Overview
Thunder Dragon is a sci-fi vertical-scrolling shoot-'em-up developed by NMK and released by Tecmo for arcades in 1991.
A shoot-'em-up similar to the earlier games Raiden and Twin Cobra, Thunder Dragon has players piloting the advanced combat spacecraft "GH-68 Thunder Dragon" as they battle a massive mechanized force in a futuristic Earth.
Similar to Raiden, the player's fighter craft has multiple sub-weapons that augments the basic twin cannons, each of which are swapped by collecting power-ups and each of which can be upgraded multiple times by collecting multiple copies of the same power-up. The four sub-weapons are:
- Wide, which delivers more cannon shots in a wider arc.
- Vulcan, which augments the twin cannons for larger shots.
- Reflect, which fires multiple laser beams at multiple angles, some of which change direction after a short time.
- Missile, which periodically deploys clusters of powerful cruise missiles from the ship.
While the game received no home ports at the time, it later received a digital release via Hamster's Arcade Archives series for the PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch on March 11, 2021. It also received a sequel with Thunder Dragon 2.
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