PAL Mega-CD *

Lords of Thunder (released as Winds of Thunder in Japan) is a 1993 horizontally scrolling shooter developed by Red Company and published by Turbo Technologies and Hudson Soft for the TurboDuo. It is the unofficial follow-up to Gate of Thunder. The player controls the knight Landis, donning the armour of his ancestor Drak on a confrontation against Zaggart of Garuda Empire, who resurrected the evil god Deoric, and his six dark generals across the land of Mistral. Lords of Thunder was created by Red Raimon, a group within Red consisting of former Technosoft staff which previously worked on the Thunder Force series, whose members would later form the game development company CAProduction, originally planned as a sequel to Gate of Thunder before becoming an original title. First released on the TurboDuo,

Lords of Thunder was ported to the SEGA Mega-CD in 1995 and received a mixture of opinions from critics. Electronic Gaming Monthly's four reviewers described it as dramatically inferior to the TurboDuo version, and commenting that it had become outdated since the aforementioned TurboDuo version was released. GameFan's three reviewers stated that the game was still a good shooter on the Mega-CD but criticised the washed out colours, re-recorded cutscenes and easier difficulty compared to the TurboGrafx original. GamePro's The Unknown Gamer remarked that though its colours aren't as sharp and bright as the TurboDuo version's, the Mega-CD version is nonetheless "a fairly close port" and helps fill a niche on a system with very few traditional shooters. Next Generation felt it was similar to Forgotten Worlds and stated that "the game has its moments, but you've seen them, and played them through hundreds of times before as well. Go away!". VideoGames' Geoff Higgins regarded it as a welcomed addition to the Mega-CD library but criticised its low difficulty level. MAN!AC's Martin Gaksch expressed his preference for a Mega-CD conversion of Gate of Thunder but nevertheless, he praised the game for its graphical design, rock music and varied action but criticized its audio balancing issues and low difficulty. Mega Fun' Martin Weidner noted that the visuals were much pale in comparison to the TurboDuo original, criticising the instances where sprite flickering occurred and lack of fine-tuning. Despite this, Weidner called it a "very good game" due to its level design, power-up system and guitar tracks. Video Games' Wolfgang Schaedle regarded the title's audiovisual presentation as inspiring despite its age, giving positive remarks to the varied stages, enemy patterns and near-lack of slowdown. Superjuegos's Bruno Sol noted that stage backgrounds suffered due to the system's inferior 64 colour palette and criticised audio balancing issues and low difficulty. Regardless, Sol commended the lack of slowdown and flickering, hard rock soundtrack and playability, stating that "Without being a masterpiece, Lords of Thunder is probably the best shoot 'em up released for the Mega CD console since the consecration of Silpheed, back in the fall of the year 1993 Retrospective coverage.

Not much is known about the music to this game other than the soundtrack was composed by Satoshi Miyashita from T's Music, a group of musicians and sound engineers. Although it's a soundtrack of original music it spawns a lot of hard rock influences from popular western heavy metal bands, such as the guitar riffs sound a lot like riffs to Ozzy Osbourne songs, the drums sound much like Black Sabbath with Cozy Powell on drums during their late 1980's and early 1990's line up and the track ''Cielom'' even sounds like something from the band ''Nightwish'' (even though Nightwish didn't form until 1997). Despite the poor reviews this port got, there's no denying that it's soundtrack is one of the system's finest! It would have to be sitting at no.2 right after Sonic CD for me.

MUSIC COMPOSER: Satoshi Miyashita 1993.

RE-RECORDED MEGA-CD SOUNDTRACK: 1995.

SOUND QUALITY: 384 Kbps.

TRACKS: ♫

1. Data Track ISO/BIN File (No Audio)
2. Title Theme (00:15)
3. Choose Landscape (00:48)
4. Choose Armour (01:50)
5. Shop (02:52)
6. Continue (04:54)
7. Dezant (05:11)
8. Auzal (09:43)
9. Liamarada (14:15)
10. Bosque (18:47)
11. Helado (23:19)
12. Cielom (27:51)
13. Dark Tower (32:23)
14. Boss 1 (36:55)
15. Final Boss 1 (39:57)
16. Final Boss 2 (42:59)
17. Opening 1 (46:01)
18. Opening 2 (47:33)
19. Mistral Clear! (49:07)
20. Goddess Luxia (50:09)
21. Ending (51:11)

Recorded from the actual game disc complete with track 1 data track from a real PAL SEGA Mega-CD II attachment to a PAL SEGA Mega Drive model 1 console.

Rock on!

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