Thunder Force V: Perfect System

An intro screenshot. The video quality is truly awful in this game.

The remains of the TFIV ship are collected by a human salvage team.

Analyzing the remains of the original Vasteel.

Automated Babel fortress is built to safeguard humanity.

Launching RVR01 Gauntlet (here the video suddenly switches to full-screen).

Title screen [640x480 (originally 512x480)]

Initial stage-select screen [640x480 (originally 512x480)]

Loading screen

Level one - "No Blue".

This is the only stage that bears any improvements from the Saturn original.

Don't believe the hype.

Some enemies are very cool-looking.

Some of the game's bosses have metal band names, however, the game is not consistent in its naming strategy.

Level two. If you have ever played this game on Saturn, don't look!

This stage took a heavy graphical hit on Playstation.

Fighting a giant robot-ape mid-boss.

This is quite possibly the easiest stage in the game.

Level Three - "Human Road". Unleashing

The TFV bonus system encourages aggressive play.

The game is nice enough to warn you of any incoming enemies with large "Danger" arrows.

And again - you can easily see how ugly the Playstation version of the game is.

This portion of the game is missing all the transparent parallax from the Saturn version.

Fighting a mid-boss.

Despite its difficulty, the game never resorts to bullet-hell tactics.

Despite looking quite menacingly, this boss can be dispatched in a matter of seconds with the Free-Range weapon.

The most difficult of the first three bosses - Armament Armed Arm!

Yup, you'll die a lot too. [640x480 (originally 512x480)]

Play summary. [640x480 (originally 512x480)]

Right away notice that the game runs in higher resolution than the Playstation version.

Stage select screen.

Some pretty impressive sprite scaling.

Nice pyrotechnics courtesy of dying Leviathan.

First boss doesn't put up much of a struggle, especially if you use the Free Range weapon.

Continuing the fight underwater.

A loading screen - you will see this screen very rarely and never for long.

Level 2 - the mandatory jungle stage.

Fighting the mecha-ape mid-boss.

The Wave weapon doesn't deal much damage, but it sure covers a wide area.

While this stage is pretty easy, there are some nasty surprises.

Unleashing the awesome of Free Range.

Note how much nicer the Saturn version looks.

This mid-boss' going down!

Fighting Armament Armed Arm.

Taking screenshots in SSF is a huge pain - so I die.

...but not before getting a high score!