Sega genesis - Thunderforce IV question

Author

Thunderforce IV question

KING TIGER

2005-01-31, 12:02 pm

Hi to all,

Maybe some of you in here can help me with a curious question about
Thunderforce IV....

I live in Australia, & when I hired this game waaay back in 93/94, I
remember when you turned the game on, the first thing you saw were 2 or
3 ships appear on screen then turn away from the screen & disappear,
then the starting intro would begin with the Thunderforce ship flying
through, spinning around dodging lasers & what not.
In every ROM I have ever downloaded from the web, that first bit with
the ships flying away does not appear at all.
Am I just mad or has anyone else out there know what I'm talking about ?
I am curious about it as to why for starters those ships even bother to
appear, but then also why it appears in the PAL Aussie version but not
in any ROM I have played. Why the need for the difference ? Or are they
bad dumps or something ?
Before anyone starts about downloading ROMs, I own the Thunderforce IV
cart but I don't have a Megadrive console to try it on, & it won't run
on my imported Nomad....

Can anyone shed any light for me ?

Thanks heaps,
Brad.

BananaOfTheNight

2005-02-01, 11:54 am

It's quite likely that all these ROM dumps are from the US version,
Lightening (sic) Force IV. My TF4 cartridge (PAL, UK) has those 3 ships
flying in as well when I play it. It could be the case that they were
missed out of the US version (though quite why, I don't know). I haven't
got a ROM of TF4 (or a way of dumping mine to see if they are missed out
during the dump), so I can't test this out. However, if a ROM dump
missed those bits out, it is highly likely that it will corrupt other
things or fail a checksum, so I think that it was intentional.

On a side note, I love TF4's music (perhaps the best game music ever,
beating Total Annihilation and Uprising 2). I recorded the music and
have it on my Winamp playlist (it might be just me, but the music from
the MD sounds better than using .gym files recorded by an emulator and
YMAMP. Sadly the volume on my rips isn't as good as it could have been,
so I don't get the full impact of the sound).

KING TIGER

2005-02-01, 5:50 pm

BananaOfTheNight wrote:

quote:

> It's quite likely that all these ROM dumps are from the US version,
> Lightening (sic) Force IV. My TF4 cartridge (PAL, UK) has those 3 ships
> flying in as well when I play it. It could be the case that they were
> missed out of the US version (though quite why, I don't know). I haven't
> got a ROM of TF4 (or a way of dumping mine to see if they are missed out
> during the dump), so I can't test this out. However, if a ROM dump
> missed those bits out, it is highly likely that it will corrupt other
> things or fail a checksum, so I think that it was intentional.
>
> On a side note, I love TF4's music (perhaps the best game music ever,
> beating Total Annihilation and Uprising 2). I recorded the music and
> have it on my Winamp playlist (it might be just me, but the music from
> the MD sounds better than using .gym files recorded by an emulator and
> YMAMP. Sadly the volume on my rips isn't as good as it could have been,
> so I don't get the full impact of the sound).

Yea you're absolutely right there ! It was awesome great rocking music
to play the game along to. I remember many times mucking around with
GYM2MID trying to get it sound right in a midi file but it never came
close. Even my brother learned to play the Level 8 music with his guitar !

Cool well at least someone else out there has backed me up so I know I'm
not crazy hehe !!

BananaOfTheNight

2005-02-01, 5:50 pm

> I remember many times mucking around with GYM2MID trying to get it sound

quote:

> right in a midi file but it never came close.

You need either the real authentic sound from the MD itself or the gyms
played with YMAMP to get a decent sound. Midi just won't cut it (though
a couple of the stage 8 midi files sounded OK). In fact, neither do the
gym files. Though they are good for giving you an impression of the
music, they seem too harsh and treble-y (if that's a word). They also
play too slow (and turning up the 'clock speed' settings in the options
increases the pitch). Nope, it's got to be straight from the MD (or from
your brother playing a guitar...)

quote:

> Even my brother learned to play the Level 8 music with his guitar !

I bow down to him! Really!

Scott H

2005-02-24, 5:51 pm

KING TIGER wrote:

quote:

> BananaOfTheNight wrote:
>
>
> Yea you're absolutely right there ! It was awesome great rocking music
> to play the game along to. I remember many times mucking around with
> GYM2MID trying to get it sound right in a midi file but it never came
> close. Even my brother learned to play the Level 8 music with his guitar !

Believe it or not, this puts you and your brother in a very small but
elite group! Check out www.vgmix.com, we need more remixes of these
great compositions! Most people I show this stuff to, actually all but
game fans, claim crap like it's too repetative, or too shreaky. But
when I felt like crushing their inferior claims it was easily
demonstrated that their favorite music was exactly as they described,
more so than good Genesis chip compositions were! I know, I'm ranting,
but these old tunes were phrygian great!

quote:

> Cool well at least someone else out there has backed me up so I know I'm
> not crazy hehe !!

Not_at_all!

--
Scott

Game Pilgrimage
http://users4.ev1.net/~sheath

KING TIGER

2005-02-25, 3:49 am

Scott H wrote:

quote:

> KING TIGER wrote:
>
>
>
> Believe it or not, this puts you and your brother in a very small
> but elite group! Check out www.vgmix.com, we need more remixes of these
> great compositions! Most people I show this stuff to, actually all but
> game fans, claim crap like it's too repetative, or too shreaky. But
> when I felt like crushing their inferior claims it was easily
> demonstrated that their favorite music was exactly as they described,
> more so than good Genesis chip compositions were! I know, I'm ranting,
> but these old tunes were phrygian great!

Yea I haven't checked out vgmix for a while !! I have just ONE
Thunderforce 4 remix. Mainly my remixes are all C64 games as the SID
chip is something I remember for ever & ever..... my C64 computer was my
first machine so it holds a special place in my memory.

quote:

>
>
>
> Not_at_all!
>

Hehe well it's been a while since he's played it too so I must get him
to work on it !!

BananaOfTheNight

2005-02-25, 6:49 am

> Yea I haven't checked out vgmix for a while !! I have just ONE

quote:

> Thunderforce 4 remix. Mainly my remixes are all C64 games as the SID
> chip is something I remember for ever & ever..... my C64 computer was my
> first machine so it holds a special place in my memory.

I've found another TF4 remix: go to
http://www.megadriver.com.br/site.html and click the 'discography' link
at the bottom of the scrolling section. Near the bottom of the page is a
track called 'Metal Squad' - try it.