Thexder

The Good
Game Arts is not unfamiliar to me, having played their classic RPG/adventure Zeliard when I was about twelve. Their debut title was Thexder, a platform game in which your character goes around sixteen levels, finding the exit and killing the many enemies that come their way with your equipped laser. And man, is that difficult!

What I like about this game is that it was one of the first games where you can change from one type of character to another. In this case, from mech to jet and vice versa. You are free to change between them at any time during the game, but only one is useful for getting past certain obstacles. The jet is used to navigate narrow passageways, for example.

The game was also among the firsts to have an auto-aim feature. If you walk up to four enemies, the laser first focuses on the top-most one, and when that enemy is killed, it focuses on the next. What I find neat is that although the energy for it depletes over time, it gets recharged slowly. The only disadvantage of the auto-aim is that it doesn't aim at enemies below you/

As I said, Thexder is a very difficult game. As you move around the sixteen levels, you are faced with hundreds of enemies on the screen at once, and it takes several minutes to kill them. There is a specific path to the tunnel that leads to the next level, and taking the wrong means some backtracking and more enemies that you will face. Also, I recall on a couple of levels that you have to destroy a floor while you are in a really narrow passage, at the time when you're the jet. This is indeed difficult without some nice well-placed diagonal shots

The sound has the same type of quality as Sierra games back then. I couldn't understand the voice that booms at you as the title appears, but I always assumed that it was welcoming you to the game. As you travel through the tunnels, you hear a voice warning that an intruder is coming. There is some nice background music in the game.

The Bad
Apart from the high difficulty, nothing.

The Bottom Line
I don't know what the story behind Thexder is, but who cares about this when you just run through sixteen levels and blasting everything that heads your way. The game introduces some firsts, including the auto-aim function and the ability to change between two different characters. Although the game has good sound and great gameplay, players who are new to the game may be put off with its high difficulty. People interested in full-on platform games will enjoy this game.

The Good
Graphics: The game looked beautiful on the Tandy 1000 platform compared to other games of its time. Enemies were well-animated, and no slowdown whatsoever was ever apparent, even when the screen was filled with enemies (on an 8 MHz Tandy 1000 TX)

Music/Sound: The sound effects were very simplistic, but on par with anything of its time on the PC platform. The music, on the Tandy, although consisting of only two scores, was done exceptionally well.

The gameplay was very uniquely challanging, and the environments were varied (environment types changed every 3-4 sets of levels) - from caves to metallic futuristic-type looking levels. The environment changes kept the player looking forward to the next set of levels.

The Bad
No ending sequence - the game simply restarts at level 2. After all of that hard work, no reward!

The lack of the ability to use a second joystick buton for the shield activation - accidental double-clicking of the fire button would activate the shield when its use was not desired.

The Bottom Line
My favorite "old school" game of all time, Thexder is a two-dimensional side-scrolling game that places the player in control of a "Transformer"-like robot. The player must must battle his way through different levels, each of which are structured in a manner that allows each level to be completed slowly and strategically. A very difficult game, because it does not allow for saving games, but if you have time on your hands, it is a challenge worth exploring. Should be played on a Tandy 1000 series machine, if possible.

The Good
I remember playing this when I was young - I had it on my XT for quite a while (and still do). I think that for a CGA/EGA game, the graphics are really good.. the game is very hard (I never managed to get past level 3, as far as I recall) and really interesting.

It has all sorts of little secrets and stuff you find if you shoot things, and is generally an interesting concept.

The Bad
Well, it's difficult, but other than that... nothing comes to mind.

The Bottom Line
Recommended, very recommended.

The Good
This game had great graphics (for the time) on my Tandy and played great off the floppy (we had no hard drive). I was a pretty big Robotech fan back then (hey wait, I still am), so being able to control a transforming mech was awesome. The game was challenging (I never got past the 13th level), but consistently rewarding. There was hidden stuff all over the place.

The Bad
Why oh why didn't they include a save game feature? After a certain point, it was no longer worth my while to play for an hour just to keep dying at the same level.

The Bottom Line
If you've got the skills, Thexder is a brilliant game.

The Good
The graphics. Nicely done with the graphics cards available at the time.

The Bad
A lot. I don't know why, but I couldn't figure this game out.

First of all it's a platform game, and the PC has NEVER been good at creating decent platform games (The exception being some of the Apogee/Epic MegaGames titles). The graphics, although nice, were jerky in my opinion, and were much to be desired.

The controls were even more confusing. I still can't figure out why the game made it so difficult to shoot the robot directly in front of you, but it would hit the ones on the far side of the screen with NO problem at all.

The overall gameplay was extremely difficult. Difficult to the point where I would erease it from my hard drive and vowing on my stack of floppies, NEVER to install it again.

The Bottom Line
If you like painfully hard PC platform games, by all means this game is for you. For the casual gamer... there are better ones out there.

The Good
When I first loaded Thexder, I was blow away. I had never seen anything like it on a PC. Its EGA colors and fast, smooth action showed me that the PC could be a good machine for arcade games when properly programed.

The game also tested you mind, as many areas required you to solve puzzles to move on.

**The Bad**
I disliked the sequel.

**The Bottom Line**
One of the classic PC games that should be remembered.

The Good
Thexder was an absolutely awesome game when it was released in 1987. I would race home from school to jump on my Tandy and shoot a few aliens with my morphing mech. The whole goal of the game was to get through as many levels as possible until you met the mega-alien at the end.

The Bad
The graphics in the game looked absolutely awesome on the Tandy. Although it was only 16 colors, it somehow seemed to fit the game. However, when the game is run on today's computers, the high resolution of today's monitors force dithering and the graphics don't look quite as good as they once did.

The Bottom Line
Although the graphics aren't quite as pretty today, Thexder still stands the test of time. It's a fun game and still an absolute classic.