Rolling Thunder 2: Skin Cancer and Big Bugs

Classic Zeroes Material
By: Zartan; circa 3/03/00

Rolling Thunder 2: The Killing of a Legend
A Zeroes Unlimited Investigative Report

I knew that I was in for trouble when I saw the look on Bob Barker's face.
"Have you seen this travesty?" Bob asked. "Better yet, have you played it?" I had to confess that I hadn't; I'd been tempted by it back when it was first released, but something just seemed wrong about it. A voice inside screamed "expensive gamble", and I'd decided it better to just pass it up. Sequels are often disappointing, and a follow up to one of the greatest arcade games ever couldn't help but fall short of expectations, especially amongst the already dismal crop of Genesis games that season.

"Well, download the ROM, play it, and find out what went wrong," Bob said. And when Bob Barker speaks, wise men listen. Everyone knows that.

I caught up with an ex-Geldra agent willing to spill the beans at the fabulous Club Rush, located on sunny and exotic Geldra Island. It is widely known in underworld circles that a covert terrorist group simply cannot claim to possess the ability to "disrupt the global flow of information" without a happening night spot.

The drinks were watered -- my whiskey sour tasted like a terrorist had melted in it -- and the house band, "Jack Thorax and the Default Settings", was just bloody awful. My contact, who wished to be known only as "Syd Barrett, no wait, Cliff Richard", noticed my distaste, and shook his head gravely. "It used to be about the terror," Cliff sighed. "Then Playmates Toys -- remember them? -- said Geldra'd need to be 'cuddlier' if this action figure thing was gonna take off."

The terrorists in Rolling Thunder were actually figures of menace in a way that has rarely been recaptured. They had personality: they looked around for you, ducked in and out of doors, laughed at you, and died in a number of unique ways, depending on when and where they were shot. This sounds de rigueur, but remember, this was 1986. "Face it," said Cliff, "we were just too creepy for mass acceptance." So they were all chucked into homogenous bug suits and stripped of all their human charm. Where some enemies used to pause and catch their breath when shot, the bugs in the sequel wipe their widdle noses. Pathetic.

It wasn't enough that the visceral, sinister charm had been ripped bleeding and screaming from Rolling Thunder and replaced with something mundane and predictable -- oh no, there were more wonderful improvements to be made. The cutscenes in the original worked perfectly. A few dramatic chords, and a wordless scene involving agent Leila is displayed on a giant computer screen. I suppose the designers fell prey to "because we can" syndrome; either that, or they really and truly were idiotic pieces of shit. Now you've got these anime try-hard shots while lengthy discourses on what just happened scroll up the screen. "Engaged and defeated large number of enemies, they resemble terrorists encountered in our last confrontation with Geldra." First of all, no shit, Sherlock. I just hacked my way through the fucking level; I know I killed about 14 million bugs. And secondly, no, they don't "resemble" anything but the crap drawn by lonely kids in seventh grade.

And as if this isn't enough abuse, they seem to have replaced the real agent Leila with Peg Bundy from Married With Children.

Some of the "stupid, stupid shit" added to Rolling Thunder 2, apparently without any forethought or playtesting.

"Oh Christ," Cliff added, "and you won't believe this. Robot. Fucking. Bosses." Yes, Rolling Thunder 2 leaves one more shitty skidmark on the history books with this big fucking robot boss; it shall be forever remembered as one of the cheapest, most difficult bosses I've ever come across. And this is at the end of the second level. "I guess they figured they didn't want people just walking right through the levels, like in the original, and saying it was too easy," Cliff speculated. I'd agree: all the video game magazines of the time were more concerned with their own image and wanking off Capcom executives than actually writing good reviews. On any given page you'd find more cute, schticky aliases and references to the reviewer's great, unparalleled, all-holy skills than constructive or insightful remarks about the game. In a move no doubt meant to pander to the same flighty, vapid reviewers we see here a fucking flamethrower, a weapon that completely destroys the play mechanics of this classic. At least when they put off-the-wall stuff in Rolling Thunder, it was done right. A little advice to those who would fuck with something that doesn't need your tender touch: It's called "balance"! Catch the fever!

A yellow mutant meets a rather nifty and visually impressive end in Rolling Thunder.

Above: Albatross in Rolling Thunder. Below: The inexplicable new look. Far below: The best thing Albatross does in Rolling Thunder 2.

NOBODY moves till I find my contact lens.

The biggest victim by far of this massive, greasy injustice called Rolling Thunder 2 is Albatross himself. Albatross was the coolest thing about Rolling Thunder. He had a sort of effortless style, certainly different from any of the other video game protagonists of the time. In fact, style and grace were really what Rolling Thunder was all about; Albatross has a sort of fluidity and effortless grace that has rarely been equalled... well, sure, tech advances mean that just about any pile of shit can be rendered fluidly, but it actually looking natural -- looking like it belongs to the character -- is another story entirely. And he was also pretty fucking stylish. The unique simplicity worked very well, and turned what could have been just another faceless, bland hero into something iconic. In fact, the entire visual gestalt of Rolling Thunder just screamed style. It was the visual equivalent of a tricky break-beat that gets stuck in your head for days. That's been traded out, too -- rather than the rotting industrial / subterranean imagery of the original, we've got this... how do I say it?... "seaside resort" thing going on. Palm trees. Little signs with anchors on them. Talk of -- no shit -- infiltrating villas. Has Geldra been relocated to a goddamn retirement community? "Rolling Thunder 2... with Wilford Brimley! Don Ameche! Jack Lemmon! and Scubbie Often as the cabana boy!"
In the "attract" mode (what do you call the attract mode on a console game? You've already bought the damned thing) we're treated to this portrait of Albatross (left), and you can't help but wonder just what the hell is going on here. Again, the try-hard anime theory comes to mind, but it just doesn't sit right. And anyway, that's the beginning and end of his little tuxedo number -- once you're in the game, he's in some generic suspenders-and-tie outfit, so that he looks less like a secret agent and more like a FBI agent of the 1930's. All the animations are there, I guess, but Albatross is chunkier and lifeless now, and it just falls flat. Anyway. I love that accidental "who, me?" expression on the bug in the shot to the left. And Albatross has a death scream now instead of those cool chords; only trouble is that it sounds just like Leila's, only slowed down. That's cost-cutting like I haven't seen since Captain America and the Avengers, also for the Genesis.

Two-fisted review summary!

Game:
Developer:
Platform:
Type:
Emulated:
Released:

Rolling Thunder 2
Pray I never find out
Sega Genesis
Loveless cash-in
Genecyst
1991

Graphics:	Should have improved on the original, but fell way short
Sound:	Nothing memorable, except the death screams. Heh
Gameplay:	Well, it's still Rolling Thunder
A Private Thunder:	Created the Powder
Overall:	*If you can get past the heartless murder of an arcade classic, you might* actually like it**

Begrudging addendum: The password system is the coolest thing about the game (bet you never thought you'd see that sentence), using interesting sentences instead of alpha-numeric strings. And I think I remember seeing a Rolling Thunder 3 at Babbage's those many years ago, but I've never played it and haven't been able to track the ROM down. I seem to remember the cover having Albatross on a motorbike shooting at a robot wolf or something. If this is the case, fuck it; I don't even want to know.