Rolling Thunder

The Good
Impressive gameplay, bringing a bit more realism and detail to platforming. The game has a spy theme to it and there is stealth and dodging involved. It of course has the "leap up a higher level/drop down to a lower level" gameplay of Shinobi, released about a year after Rolling Thunder and arguable a better game. There's the interesting realism of you can't shoot while jumping and while you have a life bar, a bullet will cause instant death(similar to Taito's Crime City, a few years later). The excellent, jazzy, spy-film background music is by female composer Junko Ozawa. Another big thing is that the gameplay is quite fair compared to other arcade games, the game doesn't punish you too much at first and you can enjoy dodging and shooting opponents for while, being proud of your successes.

The Bad
The game is a little too repetitive compared to platformers of 1987 and after i.e lot's of masked enemies, distinguished by colours and slightly ordinary background graphics.

The Bottom Line
I think it was quite a step-forward for platform gaming at the time and while it might not be as visually impressive as many of the games released the following year, it makes up for that with fairer gameplay.