Lords of Thunder
| Lords of Thunder | |
|---|---|
North American TurboDuo cover art | |
| Developer | Red Company |
| Publishers |
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| Director | Tomonori Matsunaga |
| Producers | Eiji Aoyama Masaki Kobayashi |
| Designer | Kazunori Nakazawa |
| Artist | Masamune Shirow |
| Composer | Satoshi Miyashita |
| Platforms | TurboDuo, Sega CD |
| Release | TurboDuoSega CD |
| Genre | Scrolling shooter |
| Mode | Single-player |
Lords of Thunder (released as Winds of Thunder in Japan) is a horizontally scrolling shooter developed by Red Company and published in 1993 by Turbo Technologies and Hudson Soft for the TurboDuo. It is the follow-up to Gate of Thunder. The player controls the knight Landis, donning the armor 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. The soundtrack was composed by Satoshi Miyashita from T's Music, a group of musicians and sound engineers. First released on the TurboDuo, Lords of Thunder was ported to the Sega CD by Hudson Soft and Eleven in 1995, and has since been re-released through the Virtual Console and PlayStation Network download services, in addition to being included on the TurboGrafx-16 Mini console.
Critics praised its stylish and sharp visuals, large and detailed bosses, ability to choose between stages, lack of slowdown and flickering, frantic pacing and hard rock soundtrack, though the gameplay and difficulty were met with mixed response. The Sega CD port saw a mixed reception from reviewers, who said it was inferior to the TurboDuo version due to the washed out colors, audio balancing issues, low difficulty compared to the original version, instances of sprite flickering and lack of fine-tuning. Retrospective commentary have been positive and is considered one of the most important shooting games on the TurboGrafx-16 family of consoles.