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The 1985 robot game that was one of the earliest action side-scrollers that had many elements later included in Metroid and Turrican. I recently discovered and reviewed a sequel called Fire Hawk: Thexder the Second Contact. It was a surprisingly excellent game given its relative obscurity. Wikipedia lists Commander Keen as the first smooth side scroller for the IBM PC, but this was released before that, so....

 

Going back to the original, it seems to be all but forgotten these days, with nobody under the age of 30 even hearing about it and the only review on YouTube by one of the big reviewers is from Mark of CGR, who loves the game probably as much as I do. What is your personal experience with it? Which of the numerous available platforms did you play it on? Why do you think it's not as talked about as other classic 80's games?

 

thexdershot2.gif

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I have fond memories of playing it on Radioshack computers when I was around 10 or 11, until the guy who worked there finally booted me off. Then I got it for PC.

 

Probably anyone who was into computer gaming in the late 80s has fond memories of "Thexder". The problem is it's too damn hard. One life bar. Huge swarms of enemies constantly draining said life bar. No continues. "Battletoads" has nothing on "Thexder." It looks like they addressed these issues in the sequel, but I've never played it.

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Hell, the game was ported to nearly every system, so not sure why the amnesia with most people. Remember thinking it was cool that it was even ported to the CoCo 2 on cartridge BITD! :lol:

 

When released, I thought "weird name... is this a Japanese cartoon thing or what"? Any relation to Voltron, Go-Bots or Transformers? Looking at it today - probably suffers from a slight case of identity crisis and overshadowed by the likes of Metroid, Turrican, Gauntlet and others. Looking at the Amiga version on YouTube right now, doesn't look like the most challenging or exciting game either and despite being able to transform into a spacecraft, pretty much just a go here and shoot that sort of deal.

 

 

Always liked the box art though and could have sworn I have it for the Amiga, but can't seem to find now. Guess I don't have it in my collection and it's not even on my wanted list. ha! Will have to change that, but goes to show how even I kinda/sorta forgot about it all these years.

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Hell, the game was ported to nearly every system, so not sure why the amnesia with most people. :lol:

 

When released, I thought "weird name... is this a Japanese cartoon thing or what"? Any relation to Voltron, Go-Bots or Transformers? Looking at it today - probably suffers from a slight case of identity crisis and overshadowed by the likes of Metroid, Turrican, Gauntlet and others. Looking at the Amiga version on YouTube right now, doesn't look like the most challenging or exciting game either and despite being able to transform into a spacecraft, pretty much just a go here and shoot that sort of deal.

 

It's plenty challenging. I could never make it past the third level.

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I played the crap out of the original Thexder game on the Tandy 1000 PC (the best version that I'm aware of).

 

A truly awesome game with superb artwork and animation. And yes, it's really freaking hard. I made it to around level 8 and that's as far as I could get (lots of hidden things here and there in the various levels for boosting your maximum energy capacity).

 

I tried the sequel (Firehawk) but I definitely prefer the original. Firehawk felt a bit rushed IMO.

 

Sadly the port to the Amiga didn't seem quite as good as the Tandy 1000 version and the port to the CoCo III is missing frames of animation. The MSX version is pretty good.

 

Someday I'll go back and play this again using save states.

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Similar here..

Loved the look and feel of the game...

 

I couldn't believe a PC game could look so good and play so smooth at the time.

 

That said, I wasn't a great gamer (which is still true) and it was too hard for me to really enjoy it too much...

 

Reminds me of Shadow of the Beast, which I got when I got my Amiga. Looked and sounded good, but was too hard for me to really enjoy, other than as a great animation.. ;-)

 

desiv

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It's plenty challenging. I could never make it past the third level.

That sounds like me. I remember playing this game a lot as a kid and couldn't get past level 3 or so. I still enjoyed it, but it wasn't until much later in life that I had the patience to work out a strategy and finally beat it. No end screen, by the way, it just starts over at level 2. Maybe you have to beat it twice.

 

I tried the sequel (Firehawk) but I definitely prefer the original. Firehawk felt a bit rushed IMO.

There's also a Windows 95 remake that looks really bad. I haven't tried it, but it just doesn't look like it carries the spirit of the original at all. Fire Hawk was very enjoyable. Bigger levels, special weapons, smart bosses, 20 different musical tracks. The IBM PC supported the Roland MT-32 which sounds amazing. It doesn't have the same pureness or simplicity of the original, but still a really great game.

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The music on the Amiga is very unimpressive, and no sound effects! Compare that or the PC/Tandy version to the original version for the Japanese PC-8801 computer :

 

 

Or its successor, the PC-9801 :

 

 

I do not blame the Amiga porters for the music sounding like a Tandy 1000, they probably only had to work with the code Sierra supplied them. But the original has an animated title screen, smoother animation, multi-colored laser beams and explosions. good in-game music and sound effects that can be heard alongside the music.

 

The Tandy 1000 still uses the PC Speaker for sound effects instead of the sound chip's noise channel, which is pretty lazy.

Edited by Great Hierophant
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Lazy (or least common denominator) ports to superior computers like the Amiga are all too common. One of the many and bigger "rip offs" one can encounter in dealing with consumer electronics and computers. Have high expectations out of a machine you know is perfectly capable? Half the time or more, can throw them and your money all out the window. :(

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As a kid, I remember seeing plenty of copies of it as a cheap re-release (for the PC), don't know why I never bothered grabbing it back then.

I did get around to checking the PC version (and Firehawk) out eventually - but truth be told, I kind of prefer playing it via Thexder Neo on the PSP (and I think there's a PS3 port as well).

 

 

 

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It's a fairly fun curiosity, but I can't say it's a particularly great game (or at least it really failed to hook me). I do have the boxed versions of the game for the CoCo 3 and PC DOS, and the sequel for PC DOS. I also have the boxed homebrew for the ColecoVision SGM.

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Fire Hawk makes up for a lot of Thexder's weaknesses, a more forgiving difficulty level, end bosses, a story, special weapons and a killer sound track instead of Thexder's single tune, saving and an ending.

 

I talk some more about Thexder, Fire Hawk and other Japanese PC games ported to Western PCs here :

 

http://nerdlypleasures.blogspot.com/2015/03/the-japanese-invasion-japanese-pc-games.html

Edited by Great Hierophant
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Fire Hawk makes up for a lot of Thexder's weaknesses, a more forgiving difficulty level, end bosses, a story, special weapons and a killer sound track instead of Thexder's single tune, saving and an ending.

 

I talk some more about Thexder, Fire Hawk and other Japanese PC games ported to Western PCs here :

 

http://nerdlypleasures.blogspot.com/2015/03/the-japanese-invasion-japanese-pc-games.html

Nice site. Lots of great technical info on there.

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Fire Hawk makes up for a lot of Thexder's weaknesses, a more forgiving difficulty level, end bosses, a story, special weapons and a killer sound track instead of Thexder's single tune, saving and an ending.

 

I talk some more about Thexder, Fire Hawk and other Japanese PC games ported to Western PCs here :

 

http://nerdlypleasures.blogspot.com/2015/03/the-japanese-invasion-japanese-pc-games.html

Really enjoyed reading through that. Thanks for the link.

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First time I've seen this game was on a CoCo 3 at a Radio Shack store and loved it's unique gameplay. At the time I was amazed seeing that and other NES-style games on the CoCo 3, compared to what I played on the original model...

 

Years later I came across the PC version at a thrift store and bought it. I actually had to play the game through the DEBUG program in order to play it on Windows 98 due to the copy protection. Would like to play it again on DOSbox using Tandy 1000 mode for improved music.

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  • 1 month later...

The 1985 robot game that was one of the earliest action side-scrollers that had many elements later included in Metroid and Turrican. I recently discovered and reviewed a sequel called Fire Hawk: Thexder the Second Contact. It was a surprisingly excellent game given its relative obscurity. Wikipedia lists Commander Keen as the first smooth side scroller for the IBM PC, but this was released before that, so....

 

Going back to the original, it seems to be all but forgotten these days, with nobody under the age of 30 even hearing about it and the only review on YouTube by one of the big reviewers is from Mark of CGR, who loves the game probably as much as I do. What is your personal experience with it? Which of the numerous available platforms did you play it on? Why do you think it's not as talked about as other classic 80's games?

 

thexdershot2.gif

 

Relative obscurity?

 

This game was a pretty big hit for Sierra Online. They use to brag of it as being a 100K (or was it 250K) seller which was a pretty big back then for action PC games. There wasn't anything like it at the time and Robotech was the show that made the Veritech fighter popular.

 

This was a game they should have made an Atari version for as well. They bought Mr. Cool to Atari, they should've bought Thexder too! This was a title Atari owners would've appreciated back then.

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Relative obscurity?

 

This game was a pretty big hit for Sierra Online. They use to brag of it as being a 100K (or was it 250K) seller which was a pretty big back then for action PC games. There wasn't anything like it at the time and Robotech was the show that made the Veritech fighter popular.

 

This was a game they should have made an Atari version for as well. They bought Mr. Cool to Atari, they should've bought Thexder too! This was a title Atari owners would've appreciated back then.

 

I don't think Sierra was supporting Atari platforms anymore by that point. Mr. Cool was 1983 and Thexder was 1985 at the earliest. Frankly, you would have expected a Commodore 64 port long before an Atari 8-bit port, and that never happened either.

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I don't think Sierra was supporting Atari platforms anymore by that point. Mr. Cool was 1983 and Thexder was 1985 at the earliest. Frankly, you would have expected a Commodore 64 port long before an Atari 8-bit port, and that never happened either.

 

Sierra Online supported Atari till 1990 or 1991, Atari ST only at this point but still any Atari support is good.

 

My point being, they could still pick & choose what titles they wanted to bring to the Atari platforms like they did for the Apple II.

 

This was still being done by companies like Eypx for Spy vs. Spy 2 and the BoulderDash Construction Set (released under their Maxx play label) and FireBird for The Pawn, Guild of Thieves and Jinxter.

 

Thexder came out for the Apple II so an Atari version would definitely be possible. It was a shame this game wasn't considered because the Atari audience would've appreciated this title. These types of action games would've fit right in perfectly. Definitely a potential for a hit title on the Atari platform.

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