Thunder Fox (Arcade)

Were I not playing Thunder Fox for the purposes of review, it is very likely that I would quickly forget about it entirely. This short sidescrolling action game can be completed without it ever leaving much of an impression, and while many mediocre games can slip into a safe zone of being decent but not exactly exciting, Thunder Fox falls on the other side of things where lack of identity and boring design means things don’t really register with the player because they are doing nothing to engage them mentally.

Thunder Fox’s plot is hilariously vague, right to taking place in the broad time period of 19XX. Rather than giving a name to the enemy forces, there’s a “storm for terrorism” sweeping over the globe and “the evil power of invasion” has its forces attack by land, sea, and sky. While certainly some translation issues lead to such odd phrasing, it’s clear next to no thought was put into establishing the stakes or situation. You and potentially another player serve as the two members of an Anti Terrorism Team, the yellow-haired hero going by Thunder and his red-haired companion finishing the title by being named Fox. A 1990s arcade game wasn’t likely to have a deep or complex plot, but it still feels silly how you are playing as two people named for the title fighting against, essentially, the concepts of terrorism and evil, but the plot here is really just a sign of Taito putting in only what it thinks it needs to, and that unfortunately translates to the gameplay.

Most of the time in Thunder Fox is spent marching forward to the right and rarely to the left, enemies appearing mostly in front of you but many will approach from behind as well. However, rather than being an interesting complication as you need to watch both sides, your character starts off equipped with an incredibly effective knife, one that can be thrust forward rapidly to clear out even small packs of terrorists.  If an enemy approaches from behind, all you need to do is turn around quickly and hammer the attack button to easily take care of them as well. Most of your time in Thunder Fox is spent doing this very basic form of battling, and one reason the game really fails to leave its mark is because of how incredibly basic this fighting method is. There’s nothing necessarily wrong with there being a fast, simple attack method that clears out the weakest enemy types in one hit, but the game spends too much time with this being the main form of play. Even when complications are added like enemies who are on a high wall above you, all you need to do is jump up and join them, stab them really quick, and rejoin the more abundant ground troops. If you dilly dally you might get stabbed yourself, but you have ample health so the riffraff are rarely a worry. Even the robot enemies don’t ask for a change of pace, the flying ones that attack with missiles and guns requiring just a quick jump stab and the low to the ground versions just asking you to crouch before stabbing.

For a game where stabbing is such an effective means of combat, it’s almost easy to forget about the guns. During your adventure you will have a chance to pick up a few weapons such as a pistol, flamethrower, machine gun, and rocket launcher. Enemies will die pretty much instantly to the pistol and machine gun just like they did to the knife, but the flamethrower at least offers more than just a range advantage in that the constant stream of fire reduces the attack button hammering. The rocket launcher is there as a tool for heavy damage against the level bosses, and luckily you can pick up any weapon and not be forced to use it for battle until you want to. You can still attack, either with your knife or by swinging something like the rocket launcher as an equally effective bludgeon, the player having the option of storing that ammo for later. There’s not much point to do so with the regular weapons though, because if you hold onto a pistol or machine gun for the bosses who don’t die in one hit, you’ll see they have ways of deflecting your bullets. Bosses do have weak periods you can choose to fire at them, but it’s not really such a stark difference from a regular fight that it’s worth holding onto that ammo, especially when you could have been using it against the regular enemies so that you can make more use of the many guns you find during a stage. As such, most action becomes incredibly mindless, the one angle for a thoughtful approach being halted for the most part and not worth the trouble outside of something like retaining the rocket launcher for a few good boss hits.

Thunder Fox does try to spice up the action with a few vehicle sections, but these are very brief in an already brief game and don’t shake up the gameplay much. The brief flying section has you able to zip around the air freely, but weak enemies are easily shot down, and even getting to ride your little flying machine to face enemies in the following simple sidescrolling stage isn’t too much of an improvement over walking around. Driving a car gives you a reliable gun with no ammo limits but it’s not the kind of jump in power that makes it thrilling to hop into, and while the jet ski section has you hopping over naval mines to survive, the fights during it are once more far too basic to impress. As your adventure takes you through military bases, underground mines, onto an aircraft carrier, and even to a flying fortress, the game does throw in token hazards like rocks falling from the roof of a cave or doors opening on the flying fortress to try and suck you out into open air, but this mostly just asks you to stand in the right place or jump around the hazard to survive. Like so many parts of the game, this technically adds to the experience, but with so little energy and in a way that doesn’t test the player in an interesting way.

Almost all of the bosses all have to be susceptible to the knife just in case you didn’t carry a weapon to them, and even then they have defenses against bringing most types of weaponry to the fight. The first boss has an interesting idea of having to get grenades from enemy soldiers to deal damage to a tank, but the majority of them can be easily handled by approaching and stabbing them as many times as you can before you need to step back and wait for a new opening. Having a co-op partner along at least seems to be accommodated for appropriately with more enemies and tougher bosses, but it will be over just as quick and it seems fairly likely the multiplayer session will have been more about what you two talked about during the game rather than the action on-screen. As shown so far, there hasn’t been a lot that looks like a glaring problem, but the unambitious manner in which everything is designed makes a game that should be a blood-pumping high-flying action title surprisingly plain and hard to get invested in.

THE VERDICT: Thunder Fox is a strange kind of bad. Rather than having specific areas that were done poorly, it’s the lack of vitality and imagination on show that means systems and concepts that could have worked have nothing pushing them in interesting directions. Thunder and Fox are a two-man army that just stabs its way through all opposition, and if they pick up a gun or hop into a vehicle, it’s basically the same sort of action but now they can move around better and kill enemies from farther away. The short length is perhaps its best strength, since it means it might not have the chance to register as dull in the minds of some players and it is easily completed and never thought about again.

And so, I give Thunder Fox for arcade machines…

A BAD rating. That forgettable design ultimately means Thunder Fox doesn’t end up with an even lower rating. It never implements the kind of bad design that sticks with a player and tells them that the play experience was awful, but it doesn’t have anything there to really entertain them either. The ease with which you kill 90% of your enemies, even the ones wielding guns or trying to approach from above, robs this game of any chance for thoughtful action or reflex challenges, with even most of the bosses being too plain to ask for a new gameplay approach outside of the tank fight. Were they implemented, tougher enemies who appeared more often could have a hope of clearing up the immediate gameplay stagnation, and having foes who are more susceptible to weapons fire could make finding one exciting instead of just a matter of course. Vehicle sections could have been longer with more distinct threats that test the unique abilities of that way of playing, and hazards should have been used to add engaging complications to battles. Instead, everything is just put in your path and made to fold under little pressure save for the bosses who are still designed with very little imagination.

Thunder Fox just needed something to take advantage of its basic elements to climb out of its hole, but it seems like no heart was put into this forgettable arcade title. I’m usually reticent to use a term like “forgettable” again and again, but that really is Thunder Fox to a T. Barely a plot, barely anything asked of the player during the action, and little to talk or think about after save for how underwhelming the experience was. Thunder Fox will find its place in your mind as a hazy memory of a generic military side-scrolling game, and it looks much better through that half-remembered fog than if you actually took the time to reflect on this creatively barren little title.