded precision and mastery to get anywhere. While the original is just a little bit too hard, both of the Genesis games are some of the better action games on the platform, and well worth investigating. |
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