Arcade Archives: Thunder Fox

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This week's Arcade Archives release is... Thunder Fox (Taito, 1990)

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Switch
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This game is included in Taito Milestones 3 on the Switch. Only one ROM is included but all of the game's text is in English. Preference Settings allow players to fix scrolling misalignment glitches that occur in some stages.

The year is 199X, and the world is in crisis. A wave of terrorist activities are sweeping the globe, bringing fear over land and sea and air. There is hope, though, in the anti-terrorism team codenamed Thunder Fox. This elite unit consists of just two brave men, Thunder (P1, blue trousers) and Fox (P2, orange trousers) who enter the battlefield armed only with knives (all other weapons must be OSP- that's on-site procurement) and their close-quarters combat training that allows them to perform feats such as flying leg kicks, vertical somersaults and mid-air rolling. They can also steal enemy vehicles like jeeps, gyrocopters and jet skis to bring the fight to the enemy wherever they hide. Go, Thunder Fox, and save the world!

Thunder Fox is... It's a lot. I've seen a fair few people consider this a predecessor to Crime City, and I can see that- this is very much in the style of Rolling Thunder and even has Crime City's famous rolling attack, although here it can only be done in mid-air. It's a pretty fast game for the genre at this point in time as all your attacks can be done while you're still moving, although the controls might take a little adjustment as, unusually, this is a three-button game (weapons like handguns and rocket launchers use a separate button, as using the standard attack button swings them for a melee attack instead). It does feel a bit loose and weird at times, and figuring out how not to die to some things will take practice (although it can be done in one credit, as shown by LordBBH). What this game definitely does well, though, is be as silly as possible- this is a goofy, shlocky action movie (said affectionately) in arcade form and it goes all-in. From the first stage where lightning strikes constantly hit street lights in the foreground to blow them up, kicking robots with your vertical somersault until they explode, fighting a stick-combat master on top of a submarine where he tells you "THE TIME WHEN I WILL MEET YOU NEXT IS THE TIME YOU WILL DIE" when you beat him, the constant, unending screams of enemies as you plough through them... This is one of Taito's goofiest action games, and definitely worth a co-op playthrough if you have a partner willing to play something very silly.



If you have the time, definitely check out the Hamster livestream for this one, as it's got a lot of really interesting development documents. In particular, it shows some proposals to change the game early in development, and the changes at 57:30 are especially interesting- at one point there was a complete pivot considered, replacing all the humans with cute animals! Needless to say, a lot of people I showed this to really wish the game came out like this! Oh well~