BTW, regarding Thunder Blade, there exists only *one*
respectable home version of the game. that would be the one made for X68000 (X68K) in 1990, perhaps coded by Sharp themselves, or some subsidiary (?)
Perhaps Sharp-SPS only published it, I dunno.
Anywho, the first first stage
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bA31IZTPg14
And I tried to find footage of the real arcade cab, not Mame:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7g7E25Ngw9o
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBD14_CTVc0
Was X68000 Thunder Blade absolutely on par with the arcade powered by Sega's X-Board? (same as arcade After Burner II) ?
--No, it wasn't. Although it was still incredible and is still to this very day by far and away the best home version.
Keep in mind that, unlike Sega's X-Board board with built-in hardware scaling & rotation, the consumer Sharp X68000 computer had just a single, lower-clocked CPU. It lacked actual hardware scaling (tho lots of RAM and ROM space allowed for plenty of quickly redrawn sprites for reasonably smooth 'software' scaling). That platform could not manage as many sprites on screen: 128 instead of 256, or backgrounds: 2 instead of 4, or colors, and didn't have nearly as much video memory.
With that said, the Sharp computer Thunder Blade conversion was a hell of a lot better than Space Harrier or After Burner II coded by Dempa on the same platformvand just completely
pissed from great height all over Sega's own
'Super' Thunder Blade on their own MegaDrive/Genesis, a game coded in '88 for the MD launch in Japan.
MD/Gen Super Thunder Blade was only
loosely based on the coin-op, not directly the same game, and really, more of a sequel, like Space Harrier II --another Japanese MD launch game in 1988.
Sega did the very same thing with MD/Gen Shadow Dancer in 1990-91, it wasn't even directly based on the arcade.
Don't even get me started on
Amiga's Thunder Blade that was at least a direct translation unlike STB.
So M2 & Sega are you gonna give at least part of the world a 3D Thunder Blade that is based on the coin-op, or will the X68K conversion remain the best home version?
Decisions, decisions....