We have a welcome blast from the past with the new Thunderbolt Collection. QUByte Games have been making a strong showing in the indie scene, especially with the recent remaster and re-release of the 16-bit Genesis classic Zero Tolerance. QUByte Games is celebrating the launch of a classic spaceship shooter, with both versions intact.
The collection features Thunderbolt Fighting Plane and Thunderbolt II. These spaceship shooters were originally released in Taiwan, making them very difficult and rare to acquire. Thunderbolt Collection brings these games not just to the west but to an entirely new generation of players. Thunderbolt Fighting Plane, originally released on the Famicom, is presented in its 8-bit glory. while Thunderbolt II is the follow-up that was release on the Sega Genesis. The goal of each game is to fight and survive against the waves of mechanical enemies that want to destroy both the player and humanity itself. The re-release of both games comes with a bevy of small but noticeable enhancements. In addition to English localization, each game has extra features, such as control re-mapping, different screen assets, and save states to save progress.
QUByte has had an impressive slate of smaller and lesser known indie titles released, from War Dogs to 99 Vidas. It appears their most recent and upcoming slate of releases will be focusing on the arcade classics and the 16-bit era of games. In the indie scene, there has been a big push at re-releasing the more obscure and lesser known games, including titles that were never finished, as well as games that never left their territories. It appears QUByte is onto something new and exciting, especially with the upcoming release of Breakers Collection a fighting game released for Neo-Geo and Japanese arcades in the 1990s. Let’s hope they continue to bring back and re-release these forgotten classics.
Thunderbolt Collection is out now on Xbox, PlayStation, and Nintendo Switch.
