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Technosoft

The Sasebo company behind Thunder Force and Herzog Zwei

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Technosoft, which spelled its name Tecno Soft for much of its life, worked from Sasebo in Nagasaki prefecture. It began the Thunder Force shooters on Japanese home computers in 1983, made three of them for the Mega Drive, and in Herzog Zwei (1989) built a console strategy game that Westwood's Dune II team named as an influence. It stopped making games at the end of the 1990s; Sega bought its rights in 2016.

When Westwood’s lead programmer Joe Bostic described what went into Dune II, the game that set the pattern for real-time strategy, he named three influences. Populous supplied the real-time play and Civilization the strategy. The third was a cartridge for Sega’s Mega Drive: Herzog Zwei, “for the fast pacing”. His Westwood colleague Mike Legg remembered the same thing: “We were also playing Herzog Zwei on the Mega Drive at the time.” It came from Technosoft, a company in Sasebo, in Nagasaki prefecture, better known in Britain for a series of shoot-’em-ups called Thunder Force.

Fast facts

  • Based: Sasebo, Nagasaki prefecture, Japan.
  • Founded: February 1980, as Sasebo Microcomputer Center; renamed Technosoft in 1982.
  • Name: written “Tecno Soft” on many of its games and in the period press, and “Technosoft” in others.
  • Known for: the Thunder Force shoot-’em-ups (1983–1998), Herzog (MSX, 1988) and Herzog Zwei (Mega Drive, 1989), Elemental Master (1990), Hyper Duel (arcade 1993, Saturn).
  • End: stopped making games at the end of the 1990s; its rights passed to Twenty-One Company by 2001 and to Sega in 2016.

Thunder Force

The first Thunder Force was a shooter for Japanese home computers, viewed from overhead and scrolling in every direction. It began on Sharp’s X1, dated December 1983 in public sources (one puts it in 1984), and was converted to other machines; Retro Gamer pointed to it as an example of a game where the X1 version was better than the one for NEC’s dominant PC-88. It never left Japan.

The series found its audience on the Mega Drive. Thunder Force II appeared first on Sharp’s X68000 in 1988 and on the Mega Drive in 1989, published there by Sega. It already let the player flick between forward, backward and multi-directional weapons, and it kept the first game’s overhead stages, which “scrolled in eight directions”, and alternated them with side-on stages in the manner of Gradius and R-Type. Mean Machines gave it 82% in its first issue. Thunder Force III (1990) dropped the overhead stages and became, in Mean Machines’ words, “a more traditional R-Type style horizontally scrolling shoot ’em up”, keeping the switchable weapons: the ship carried five at once and the player could change between them at will. Sega did not release it in Britain. Mean Machines reviewed it in October 1991, after it had been available on import for more than a year, and ranked it with Hellfire and Gynoug as one of the best blasters on the Mega Drive.

Thunder Force IV (1992) widened the playfield. The screen scrolled up and down as well as along, so that power-ups were not always in view, and the player chose the order in which to attack the first four areas. Mean Machines’ import review called the graphics “state of the art”, with “some breathtaking backdrops”. Its verdict caught the series’ reputation: “The best shoot ’em up you’ll get on the Megadrive, but suffers from a complete lack of originality.” In America it was sold as Lightening Force, and Sega released it in Britain in 1993.

Thunder Force V came out on the Saturn in Japan in 1997 and on the PlayStation in 1998, when Working Designs published it in America. Sega Saturn Magazine reported in 1997 that the enemies would be “full 3D polygon constructions” while the play stayed side-on, and that Technosoft had been impressed by Taito’s RayStorm but thought it could do better. Edge gave the game six out of ten in 1998. It found the “3D” only cosmetic and the game, “like so many Japanese releases, far too short”, though its “2D appeal to old school gamers is undeniable”.

Herzog Zwei

Technosoft’s other lasting idea began on the MSX. Herzog (1988) was billed as a “real time combat simulation”: each side had a base, and the player flew a fighter that could turn into a robot while sending units against the enemy base. Herzog Zwei took the idea to the Mega Drive in 1989. The Games Machine found it an odd thing to see on a console, “a strategy game”, and decided that it was “really a multi-direction shoot-’em-up with one or two tactical possibilities”, but “quite addictive in two-player mode, fierce rivalry developing between friends”. It gave it 75%. The real-time strategy entry tells how Herzog Zwei fits among the genre’s forerunners.

Retro Gamer later wrote that the game sold poorly, partly because Technosoft’s reputation for shooters led buyers to judge it as one.

Other games

Elemental Master (1990) was another Mega Drive shooter; Megatech called it “a technically superb shoot ’em up” with “excellent graphics and superb sound”. Technosoft also converted Devil Crash, the pinball game Compile had made for the PC Engine, to the Mega Drive in 1991; it reached Britain as Dragon’s Fury. Hyper Duel began in the arcades in 1993 and came to the Saturn, with a ship that could change into a flying robot, which Retro Gamer said gave it “a distinct Thunder Force feel”.

The music was part of the reputation. Looking back at Thunder Force III in 2012, Retro Gamer called Technosoft “well-regarded for its superb chiptune scores”.

After Technosoft

Technosoft stopped making games at the end of the 1990s, and by 2001 its rights and assets had passed to Twenty-One Company. In 2008 Sega announced Thunder Force VI, made by Sega under the direction of Tez Okano. In September 2016, at the Tokyo Game Show, Sega announced that it had acquired the intellectual property of all Technosoft’s games. Naosuke Arai, a former Technosoft development director, told the audience that the company’s late president, Mr Ozono, had worried about the brand dying out and had felt that Sega was the company to take it on. Thunder Force III was the first game to follow, in a Japanese collection of Sega classics for the Nintendo 3DS in December 2016.

Sources

  • Retro Gamer issue 114, May 2013: Joe Bostic on Dune II’s influences (Populous, Civilization and Herzog Zwei “for the fast pacing”).
  • Retro Gamer issue 48 (2008), the making of Command & Conquer: Mike Legg, “We were also playing Herzog Zwei on the Mega Drive at the time”.
  • Retro Gamer Videogames Hardware Handbook volume 2 (2010): the Sharp X1 and the original Thunder Force.
  • Retro Gamer issue 19 (2005): Thunder Force V import feature (the original Thunder Force “confined to Japan”).
  • Retro Gamer issue 27 (2006): Thunder Force II (Mega Drive, 1989, published by Sega); Thunder Force IV released in Britain by Sega in 1993; Devil Crash in a Mega Drive top ten.
  • Mean Machines issue 13, October 1991: Thunder Force III review, with a note on Thunder Force II (82% in issue 1).
  • Mean Machines issue 24, September 1992: Thunder Force IV import review.
  • Sega Visions, February 1993: Lightening Force, with the choice of the first four areas.
  • Mean Machines issue 22, July 1992: Dragon’s Fury (“previously known as Devil Crash”).
  • Retro Gamer issue 21 (2005): “Techno Soft’s conversion of Devil Crash”.
  • Sega Saturn Magazine issue 21, July 1997: Thunder Force V preview.
  • Sega Saturn Magazine issue 22, August 1997: Thunder Force V already out in Japan.
  • Edge issue 60, July 1998: Thunder Force V review (Tecno Soft; six out of ten).
  • Gamers’ Republic issue 5, October 1998: Thunder Force V PlayStation review (developer Tecno Soft, publisher Working Designs).
  • Retro Gamer issue 15 (2005): Herzog (MSX2, 1988).
  • Retro Gamer issue 28 (2006): “Why You Must Play Herzog Zwei” (Herzog as a “real time combat simulation”; poor sales; “Tecno Soft itself (now sadly departed)”).
  • The Games Machine issue 28, March 1990: Herzog Zwei review (Techno Soft, £29.95, 75%).
  • Megatech issue 1, December 1991: Elemental Master.
  • Retro, volume 2 (Imagine Publishing, 2008), p. 61: Hyper Duel on the Saturn.
  • Retro Gamer issue 103, June 2012: Thunder Force III retrospective (Technosoft’s “superb chiptune scores”; Thunder Force AC).
  • Retro Gamer issue 54 (2008): Thunder Force VI announced, “handled by Sega”, overseen by Tez Okano.
  • “Technosoft”, Wikipedia, English and Japanese editions (web, secondary): founding in February 1980 as Sasebo Microcomputer Center, the renaming in 1982, the end of development, Twenty-One Company, and the release years of Elemental Master and Hyper Duel. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technosoft
  • “Thunder Force (video game)” and “Thunder Force II”, Wikipedia (web, secondary): the 1983 game’s overhead, multidirectional scrolling and its first release on the X1 in December 1983; the X68000 release of Thunder Force II in 1988. Sega Retro dates the first game to 1984. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thunder_Force_(video_game)
  • Game Watch, 17 September 2016 (web, secondary): Sega’s acquisition of the Technosoft rights, Naosuke Arai’s account and Thunder Force III in Sega 3D Fukkoku Archives 3: Final Stage. https://game.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/news/1020718.html

See also

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