Ray-Thunder (1991)

When you press start, the guy gives a thumbs up.

Name:Ray-Thunder
Number:236
Year:1991
Publisher:Nihon Bussan
Developer:Nihon Bussan
Genre:FPS
Difficulty:3/5
Time:1 hour
Won:No (104W/74L)

Said by some to be a FPS, I must admit I felt unconvinced going in, but felt like I could use something a little bit simpler to ease myself into the nightmare that is undoubtedly going to be Ashes of Empire. A Japanese FPS on the Game Boy is a combination that makes me think this will be quite easy to tackle.

The reason why I was unconvinced is pretty obvious, the game constantly shoves planes in your face. I know that technically there's nothing saying that a flight combat sim isn't a FPS, but it feels wrong to me. In a FPS, you can occasionally be in a plane, but mostly, you're on the ground shooting other people. How can a game where you chose one of three planes, and are in that plane all the time be a FPS? Because you never go off the ground.

Nothing gets me more excited for a FPS than picking out a plane.

This is such a weird game on the face of it. You're in a plane, just driving along shooting things. Underground. It's such a counter intuitive set of ideas that I feel like I'm not actually grasping it. It's an action that happens not because you're in an incredible situation in a game that has both planes and ground combat, not a game where you're always in a plane. Shouldn't they just be tanks?

You're given a choice of three planes, with varying power and speed. One with more power than speed, one with balanced stats and one with more speed than power. I went with the balanced one after trying out the more powerful one and the faster one. Oddly, the more powerful one feels more crippling to use, but perhaps this is just my usual abilities shining through. I think these are supposed to be power and special, since later on you get special attacks, but then that doesn't explain why the more powerful one moves slower.

An enemy in the distance, looking like it's a comic book character teleporting in.

Gameplay is your typical Dungeon Master-style FPS, except the developers felt like they needed to make it more fancy. So instead of turning around instantly or swiftly enough, you slowly watch your view rotate as you are helpless to defend yourself. It's a nice effect, but I would prefer just turning. I don't understand first-person Game Boy games feeling the need to overcomplicate your ability to view the game. It gets worse because pressing down does nothing but cause your view to mysteriously bob down and up. This is bad, but at least I'm doing this on a keyboard, the Game Boy had a D-pad which was easy to accidentally press two directions at once, so this would be unplayable there. I suspect this may be related to how I have to constantly fight with the game to get actions to work sometimes.

A shoots, you get unlimited ammo as far as I can tell. You only get one shot on-screen, but it's a short enough distance that it doesn't matter. B shoots your special attack, which presumably does more damage. There are multiple special attacks, I'm not sure there's a difference. Start might pause, because I remember it working, once. Select opens a map. The game isn't paused when the map is open, because that would be easy. This game does not want to give you any advantages whatsoever. Select closes it, whenever it feels like it should be closed. Speaking of which, the game has a soft time limit, moving uses fuel. There are pick-ups, in addition to repair items, which restore it. Being a bit conscious of it, I never ran out.

The map screen, showing everything important about a given level.

Your objective on each level is to kill all enemies and gather all parts. Dunno why we need the latter, but I'm sure it's very important to the backstory. It does something for the gameplay. I'm not sure if it's good that this isn't just mindless shooting. There are also various wall opening and teleport objects, which are seem to be invisible on the map, but you have a fairly decent amount of visibility, 3 tiles. Nothing really holds over between levels, it's all passwords, so it's not like you need to hold off on advancing levels to recharge.

A mine enemy, which you have to kill if you want to win.

The strategy boils down to, am I facing an enemy? If I am not, he hurts me. If I am, there is nothing he can do but run. Shots can be shot, and you have a faster firing rate than the AI, so enemies quickly fall down. It's just a matter of positioning yourself so that enemies can't sneak up behind you, which is entirely what level design is about. Enemies have some distinct behaviors, but it all falls down to simply putting yourself in a situation where you won't get snuck up on. Don't run into them either, because that hurts you quite a bit. You can use that as a strategy, but it's not reliable.

This guy is more intelligent than some of the other enemies, but in this situation there's little he can do to harm me.

On stage 4, I figure out how the levels themselves are designed. They're randomly generated, probably based off a few templates. I don't ever see a level that's impossible to win, but I can't be sure I didn't just have good luck. Power-ups are certainly randomized, but level design is too, because this level is primarily based around just going down a series of cross hallways shooting enemies as they pop up. This, oddly, seems to break the shooting mechanics, as I can't consistently get off shots.

Parts, needed on most levels they appear.

The game is trying to do dungeon crawler design, but does so in a bizarre way. There are traps, which are manageable, but then most of the things that would be objects or reusable are powerups. Things like walls opening or teleports are one-use. Level design means that these are often one-way to areas which contain parts and enemies. It seems like sometimes teleports are one use, sometimes not, just one of those things that comes off as odd about the game. I guess it isn't too bad in theory owing to the shortness of the game and easily starting over, but man, way to hit on every single possible bad design choice you could.

To nail home this point, there's a set of levels (Stage 6/7 if memory serves) that I found used these mechanics in ways that would be ridiculous to play in any other game. First, a level full of mines you have to navigate around, featuring the usual enemies you can't see. You can shoot them beyond visible distance too, but good luck hitting them. Then, a level using teleportation, not one-time use, to prevent you from going down a hallway. So the objective is to find the one gap in these teleporters so you can reach the other side.

Shooting something or another.

I skipped ahead to the end, Stage 21, to see if there was anything new or special there. Well, to start with, you get a series of blocked off blocks which gradually open up thanks to various wall openers. I like it, it's mostly just hampered by the game itself. Then it opens up to these enemies which look like corrupted sprites. Not sure if that's intentional or not. They're tough, and actually move around somewhat intelligently, but assuming you know what you're doing, they're easy enough to take out. It's a longer level, but feels good, not like memorable, just the kind of filler level I don't mind in other games. Here, it seems like the highlight.
 

It's a flying tank, I guess.

And that's the game. There are the credits, odd considering they were before the title and you see your ship flying over a city, which I presume I was defending, but will never really know. In the end, you're usually defending some city or another, even if the game never says it.

To not completely crap on the game, while I think the game is trying too much to polish a turd, I think it's easy to fall in the trap of throwing good development time after bad, especially when it's your meal ticket and it probably came off as incredible just for the sheer novelty factor at the time. This would have been the only game of it's kind during development, so why does it matter if one of the levels is some annoying minefield?

Weapons:
It's weird being in a first-person game with shot limitations, and the special weapons feel like they're just there to take out tougher enemies quicker. 1/10

Enemies:
There's a surprising variety, some more intelligent and some simpler. But because you're often shooting at the limit of your weapon range, which is longer than your sight range, you can frequently end up not having an idea about what it is you're shooting until it's dead. 3/10

Non-Enemies:
None.

Levels:
On one hand, they really tried. On the other, this was so unbelievably boring I couldn't bother to finish most of them despite how easy they were. Still, those randomized elements got on my nerves and the game doesn't really have anything to make up for it. 1/10

Player Agency:
I never thought that an emulated game would remind me of how frustrating it can be to use an actual Game Boy, which is an accomplishment. That said, it was usable enough that I had no trouble going through the levels I did, and likely would have no trouble through the rest. 3/10

Interactivity:
None.

Atmosphere:
Clashing design choices and a lack of interesting...well, much of anything. 1/10

Graphics:
The developers could clearly draw a nice, shiny big screen picture, because the enemy sprites look nice. It's just that you see the title screen, your fancy ship, and then maybe a full enemy sprite once every few minutes. The rest is bland walls and objects chosen because the artist could draw them. 2/10

Story:
None.

Sound/Music:
In addition to the usual bloops and blips, there's this odd ambient walking sound going on. It's not distracting, but it does feel a bit odd. 2/10

That's 13. Feels fitting. It's bad, but not offensively so. A big factor in this, is that while it is bad, it's never a struggle to play. Even when I was fighting against the controls I was generally winning. It's just a novelty that's been surpassed by other games on the system. Of course, today, considering you can play the biggest games of today on your phone, the novelty is considerably...less.

Next time, we see a psuedo-adaptation of the film The Dam Busters.