377 · Thunderbirds
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An evil alien named Hood wants the Thunderbirds to turn over all their vehicles to him within a 60 day time period or Hood will bombard the Earth with meteors. The Thunderbirds figure he needs the 60 days to prepare to come through with his threat so they decide to go looking for places which may contain his energy sources for his power.
Thunderbirds is a shoot-em-up based on a 1960s British puppet show. We didn't know the show going in. After we watched an episode, the stiff doll faces in the cutscenes made more sense. Mike, Sean and Joe were on this one. The game has a good idea buried in it, and we kept running into the screen instead.
What works
- The 60-day clock. Every mission you attempt costs a day, and if you haven't beaten the Hood within 60 days he wins. Dying costs you a few days rather than a life, so you keep going until the days run out. We kept comparing it to XCOM's meta layer.
- Options get their own slot. In most shmups the options are one upgrade among many. Here you collect different formations of them. It is a good start for a concept, though it never paid off for us.
- Easy on the nerves. It never made it hard to dodge, and it reminded us of 1942.
What doesn't
- The lava level. It's red enemies and red bullets on red lava, and one of the least legible moments we have had on the show. We wondered if we were getting older.
- Blocks that look like scenery. In the underground mission, medium brown rock you can destroy looks like the dark brown rock you can't touch. You blow up and don't know why.
- Five vehicles that feel like one. The jeep, the sub, the drill and the plane have different projectiles, but it's all the same auto-scrolling shooter. It seems like Gradius's power-ups were scattered across vehicles.
- The clock never tells you anything. We wanted to know when we had passed the point of no return, or roughly how many days remained. Our idea was real days, or a Pokemon Gold and Silver day-night cycle.
- Mission select that isn't. You pick the level, but the vehicle is already chosen for it. Mike argued it makes sense, since we play as the sons and Jeff Tracy gives the assignments.
Beyond the game
The cutscenes pan across the brothers' portraits to whoever is talking and never pan back, so it feels like there are 200 of them. The game takes place in 2060, 50 years after Street Fighter 2010. A Euro gamer article from 2011 claims Star Fox drew on the show, which we couldn't verify and chose to enjoy.
The bottom line
Skip it. All three of us left it off the Essential Games List. Mike said it is one of his lowest and he could barely stand looking at it. Joe thought unplayable was too harsh, but it will melt into the mush of lower-middle NES games. Sean said it is bad, though the show itself got him curious. Make a great game, then wrap the Thunderbirds around it, and not the other way around.
Written from our conversation in this episode.
- FLY WITH THE BEST
- SUPER MARIO NATION
- Presentation & Theme
- Based on the British TV show Thunderbirds, but:
- Cover art gives no indication of this connection.
- Game avoids references to the source material in U.S. release.
- Game avoids being a “flight sim” and opts for arcade-style shmup gameplay.
- Opening cinematic is overly long with awkward-looking stills of characters.
- Production & Background
- British
- Filmed from 1964 to 1966 using:
- "Supermarionation" (electronic marionette puppetry).
- Scale model special effects.
- Consisted of 2 series totaling 32 fifty-minute episodes.
- Setting & Premise
- Set in the 2060s.
- Follows International Rescue, a secret life-saving organization.
- Operates from a hidden Pacific island base.
- Uses a fleet of advanced vehicles, including five Thunderbird machines.
- Main characters:
- Jeff Tracy, ex-astronaut and leader of International Rescue.
- His five adult sons, each piloting one of the Thunderbird vehicles.
- Adaptations & Spin-offs
- Two feature films: Thunderbirds Are Go and Thunderbird 6.
- Radio adaptation in the 1990s.
- Other adaptations include:
- Anime reimagining (Thunderbirds 2086).
- Live-action film (Thunderbirds).
- Part-CGI, part-live-action remake (Thunderbirds Are Go).
- Three supplementary episodes using original puppet techniques, based on audio plays.
- Structure & Gameplay Design
- Mission select screen features multiple starting points across the globe.
- Time-based challenge:
- 60 in-game days to defeat the villain, The Hood.
- Time is consumed when undertaking missions.
- Failing a mission penalizes players by forcing time-consuming ship repairs.
- Allows switching between different team members and vehicles, but not at your own leisure.
- “The planet’s crust is unstable,” this probably isn’t a job for a single tank.
- Gameplay Mechanics
- Core gameplay is serviceable but underwhelming:
- All ships (air, sea, land) control and play identically.
- Visual differences in design don’t affect mechanics.
- Power-up system is standard: one-up/one-down style.
- Most standout feature:
- Ships gain orbiting turrets over time.
- Turrets can be repositioned for strategic advantage.
- Critique
- Missed opportunity:
- Wasted potential in not differentiating the vehicles.
- Could have delivered more variety given the Thunderbirds source material.
- Solid but uninspired:
- Game is functional and decently enjoyable.
- Never becomes egregiously bad or lazy—just lacks innovation.
- Conclusion
- Despite flaws, reviewer found Thunderbirds enjoyable.
- Likely wouldn’t revisit it, but still considers it worth trying for shmup fans.
- Recommends it more as a novelty than a must-play.
- Sequels and Spinoffs
- 1985: First Thunderbirds video game released for Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum; players pilot Thunderbird 1 and 2 through an Egyptian-style labyrinth.
- 1989: Grandslam Entertainment launched a game for multiple platforms, including Commodore 64, Amiga, Amstrad CPC, Atari ST, MSX, and ZX Spectrum.
- 1990: Activision released a NES version of the Thunderbirds game.
- 1993: Super Famicom game titled Thunderbirds: Kokusou Kyuujotai Shutsudou Seyo! released exclusively in Japan.
- 2000: SCi Games published a Thunderbirds title for Game Boy Color.
- 2001: SCi Games released "F.A.B Action Pack," a collection of Microsoft Windows themes and screensavers, and Thunderbirds: International Rescue for Game Boy Advance.
- 2004: Vivendi Universal Games released another Thunderbirds title for Game Boy Advance.
- 2007: A new Thunderbirds video game launched for PlayStation 2 in Europe; North American release was canceled.
- 2015: Co-operative Thunderbirds board game designed by Matt Leacock released to coincide with the series' 50th anniversary; three expansion sets followed in 2016.
Auto-generated transcript. Each paragraph starts with its timestamp. Speakers are not identified.
Thunderbirds, fly with the best!
And welcome to NEStalgia, a chronological exploration of every NES game released in North America. I'm Mike. I'm Sean. And I'm Joe. Thunderbirds, the TV show from the 60s was filmed in Super Mario Nation or Thunderbirds on the NES in Super Mario Nation. Eh? That's what I thought you said. Yeah, right? It's a puppet show.
I guess they were doing VistaVision or other kinds of things and they were pretending like they invented this new thing to record puppets. And they called it, and I'm going to probably say it the same way again, but they called it Super Mario Nation. Yeah, it's like a... Yeah, a marionette. Don't say that word. That's like a bad word. A marionette?
Yeah, you said it again. What are you doing? Oh, you want to hear about puppet. Puppet. Yeah. Puppet. So, I had no idea what this even was. Had you guys heard of Thunderbirds before? And the whole time I was playing it, I was like, I think this is based on a TV show. And that might be because you can kind of tell, but also I was like, that sounds familiar.
It wasn't until this very moment where I had the same existential horror I'm sure we all had by looking up the original show and seeing what it actually looks like. And it's pretty terrifying. My thing was that I kept seeing... So, we'll get into this, but between each mission in the game, you get these little cut scenes with the characters. And I was like, why do they look like that? And they all just have this weird doll look. And then it's like, oh, they just do look like that. They are puppets. It was strange. Now, we all watched an episode of the show. And for those of you who don't know, it was a British TV show.
And I feel like the marionettes thing and the puppet nature of it all is like what was impressive about it. Because it was kind of a... I mean, it's British TV, so it was always going to be dry. But it's really dry. It's not necessarily funny. It's not that action packed. So, it was like, was the cell that it's just really impressive that we can do this shit with puppets?
Yeah, is it taking itself pretty seriously then? I think so. I would say that, yeah, it was like, wow, this is actually small. I think that it's the same thing with claymation, but we're a bit more exposed to claymation. Whereas I think, at least for myself, I can say that my only real exposure to something like this was Team America World Police, which I now have to imagine is basing 90% of itself off of the show.
Right, right. Yeah, I got that vibe as well. And I can't think of too many other, like, I'm sure there are plenty of others, but like, this isn't just like, other than the Muppets, like, I didn't really expose myself to like puppets on TV.
Yeah, yeah, Sesame Street, Muppets, things like that. Yeah. What about, what's the, Fraggle Rock? I never watched it. No, yeah, but that's all, that's all like the Henson Company stuff. Yeah, right, right. I guess I just mean like, I'm sure that there's other stuff out there besides Thunderbirds and Team America. Like, there's probably a large gap of this stuff that we're missing. But that was my knowledge going into this.
And it's funny because Thunderbirds was a British TV show in the 60s, and I'm sure it came over to America. I'm sure like at some point it ran in syndication or something. But like, this is another one of those weird games where it's like, not getting a revival at this very moment in 1990. But like, they're like, yeah, we'll make a game about the Thunderbirds and a TV show from long ago.
And they do nothing to like, enforce that on the box art. Not, there's a ship on the box art, but none of, that ship is not from the Thunderbirds. It's not one of their five ships. That's the whole thing, right? Thunderbirds five.
Like, there's five of them. I think there's five of them. And this is now the sixth ship. Like, we haven't seen this. Like, I was, it was funny to see that they did try again. And with the, you know, the, the superstar Bill Paxton had a movie. Oh, yeah. The live action movie. Yeah. Which I think is very strange that they would just cut the whole concept.
Yeah, they just, they should have at least had those people on strings, right? Like, it should have been like wires you could see, but they went for like that effect. It's kind of like the reverse of the, the Wachowski brothers, Speed Racer movie, which was like hyper aware of its itself and it's like, and the tropes it was playing into, but also incredibly stylized and, you know, cinematically beautiful.
I feel like Thunderbirds didn't commit to anything about the puppetry or like, no, but also just like, it didn't commit to like poking fun at the original source either though. Right? Like it kind of, it kind of like, why did you believe that stuff was awesome? 2004 though, is like sort of in the middle of this, like, it's sort of like a dearth of culture and all movies are kind of terrible though. You know? Well, Speed Racer was 2008 and there are people who will say that was terrible, but they are objectively wrong. You can tell anybody who says that 2008 Speed Racer movie wasn't good, that they're bad.
Not essential. I'm just going to stay out of that one because I haven't seen it, but I'd probably dislike it. Great. Yeah. You would love watching that. Watch that for sure. I think you'll enjoy it. Anyway, Thunderbirds, the video game. Let's, let's get into it. The video game. Yeah. The video game. There are like, there's like a couple of different ways I could imagine this going. I guess I just didn't imagine shmup.
Um, and, and it seems silly. I know. But like the Thunderbirds are like a team of five that like kind of work together to get something done. And this tries to do that of like, oh, this time you're playing as this vehicle or this time you're, you know, you're this guy and you, you get to choose like where you want to go so you can like take things out of order. Sure. But ultimately at the end of the day, you're just picking which level of the shmup you want to play. Yeah.
And, uh, there is at first like a little bit of appeal to the idea like, yeah, you're going to be in the submarine. You're going to be in the underground drill or something. You're going to be on this Jeep or in a plane, but yeah, they're, they're not, I, I, I'm impressed with the, uh, how much the, it looks different, but they don't really play very different. I mean, it's, it technically plays different, but it doesn't feel different.
What they did here is that they took every power up from like Gradius and just like sort of separated them all so that you couldn't get them all at once or you couldn't choose which one you had. It's just, Oh, this, this ship gets this upgrade. And like, so that's why I think like, yeah, there's like some that made them all feel different. That's just because they kind of, they just split apart any other shmups power system and scattered them a bunch between a bunch of different characters. Yeah. For, for my money. I mean, I, I know you were being nice, Joe, but like the, whether you're on, whether you're in the air, in the sea or on land, they, it is like identical gameplay.
Yeah. I mean, I guess I, I caught myself while I was making that point because I'm watching and like, I am realizing like, yeah, I guess it's technically not. I mean, there literally are different power ups that do slightly different things. They just don't feel that different. Right. You know, there's a, but like the end of the day, it's still like, you're not like in the, when you're on land, you're not like free roaming or, or racing. You're just still doing the thing where you just shoot a bunch of enemies on the screen as the auto scrolls.
But where it's like the, the submarine thing, you get like a different projectile. And then like when you're in the, I don't know, you're in like a, some underground thing and you get like a giant long laser beam looking flame where it's like, yeah, that, that presents very minimal differences. But like, until I really thought about it, it never felt very different to me.
I'd say that the only, the, the actual space in which this game is sort of setting itself apart from other shmups aside from the tie in or whatever, and the level structure. Sure. Sure. Um, would be that in the moment to moment gameplay, they've sort of centered the whole option, uh, aircraft thing. Whereas like in, you know, other shmups you get options, but they're just one of any number of other upgrades. Whereas this gets its own slot and you kind of collect different orientations of them. And that's, that's something. That's a good start of a concept, you know, like, yeah. And I, I, I could see that really paying off. I don't know if, uh, if it did.
Yeah. It's funny. Cause I actually think like the actual gameplay and this is going to sound crazy cause we played so many of these, but like, I really couldn't play this game cause I couldn't stand to look at the screen. There's something about like the way that the screen is scrolling and the way that all the graphics looked at it actually hurt my eyes to play this game. Oh yeah. I remember the moment. It's like a strobing effect or something.
It's pretty early in the game, uh, that you go to some, uh, I guess some active volcano. You know, um, on the planet where you, yeah, it's just screaming red at your face. Like, cause you get into some like molten lava sea and then not only are you shooting at,
uh, red enemies, but you're also being shot with red projectiles at other times. And it's just the, one of the most unlegible moments in this podcast. I think. Yeah. I really couldn't believe it because it was so hard for me. I had to keep playing. Obviously I think that's technically that could be the second level you encounter. Um, if you do the first mission and then go to that mission next, but like, wow.
Like it was so hard for me to like, look at that level. Like I was like, am I getting older? What's happened? I had, I, I, I had like a similar thought, but maybe, maybe for different reasons. I do feel like I didn't feel like this game was hard to look at. I felt like it, it, it, it almost reminded me of like 1942 in the sense where it's like, there's, it's like 1942 and the way it moves, but then there's a lot going on. That's like, it feels disconnected from my gameplay.
Like, whereas like a lot of other shmups I, I do with a lot of shmups actually like find them. Sometimes like hard to look at mostly with like the shmups that I think are really good because there's so much happening and so much flashiness. But also it's like, I'm, that makes it feel like fast and like intense, but that lava level, like that's hard to look at because of things that are happening that like doesn't, it doesn't translate to like, I'm moving really fast and I'm dodging things. And then, oh my God, all this stuff's happening to me. It's just like, yeah, I just can't see the, I just can't see the ships because they're the same color as the lava.
Yeah. Like it's, it's just not, I don't know. I, I guess it, I, it didn't immediately sound to me like, wow, this is hard to look at because most shmups for me are kind of like hard to look at sometimes. But it, to me, it was just like, why does this feel like I should, everything should be happening faster?
The game just sort of has this, this ongoing problem with, again, legibility, like being able to play the game because you might have your next level be this one of the, like with that underground one. And you will just sort of blow up. You'll, you'll go forward and then you'll just kind of blow up and you'll wonder, why did I just blow up there? There was no, there were no projectiles coming for me. I didn't hit a wall. And then you realize that, um, they have a very interesting way of communicating that there are breakable blocks in front of you that just kind of look like background noise. Um, but no, that's actually something you've got to dig through and give yourself carpal tunnel shooting through.
Um, where, where, like, I really have no issue with that as a concept in a level. I, it's just that the way that they designed how it looked makes it look like something you can't interact with. Yeah, it looks like the ground. I had this, this was very frustrating to me, uh, this exact moment you're talking about. Cause there's these light brown walls and then there's like dark brown floors that you don't interact with. And then there's like a, a medium dark brown. That's like very close to the regular brown. Stalactites and stalagmites maybe.
Yeah. And like, that's like you blow up, but it's all, it's like, and it's also, it's not only is it like just a slightly different color, it's like kind of the same texture too. Yeah. It's this weird textured thing. They don't look like, they don't look like, uh, there's like a, a clear distinction to like where it starts and where it stops. It's just this weird, it's just this weird fuzz on the screen. That's like, Oh, if you run into that, you blow up. And sometimes it's so vague where I'm like, I didn't even realize it was there.
Now the part of the game I thought you were going to talk about, Sean, is like a differentiator is that, yes, you have this mission select screen where you can kind of choose which levels you want to go into, but you also have a overall 60 day challenge to defeat the game. If you don't get to the end of the game within 60 days of the game time, um, then, uh, the villain who's referred to as the hood. I'm not sure if he wears a hood, if he's from the hood, uh, not, not sure what that's about. Didn't, didn't look into it, but the concept of the hood, right? The hood will win. Uh, if you don't, um, get to the end by the 60 days.
And obviously that means that every time you take on a mission, it counts as a day and you can fail those missions. So, uh, you do have kind of a way to lose, um, just by not being able to complete the game in X amount of time, which, uh, you know, I think is, is an interesting idea. That just by making it like, Oh, every time you try a mission, a day has passed is not like really capitalizing on that idea. It should have brought some strategy into the overall map where you have to like, kind of not waste time by going to places that won't help you with the mission. If that makes sense. Yeah.
I think I, I, I definitely get it and I appreciated it as something like sort of like a meta game. Um, my, my main exposure to something like this would be like XCOM and that's done very well, but I've also played a lot of XCOM and know how that works. And I haven't really played too much of Thunderbirds. So maybe if I played the full game, if I'm, if I did that 60 days, um, and failed and succeeded, maybe it does do something for the balance. I appreciate that there's something that you're thinking about between mindlessly shooting forward and sometimes to the left and right.
Uh, so I, I, I like it as an idea on paper at the very least. Yeah. Same. The part that intrigued me about it is this fact that like when you die, like instead of lives or continues, when you die, you just lose a few days.
And I think that that is a cool way to contextualize like your, your experience where it's like, you can keep going as long as you want until you run out of these days. It's not a binary. You failed. Start the game. Yeah. It's like you, you failed. It's going to take you some time to get back on your feet. So like two more days are lost. Plus these days are ticking by.
Um, I, I think, and now this is something, I don't know, maybe the game does do this and I just didn't play enough of it to like really, uh, get this. But I think what I need a little more out of it is like, I need to know when I'm at the point of no return, you know, when am I wasting my time? Because like, there is something kind of cool about like, Hey, if you're good enough. And even though you've lost all these days, like, Hey, now it's, it's just getting harder and harder, but now we got to like really lock it in and not lose another, another run.
You know, like something cool about that. It's just, once you look under the hood and there's no pun intended. Once you look under the hood and decide like, okay, wait a minute. Actually, I'm at a point where it's impossible, but the game's not telling me it's impossible. Like literally there's no way I can get this done in the amount of days I need.
Then if I'm starting to think about that, then I'm like, well, what's the point? But I, I don't know what the solution is there, but I, I think that that is like the one little hurdle to this idea for me. Um, outside of like, yeah, it would be nice to have more, more working for it. But, uh, for what it is, I don't hate it.
Yeah. I don't think it works. If it tells you, cause otherwise, why you may as well just have a live system. If there's only so many times that you can fail, then. I mean, that's true. I don't want it to necessarily. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's a, it's a half baked idea I'm giving here, but I don't want it to necessarily say like, Hey, just so you know, point of no return. I want it to be like, I just want to know like vaguely, how much more do I have? Yeah. So I can kind of think about like, Hey, wait a minute. It's like, I have four days left and I got to do 70 more missions. It's like, okay, I'm, I'm not going to beat it.
But like, I don't know. There's, there's, there's something inherently about the idea that like, Oh, I'm working real hard. But in the back of my head, it's like, it might actually already be literally impossible.
I don't know. I don't know how to like get around that, but that's the, my hangup. And the game obviously allows you to play as the, um, various team members who are all related. They're all, um, like brothers of the, uh, their father. Yeah. Their father is the like head Thunderbird. Not only are they all related, there's like five of them. Okay. Because go ahead. But they all have to just say dad or father. And it's just like kind of weird and creepy.
I, and there's nothing weird about having a bunch of sons, but there is something weird about having a bunch of sons. And then what it seems like making it a mandatory thing about being a part of the family that you have to, uh, be a puppet. Well, not just be a puppet, but be a puppet for the international rescue team and risk your life all the time. So strange. Well, uh, the, the, the thing that confuses me on these, on these sons is that every time someone starts to talk, it's like, you see like three sons in the frame and then the camera like pans over to reveal the next one. And that's the one talking. Well, did you see the show? Is that how it works?
Apparently he's got a whole like matrix of their portraits. And whenever one calls, uh, their eyes glow and then he selects the portrait and then the portrait turns into a video screen of them saying, Hey dad, I've got an update.
Okay. Well that, that puts it in a little more context, but what's still bugged me about it is like, it never goes, the, it never pans the other way. So it's like every time it just pans the next time, I'm like, it looks like there's like 200 of them. Every time another person talks, it just keeps going forward. Like there's another guy there.
Like it must be on a circle or something, but I'm just like, is it, and they all look a little different. So I'm just like, is, are there just like hundreds of these kind of similar looking guys just in a row? And like each person takes their turn. It may as well. And I will admit that I did not know that this was, that that's how it worked in the show until after I played the game. So I was right there with you.
Now, is it a mistake though, that you don't get to choose who's the right Thunderbird for the job? Like you're forced into picking them. So while you do switch between them, the level is clearly laid out for their specific vehicle. Should you have been able to tackle the volcano or, you know, like the, not go to the sky, obviously. But if you're going to be on land now, it's like you're in this same location, but now you have to do it on land.
Obviously that requires a lot of different ideas from the developers for the levels, but they could have also just made it a different way of handling the map itself. Like how you progress through is like, there's a faster way if you, you know, like take the sky versus going on land. Right. I don't agree with this. Here's, here's my theory on Thunderbirds. You aren't playing as the Thunderbirds. You're playing as the Suns.
Jeff Tracy, the patriarch is, you are not him. And he's assigning you. You don't, you wouldn't have a say in the matter. Whoever he decides to go and with what vehicle, that's Jeff Tracy's domain. We just do it as the Suns.
I also was thinking like, I don't think it's a mistake the way they did it. I think what you're describing would be a cool different game, Mike. But the, um, for this. But totally not canon. I think that like what you have to remember is like, we are not super familiar with the Thunderbirds. So maybe, maybe this isn't the case, but I imagine that like one of the Suns always drives this thing and like people know. Oh yeah. That is definitely the case. That this Sun drives this. That's the case for sure. Yes. Yeah. So it's like, it would be like, they're designing a level that like, what's going to be the Frank Thunderbird level. I don't know their names or last names or first names. But like, what's going to be this Thunderbirds level?
Like that's not even their last name. Right. But, um, you know, it'd be like, what's going to be the, I'm trying to think of like another, you know, bad example, but like, what's going to be the Donatello level where you do like techie stuff. It's a bad example because that's not how most of the TMNT games work either. Actually, two of the Thunderbirds names are Donatello.
Yeah. Donatello Thunderbird. There are, um, you know, like little, uh, intel that you get from your father before you go on the mission. And in one of them, he mentioned that the planet's crust is unstable and then sends in a single tank. This probably isn't a job for a single tank to handle if the planet's crust has now become unstable. But he's only got the one tank, Mike. Yeah. You just got to get that tank into like the crust stabilization point. What's the hood's goal here? To disrupt the planet crust? Like maybe he thought he was going to make a pizza.
Oh, it's not funny. It's not funny at all. It's actually the kind of humor you would get out of Thunderbirds. Oh man. Oh, well, I, you know, what's the standout feature then of this game? What is the like, um, you know, it's literally just collecting different orientations of your options. That's it. No, I know. I know. But I, sorry. So not like, not like a gameplay feature that makes it unique, but like, what was the standout thing for you? What was the, what, when was the most fun with this game for you?
I mean, I, I always appreciate a shmup that doesn't make me feel like I'm bad at video games. And this was kind of that. Cause it was like a lot easier than other shmups. But, uh, I don't know if that's like a, a positive. Yeah. It was easier. Do you think that was to make the Thunderbird vehicles themselves feel stronger? Like you don't want to like make them look weak?
Maybe. But I think that they maybe went around about it the wrong way. Cause it was easier, but it was also like not super exciting. And I'm, you know, I, maybe people are wondering like, what does Joe even want from a shmup? Cause I complain when they're too, when they're too complicated. I complain when they're too simple, but like, yeah, this reminded me of 1942. There's definitely more to it than that. But I'm just like, there, there were definitely a lot of those watch out for that bullet moments. Like it was very easy to dodge things.
Wasn't a bad thing. I did, you know, it did make it like, oh yeah, I can get through this. But you know, it's also, it didn't, it didn't, I don't, I guess all this to say, like there really wasn't like a major standout thing. The standout thing for me was the date system. You know, it was not actually in the action gameplay. It was in the, like, you can go on dates. Yeah. The dating sim version where you can, all these Thunderbird family members, nevermind. Yeah. It was like an episode of white Lotus.
But the, yeah, like, and now that I'm like saying it like that, maybe I do kind of wish there was a little more to the, like the date, the like, yeah, keeping track of the date system because like that was the part that was most interesting to me. Yeah. It should have had a clock in it so that you could only do one mission each day. In, yeah, each real day. In real life, yeah. Yeah. Or like a day-night cycle or kind of like, you know, Pokemon Gold Silver. Yes. Yeah, absolutely. Exactly. And then certain enemies only come out at night. After you beat the game, you get to go to Kanto.
Anyway, there are a lot of other Thunderbirds games. There were some before this too, but they were all on like British consoles. We're not going to, British computers, they're not even consoles. But like the ZX Spectrum, of course, had a bunch of Thunderbirds games.
The Super Famicom got a Thunderbirds game like exclusively in Japan, which reminds me of like another thought I had, not while playing the game, but while watching the show of like, I wonder if Miyamoto was inspired by Thunderbirds at all for Star Fox. Huh. No. Because he does do like Star Fox puppets from time to time. And the way that they talk on the N64 version was supposed to be, you know, like puppet-like. So I just wonder, because like the system's kind of the same with like the talking, like
in between missions, you know, like seeing the leader and then seeing the group in like little panels on the side. Like it was a similar setup. I just wonder if like, you know, not even joking, like Thunderbirds may have played a role in like being popular in Japan and then Miyamoto being influenced by it and then that leading to Star Fox. Because I know Star Fox is also influenced by like shrines in Kyoto as well. Like the idea of flying under them or walking under them. But I think that's another, I think that could be another source of inspiration. Euro gamers. You're guessing though, right? Nintendo sci-fi shooter Star Fox was partly inspired by British puppet TV series Thunderbirds. You've got something there?
It's just a Euro gamer article from 2011. No fucking way. I trust Euro gamer. I'm not joking. The puppets was like a big thing for Miyamoto specifically. They even did like a whole Nintendo Direct where they were puppets for like the new Star Fox game on Wii U that failed miserably.
Um, cause you know what the problem is? Star Fox ultimately just keeps wind up like, Oh, let's just remake Star Fox 64 again. It's like, you can't, you can't remake a game five times and calls it Star Fox adventures though. Yeah, you could do that. But that game was actually not even a Star Fox game. It was a game called dinosaur planet. And then they were like, this would be better with Star Fox in it. No, it wouldn't. There's other Thunderbirds games though. There's a Thunderbirds game on the Game Boy Advance. There's the new Thunderbirds on PlayStation two.
Um, Oh, which only came out in Europe canceled in North America. They realized nobody watches British TV and, uh, there's apparently another new series called like Thunderbirds are a go new new. How 2015 new. And it's a mixture apparently of CG and live action. Okay. I like that instead of puppets. Now they're CG, but there's still like, Oh, I don't like this at all. Don't look up Thunderbirds are go. Whatever you do.
Um, it looks like it's on Amazon prime. If you really want to suffer, but like, sheesh. Some scary looking uncanny Valley. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. A little too much detail and then not, and everybody, all the Thunderbirds look like bros. That's not like, that's not what you want. Do they have Pat Mahomes hair? Uh, one of them does.
Of course. Can't all have it. Uh, and you can't always have everything, but we have to every episode have the essential games list. I mean, you guys really are not at the edge of your seat, right? I could barely stand looking at this game. Uh, this is, this is going to be one of the lowest ones for me, actually.
Uh, I think that there, I think there are some good ideas in the, you know, like on paper, but then when you play the actual game, it's almost borderline unplayable for me. Just, I couldn't look at it. But then also it's not that interesting when, if, when you actually can play it right on a level where it actually doesn't just all look like one mesh of the same color. Uh, and you can differentiate some things. You're just not really doing anything that inspired. Uh, you're just finding a creative way to tell a Thunderbird story via a video game. And you should always be doing the opposite of that. You should be trying to make a great video game that then wraps in the Thunderbird somehow.
Uh, it's a no for me. What about you, Sean? Sean. Yeah, no, the game is pretty bad. Uh, I have no love for it. Uh, but, but one thing that I've noticed about this podcast recently is it's just been introducing me to, uh, media, like of, of a forgotten variety that I just like, I, I, I'm oddly drawn to. Like, I, I think even though the whole concept of a brood of children bred by some guy in a spaceship, um, to go around and saving international crises and mysteries, like, I think it's kind of interesting. I might, I might check that out even though it's like weird marionette puppets, uh, because, you know, it's like a, it's a version of the sixties that's just like, oh man, everything's possible, you know?
And, uh, I, I'm just into that, but the, the game's bad. Joe. Yeah. I mean, I wasn't, uh, it wasn't crazy about it. I do think that maybe unplayable might be a little harsh personally, but I feel like for me, this is going to just like melt into like the mush of those like lower to middle tier NES games. Like I've definitely played a lot of games that like were to me, like, I'd rather play this over plenty of other games that are like horrible, horrible, but this one just does not stand out in any way. And it is kind of, it's kind of just like, they didn't do enough with it. I mean, it's, it doesn't, it's kind of boring.
Um, I, I, the one thing that I thought was interesting was that like keeping track of the days system, but it didn't really go anywhere. And I think it's a shame that it's so unique that we will probably never get another game where you have to keep track of what day it is, especially not next week.
Uh, not essential. Thank you, Joe. Uh, and you know, it's funny, uh, Sean, you mentioned 1960s again, even though I said it at the top, uh, the game takes place in 20. Sorry. I didn't, I knew that you said that. Um, I didn't mean to save the words that you said. Oh, thank you. I appreciate that. But it's actually great that you said them because you just reminded me that the game and I think the show takes place in, uh, 2060, a hundred years after the setting of, uh, you know, of when it came out, but also, uh, through the lens of 1960 something. Yeah. But 50 years after the events of Street Fighter 2010.
Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Thank you.
