Amiga Port Authority
presents:

By Mathew R. Ignash (mathewignash@comcast.net) - Last updated on May 28, 2000.

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Vital Data:

Created By: Sierra On-Line, 1987.

Ported to Amiga by: Synergistic Software, 1987.

System requirements: 512k of system RAM.

System recommended: Same as above.

System Friendlyness Scale: 1xx45x789x - I have had no luck running this game from Workbench properly, it only generates NTSC and PAL screens, and is not compatable with RTG software.

About The Game:

You play a transforming robot/jet that must travel through a maze full of enemy robots. The sound and speach synthesis, along with the beautiful 640x200x16 screens made it stand out in it's day. I recently brought it to a user group meeting and it still turned heads of several kids, who wanted their dads it buy it for them. They were shocked to learn it was over 11 years old and wouldn't run on their SNES's.

The story: ''Command a Thexder Robot Jet Super Assualt Vehicle on a mission that no man has survived. Change from robot to jet and back at the touch of a button. Fire high energy lasers to destroy enemy creatures in your path. Lock on the shield to protect your vehicle from enemy attack. You will encounter innumerable mazes, booby traps and dead ends in your quest for survival.''

I have personally played the Amiga, MS-DOS and NES versions of Thexder, and can easily say that the Amiga version is by far the superior of the three. The NES version has a lower screen resoluton and the laser is slower and less accurate. The MS-DOS version is pitiful looking in EGA colors. And neither can match the Amiga's sound and speach synthesis. The MSX version is only slightly below the Amiga one. I only recently learned their was a TRS-80 version of Thexder and have never seen it in action.

Their were two sequals to this game. The first was called Thexder II: Firehawk and was for MS-DOS, which I will soon be trying to run under PC-Task. The second was just called Thexder and was for Win32.

The original disk for the Amiga port of Thexder is heavily copy-protected, making you boot off the original disk, and not allowing backups to be made. This ended up in disaster, as I literally played the one I bought at a store until it wore out. I ended up having to download an ADF file, which had the copy protection removed so I could play it again. Just goes to prove that some people really do download games that they already own for legitimate reasons.

I was recently able to get this game installed to my hard drive by taking de-protected version off the internet and then using the JST installer as a degrader and launcher.

According to some literature produced by Commodore, Thexder was scheduled to be released for the CDTV, but it was never produced.

Synopsis:

FAQs:

Reviews:

Amiga Format: Rated Thexder 74%.

NESGuru: Mathew Ignash reviews the NES version of Thexder. http://members.xoom.com/nesguru/reviews/thexder.html

Extras:

Aminet Thexder files - http://ftp.uni-paderborn.de/aminetbin/find?thexder

Cheats for Amiga Thexder - http://netrover.com/~timt/classics/t/thexder.html

JST Amiga hard drive loaders - http://jffabre.free.fr/amiga/patches.html