Rolling Thunder
- Amiga Gold Hits 1 (1988)
-
Giants
(1988) -
Namco Museum Archives Vol. 2
(2020)
Description official descriptions
Rolling Thunder is the world's most powerful secret police force and you are its best agent. Your mission is to stop an underground conspiracy to conquer the world and to save agent Leila, who has been captured. Starting out armed only with a handgun, you have to make your way through heavily guarded hallways and secret passages to find Leila and stop the enemy.
Spellings
- アーケードアーカイブス ローリングサンダー - Japanese PS4 / Switch spelling
- ローリングサンダー - Japanese spelling
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Credits (Arcade version)
| Music Composer (uncredited) |
Reviews
Critics
Average score: 75% (based on 24 ratings)
Players
Average score: 3.6 out of 5 (based on 57 ratings with 1 reviews)
A progressive platformer, one of the best arcade games
The Good
Impressive gameplay, bringing a bit more realism and detail to platforming. The game has a spy theme to it and there is stealth and dodging involved. It of course has the "leap up a higher level/drop down to a lower level" gameplay of Shinobi, released about a year after Rolling Thunder and arguable a better game. There's the interesting realism of you can't shoot while jumping and while you have a life bar, a bullet will cause instant death(similar to Taito's Crime City, a few years later). The excellent, jazzy, spy-film background music is by female composer Junko Ozawa. Another big thing is that the gameplay is quite fair compared to other arcade games, the game doesn't punish you too much at first and you can enjoy dodging and shooting opponents for while, being proud of your successes.
The Bad
The game is a little too repetitive compared to platformers of 1987 and after i.e lot's of masked enemies, distinguished by colours and slightly ordinary background graphics.
The Bottom Line
I think it was quite a step-forward for platform gaming at the time and while it might not be as visually impressive as many of the games released the following year, it makes up for that with fairer gameplay.
Arcade · by Andrew Fisher (700) · 2018
Discussion
| Subject | By | Date |
|---|---|---|
| Rolling Thunder(NES port) in NAMCO MUSEUM ARCHIVES Vol 2 | Andrew Fisher (700) | Aug 21, 2022 |
Trivia
1001 Video Games
The Arcade version of Rolling Thunder appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.
Conversions
US Gold picked up conversion rights and Tiertex ported the game for release on all major home computers in 1988. The C64 version is sluggish and blocky, yet a very playable and satisfactory effort, while the Amstrad features colourful in-game graphics and the Spectrum contains its characteristically faithful sprites and linedrawn backgrounds. The Amiga and Atari ST versions are a relatively disappointment when taking into account that near-perfect conversions could have been achieved on such powerful machines. The Amiga version was US Gold's first foray into the 16-bit Commodore market and its lacklustre execution is perhaps the reason why both it and the Atari ST port were never re-issued pon the Kixx budget label, as were the 8-bit versions. Predictably, all releases feature the ever-obligatory and annoying border around the playing area.Several consoles received conversions with a version for the Atari Lynx and a pleasant Nintendo NES port from Tengen in 1988 which implemented a password system and featured strikingly daring box art for the family-friendly console. An arcade-perfect release finally came to home systems in the Nineties when the game was included on the Sony Playstation's Namco Musem Encore Collection - sadly, a Japan-only exclusive.
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Related Sites +
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The Rolling Thunder Online Resource
A full overview of all aspects of the games
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Contributors to this Entry
Game added by Servo.
Commodore 64 added by Quapil. Arcade, Wii added by GTramp. Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 added by Rik Hideto. Amstrad CPC added by chirinea. Amiga added by necronom. Atari ST, ZX Spectrum added by Martin Smith. Antstream added by lights out party.
Additional contributors: paul cairey, Sciere, jean-louis, mailmanppa, Rik Hideto, FatherJack.
Game added October 4, 2002. Last modified December 19, 2024.