Thunder…Thunder…THUNDER…THUNDERCATS HOOOOOO Dear God what happened???
Before I begin, I hope you all are having a great week so far. Easter over and done with, kids off school until Monday though…Oh well can’t be helped!
Anyway, so here’s the wonderful plot for this game based on the fantastic original Thundercats series from Arthur Rankin and Jules Bass.
Mum-Rah has stolen the Eye of thundera, as you know is the big eye that sits in the hilt of the sword of Omens. How he managed this is unknown, based on the cartoon series he wouldn’t have even crossed into the Thundercats Lair…but I digress, it’s up to you, as Lion-O, Lord of the Thundercats to go out and retrieve it.
There you go, simple plot, plonked into a simple game. A game that deserved alot more love than Elite gave it that’s for sure. Why is it when a company get a huge franchise to play with, they screw it up in the worst possible ways…yes He-Man, I am looking at you AGAIN!…The game is a side scrolling plat-former/beat em up style game, you as Lion-O have the sword of Omens minus the eye of Thundera in the hilt and have to swipe at multiple enemies coming at you from both directions. This reminded me of a poor man’s Rastan Saga if I am quite honest. The scrolling is nice and smooth and the animation of sprites is not too shabby, the game is just poorly put together. Enemies come in a variety of flavours but repetition is massive, there’s only one Vulture man in the series, yet you can see many of him on screen at once, maybe he called all his family in to help. Floating eye balls and bats make up more of the bad guys hoping to put a stop to you in your tracks. After each mission you will be given a bonus mission to go and rescue Tygra, Panthro, and for some reason Wily Kit??!!?? I dunno, maybe the others were on vacation that week. Levels are split into four sections, each representing a different aspect of elements, Earth, wind, fire and water and spread over a number of levels. Lion-O can grab a short range gun at times which replaces the sword and gives you some distance to give yourself some breathing room. Another feature is a hovercraft type vehicle which you will jump into on various levels and blast your way to victory. It’s nice that they kept to the art of the original series in static screens and the environment backdrops although static and occasionally changes to Mumm-Rah looming over you grinning like a Sumo at an all you can eat buffet, give a nice bit of eye candy.
Graphics:- Well what can be said about this? Well the main sprite looks more like a gurning hunchback than the majestic Lion-O, it’s such a shame that this was not given more attention on the Amiga, even the Spectrum version looked slightly more Lion-O esque. Colours are done nicely and you can pick out the henchmen from the series, which actually seem to have been given more priority than the actual main character…bizarre!
Sound:- Nothing to write home about, nice intro theme, though not based on the TV theme tune at all. The in game sounds should be embarrassed with themselves as they are really bad! No in-game score at all, which really emphasises the badly written sound effects…poor show!
Overall:- Well, the game isn’t very good, the sound lets it down in a massive way, and for a company that called itself Elite…this game was far from that! Poor quality for such a promising franchise…Maybe they should have just made it so you could control all of the Thundercats and swapped in and out or had their own levels. Bland and uninteresting, Thundercats becomes a room 101 candidate!
