From the Memory Bank: My History with Video Games

Rolling Thunder - Taking Out Some Hoods
Join me as I re-remember one of my first-ever arcade favorites.

As the mid-80s approached, I wasn't yet at a point where I was ready to entertain the notion that video games could be considered serious hobby material, no, but I couldn't help but observe that they were starting to have an ever-increasing presence in my life. In the previous three-and-a-half-year period, I could recall, I'd spent many an hour playing a growing number of Atari 2600 games in my brother's room. Just recently I'd become deeply immersed in the Commodore 64's weird, wondrously expansive world. And all the while, I'd been visiting, with increasing frequency, the magical wonderlands that were created solely for the purpose of housing the newest, most-groundbreaking games around: the arcades.

So as you can see, a passion was beginning to develop within me even though I wasn't yet consciously aware that such a thing was happening. The flame was indeed beginning to spark. And at the time, it was arcade-gaming that was providing the bulk of the necessary friction.

To the younger me, arcades were magical places where people crowded around bunches of tall, eye-catchingly flashy machines whose assemblage emitted a wonderful symphony of bleeping, buzzing and ringing noises as augmented by the intermittent sounds of explosions, crashes and violent slams. Theirs was a one-of-a-kind, highly enchanting ambiance--one that was essential to the authentic arcade experience. One to which I was helplessly drawn.

Quite simply, I absolutely loved arcades. There was no place like them. There were no other outlets that could come close to delivering their kind of experience. Arcades were the meccas towards which kids of every age would flock when they were eager to play the biggest, most-technologically-advanced games and do so while exuberantly socializing with others of their ilk. Before the days when consoles and PCs could match their level of technological advancement and range of socialization, arcade games were the ones setting all of the graphical benchmarks, creating all of the popular trends, and bringing people together in new and innovate ways. If you were playing an arcade game, you were getting a glimpse into the industry's future.

And arcades were everywhere. Every commercial district was home to four or five of them. You would come across one at the corner of every strip mall. Every local video store had a few arcade cabinets in a back room. There were always arcade machines set up in the waiting areas of diners, pizzerias, car washes, and movie theaters. And you would even find dedicated "arcade" sections in places like hotels, entertainment centers, outdoor parks, and cruise ships. You could game wherever you traveled. There was never a shortage of accessibility.

And no matter where I was--no matter which environment I was currently immersing myself in--as I engaged in arcade-gaming, I was happy to be there. I was finding great enjoyment in absorbing each establishment's unique vibe. And, certainly, I was having a blast playing some games with all of the people I was meeting for the first time.

More so, though, I loved going to arcades with my friends. Really, there was nothing like spending a few hours wandering around an arcade with your buds and in the process discovering new releases together, teaming up to play the best multiplayer games currently available, and generally sharing in some of the most fun experiences we'd ever have as a group. We'd game almost everywhere we went, though we preferred to frequent those doorless, two-store-wide joints over on Bay Parkway. They had great atmosphere to them--especially in the summer, when the air inside would take on the quality as the soft, freshly-cut-grass-scented air breathed outside and the sun's light would beam in from the west and provide radiance whose reach extended as far back as the proprietors' little stands.

Good times, man.

Now, I separate my arcade-going years into three distinct eras: (1) The less-resonant early years, when I'd tag along with my brother and follow him into the odd Florida or Catskill Mountains arcade, where I'd play a few rounds of Pac-Man, Missile Command or Dig Dug while being mostly oblivious to what I was doing. (2) The highly memorable middle years, when my friends and I would discover and play the best action games and routinely engage in long multiplayer sessions wherein we played games like Rampage, WWF Superstars, Double Dragon, Street Smart, WWF Wrestlefest, Street Fighter II, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and NBA Jam. And (3) the "End Times," when I grew increasingly disinterested in arcades because the entire scene shifted and was now being dominated by a select few genres (3D fighters, realistic racers, and quirky shooters) and games that closely resembled those I was already playing on the N64 and PlayStation.

The one I mostly fondly recall, of course, is the middle era. It was the period in which I discovered so many of the games that would go on to become cherished favorites. And in particular, it was when I was introduced to the first from a group of the most-profoundly-impactful arcade games I'd ever played.

It was a little game called Rolling Thunder.

I remember the sequence of events that led me to it: It was the summer of 1987. For the first time ever, I traveled along with my parents to Atlantic City (until then, it was usual that my brother and I would stay home with our aunt, who would come over and "responsibly" babysit us by allowing us to stay up late so that we could watch syndicated reruns of The Odd Couple, Taxi and The Honeymooners, which were our favorite shows). We arrived there, I'd say, at approximately 12:00 p.m. Our destination was the Showboat Hotel and Casino, where we were booked to stay for the entire weekend.

After we finished eating lunch in the coffee shop, we started to walk toward the casino, which my parents were eager to hit. Though, there was a problem: Kids weren't permitted to enter casinos. Knowing this, my father came up with a plan: He decided to take me over to the ground floor's right side, which was home to an on-premise arcade. "You can hang around here until we're finished," he said, figuring that I'd be safe in such a place because there were plenty of other kids around and because these places were usually well-supervised. After handing me a couple of rolls of quarters, he walked out of the arcade and headed back to the casino area.

"I'm fine with this rearrangement," I said to myself. "I'll be fine here. This is my turf!"

So there I was, wandering around the Showboat Hotel and Casino arcade, looking, as I always did, to see if any of my favorite games were present, when suddenly I saw it.

Now, if you were an arcade-goer, you were used to seeing technologically advanced games--those like Space Harrier, Iron Horse, Out Run, Darius and others that could never be adequately reproduced on consoles and computers. You expected a certain level of graphical fidelity from your arcade games--nothing less than what you'd see in standard-setting games like, say, Ghosts 'n Goblins--and most of them could deliver that to you. Though, what you were never prepared for was the next generation of arcade technology, which, unlike the next generation of console and computer technology, arrived suddenly and without warning and did so in the most shocking fashion.

One day, you'd be impassively walking about your favorite arcade, prepared to play the same ol' games from a selection that probably hadn't changed in over six months, and then, suddenly, there it would be--the game whose appearance would hit you like a lightning bolt. The game that would signal to you the start of a stunning, unexpected shift.

That was exactly how I felt the first time I saw Rolling Thunder. The image of it was absolutely striking. For the first time in my life, I was blown away by how an arcade game looked.

I was so stunned by what I was seeing that my cognitive functions began to fail and I couldn't even generate the motor-function necessary to move forward and approach the game's cabinet; all I could do, rather, was stay planted right where I was--continue standing at a distance--and gaze at it in wonderment for an entire minute. That's what you did the first time you saw a next-level arcade game like Rolling Thunder.

When finally I regained full control of my faculties, I wasted no time in speed-walking my way over to the machine and dropping a quarter into its coin slot. From there, it was all about giving myself over to this breathtaking game and letting it go about wowing me.

And in just its opening moments, Rolling Thunder showed itself to be one of the most engaging action games I'd ever played. From a visual perspective, alone, the game was amazingly captivating: Its characters were large and lifelike--the most realistic-looking I'd ever seen--and they were rife with animation! The enemies, in particular, were spectacularly rendered: They turned toward and away from the camera; they turned their torsos left and right to check in either direction; they leaned over to peek down at lower levels; they turned their heads upward to check upper levels; and they did all of this slickly, fluidly and in the most realistic way! And at any time, there could be a dozen or more of them onscreen, with each character behaving and operating in an independent manner; and somehow, with all of this activity going on, there wasn't a hint of slowdown! The NES, in comparison, would go into cardiac arrest if as many as five characters were currently onscreen together!

"This is absolutely incredible!" I thought.

When I broke out of observation mode and started focusing in on the action, I found that Rolling Thunder played great, too: The red-shirted, suspenders-wearing hero (whose name or code name, I thought, was "Rolling Thunder"), too, moved quickly and fluidly. He could fire off shots rapidly and mow down waves of enemies in the most viscerally pleasing fashion. Controls were responsive and allowed for him to slickly, competently maneuver his way around the mobs of enemies that were pouring out from every door and every part of the screen's edges. He could duck into any of the numerous doors and hide there as long as he wanted. And by entering specially labeled doors (those with signs pointing to them), he could obtain either more ammo or a machine gun that allowed him to mow down enemies in a more-rapid, even-more-satisfying fashion!

It was just beautiful. Nothing was ever more fun than dispatching an entire row of twelve goons in about two seconds. And that sound they made when they died ("AH!") would forever remain etched in my memory. I'm telling you, man: There wasn't anything more satisfying than taking down a large group of incoming enemies and hearing a string of such utterances--a symphony whose sweet melody went "AH! AH! AH! AH! AH! AH!" It was music to the ear!

Also, Rolling Thunder introduced what quickly became one of my favorite action-game mechanics: balcony-jumping. The hero had a high-jump maneuver that wasn't much use in combat scenarios, no, but it could it be used to jump up to a room's upper level (if one was in view) in either an evasive or strategic fashion. And you could jump back down wherever there was railing over which you could vault. Shifting between levels in this manner, I learned, allowed for you to cunningly snake your way around stages and avoid trouble spots--mainly areas where there were a lot of doors, out of which scores of enemies were liable to pop at any moment and inflict contact damage. The enemies could also jump between levels, so it wasn't the case that you could simply ignore them and continue charging forward, no; if ever you moved into their line of sight, they'd drop down onto your head, leap up into you, and then relentlessly pursue you until you killed them.

"This is the best new mechanic I've ever seen in an action game," I continued to think as I leapt up to and down from one balcony after another.

I was also taken with its opening-stage musical theme, which had a curiously unique structure to it: It started with a rousing James Bond-style intro that served to epically heighten the mood and generate instant energy. This intro segued into a lengthy piece whose steely, urgent tone and jazzy-sounding note sequences worked together to produce some of the most bizarrely rhythmic strains I'd ever heard in an arcade action game. The response it drew from me told the whole story: There I was, intensely focused on the hectic action, burdened by the stress of it all, and at the same time grooving to the music--swaying my head back and forth in rhythm to the music.

It was an unusual-sounding tune, yeah, but also a highly engaging one; it pulled me into the action and made me feel as though I really were a secret agent infiltrating the enemy's base. 

It was an excellently-composed tune in general. It featured wonderfully distinct instrumentation, great supplemental use of percussion and synth, and an incredibly invigorating bridge section that served as the perfect crescendo to what was in total an outstanding piece. It was, quite simply, pure dynamite.

I'd always had an attraction to games whose worlds were outwardly similar to ours but in some way mystically imbued--to those whose anomalous features could stir my imagination and make me wonder about how their worlds might differ from ours. I liked to theorize as to what was going on under the surface and as to how the characters might operate within such spaces. I could get lost for hours in a game that could inspire me to imagine.

Well, Rolling Thunder had that power. It had it in spades. Its world was amazingly wondrous! In the hours and months after I played Rolling Thunder, I couldn't stop thinking about its environments and the type of activity that might occur within them. I couldn't stop thinking about its only-possible-in-video-games enemy base with its worn, lived-in interior whose cracks were showing and whose paint was peeling to reveal the brick walls it was covering; its industrial-looking ceiling fans; its overabundance of air vents and power boxes; its hundreds of doors, each of which, I could imagine, led to a fascinatingly embellished room or building area; and its storage section, which was filled with mounds of brown sacks and stacks of tires, within which you could hide. "What do the enemies do here?" I'd wonder. "And what are they working on?"

Also, I loved the game's enemy cast--those goons who could be seen swarming the place in great numbers. In particular, I liked their specially designed uniforms--their hood-and-jump-suit ensembles. There were several enemy types (most of them mere palette swaps), and each donned its own uniform variant and most noticeably its own uniquely colored hood; some wore purple hoods, some wore gray hoods, and others were assigned those that came in yellow, orange and a myriad of other colors. A few of them even wore goggles! I figured that the hood color designated a goon's rank, with purple-hooded guys, who died in one hit, serving as low-level grunts while the yellow-hooded ones, who instead died in two hits, were captains and lieutenants.

Rolling Thunder's hooded goons stuck with me because I had a weird obsession with uniformed characters whose clothing came in multiple shades. It was probably because I was OCD-afflicted and that people and things being arranged in groups according to color and type was one of the best expressions of orderliness. And because that was the case, I just couldn't help but spend money on properties that featured groups whose members sported an array of different-colored uniforms, be it the G.I. Joe line's Cobra Unit action figures, whose uniforms came in shades of red, gray and blue (and some of them even had Rolling Thunder-style hoods!); or Mortal Kombat games, whose playable casts included members of the Lin Kuei clan--ninja warriors like Sub-Zero, Scorpion, Reptile, Rain, Smoke and Noob Saibot, each of whom wore a uniquely colored variant of the Lin Kuei uniform.

You could say that I was a toy company's wet dream.

And this is just what I took from the game's first stage! Because, really, that's about all I saw that day. In truth, I wasn't able to make it to the second stage. I couldn't get that far because Rolling Thunder, I quickly came to learn, was extremely difficult; in fact, it was just about the toughest, most-unforgiving arcade games I'd ever played. Part of the problem was that the hero lacked for an adequate amount of health: Bullets killed him in one hit, and he could only absorb two collisions worth of contact-damage. Really, the health meter was an entirely pointless addition; it was purely ornamental, included because the developers felt obligated to adhere to tradition.

Otherwise, there was always a ton of onscreen activity going on, and it was difficult to keep track of everything because all of it was occurring so quickly; so there was always the possibility that you'd suddenly find yourself sandwiched between two incoming groups of goons and die before you could draw your weapon--this because both groups had started to open fire before you could even start to process what you were seeing. That's what kept happening to me. I couldn't react in time; at that point in my life, my reflexes just weren't developed enough.

Still, even though I'd only seen a small portion of it, I was thoroughly impressed with Rolling Thunder. I loved every aspect of it: the graphics; the music; the sound design; the setting; the level design; the satisfying, fast-paced shooting action; the balcony-hopping mechanic; and the colorful enemy cast. As I walked away from the machine that day, I knew that I'd be returning to it frequently. "This is my kind of game," I said to myself, "and I'm gonna play it every time I see it!"

And return to it I did--several times over the course of that weekend. I played it in that same on-premise arcade and in every arcade we passed while walking the Boardwalk (whose strip was once home to a great many arcades). And I was hoping to see it again in the future.

And I certainly did: Soon the game began to appear in local establishments. I'd come across a Rolling Thunder machine whenever I was in one of the Bay Parkway arcades or in the Maple Lanes bowling alley on 60th street, and it would always be the recipient of my first quarter.

Though, even after playing it a bunch, I was still finding it to be a tremendously difficult game. I continued to have all of the same problems: I couldn't react in time to enemy shots, especially when they were flying in from both sides at once. Whenever I'd refrain from exchanging fire and instead rush forward, I'd get pinballed around by all of the enemies that would suddenly start emerging from every point on the screen. And no matter how many times I tried, I still couldn't make it past the first stage. And since continues were limited in number, it wasn't possible for me to credits-spam my way to Stage 2 (or "Area 2," as the game called it). Not that I would have been able to clear the first stage anyway; its second half was simply too tough; it would beat my brains in every time.

But that didn't deter me, no. No matter how difficult Rolling Thunder was, I wasn't going to stop playing it. I couldn't; I loved it too much. So what if I couldn't survive for more than three minutes? I didn't need to last long to have fun with Rolling Thunder; its action was super-satisfying even in the shortest of bursts.

Over time, though, I got better at Rolling Thunder. Soon I was able to competently advance to Area 2, which contained two of my favorite platforming challenges: one in which you had to negotiate your way around and up large stacks of colorful boxes whose separate levels were all well-patrolled; and another in which you had to descend down a long enemy-packed stairwell using both stairway traversal and rail-jumps; whenever I'd reach this stage, I'd look forward to taking on the latter challenge because I loved to speed my way through it--loved to take advantage of the stairwell's generous supply of railings and rapidly vault my way down to its bottom and effectively bypass most of its levels. "This is such a great mechanic," I'd repeat over and over in my head.

In those early years, though, I could never advance beyond the first section of Area 3. The stage's newly introduced mutated ape creatures would always tear me to pieces and quickly drain my entire stock. And I could never find a way to deal with them.

At that point, I knew the score. I knew that I wasn't going to be able to progress any further in this game. I couldn't lie to myself: For as much I loved Rolling Thunder, I understood that it was a brutally tough arcade game that ate people like me for lunch. Really, there was little chance that I could ever beat such a game.

But hey--I was still able to have a ton of fun with it. For the price of only a few quarters, I could buy myself 8-10 minutes of enjoyable, satisfying shooting action. That's what arcade gaming was all about: briefly immersing yourself in a visually impressive world and engaging in the most intense, challenging action you ever experienced. Those were arcade values. They're what made arcade games what they were. They're what kept them from going stale.

For me, Rolling Thunder never got old. I continued to play it for years. If ever I was in an arcade, it'd be the first game I was looking for. Its brand of action made for the perfect starting-off point; it never failed to raise my energy-level and set the tone for the entirety of my arcade visit.

Rolling Thunder was my favorite arcade game ever.

Now here's the sad part about all of this: In the decade following my arcade-going years' closing phase, I somehow forgot all about Rolling Thunder's existence. By the time I was 25, I'd lost all memory of the game and the experiences attached to it--of how it came into my life, of how it was a staple of my arcade diet, and of how I felt about it. This happened to me--someone who prides himself on having a great memory. I just forgot--about all of it. It was inexplicable. I mean, how could I forget about the first arcade game I ever loved? A game that played such a huge role in shaping who I was? A game that inspired me to imagine? A game that sparked a passion within me?

It probably has a lot to do with the fact that I hadn't been in an arcade (a real arcade) in almost ten years and that it had been an even longer period of time since I'd last seen a Rolling Thunder machine. Though, still, such explanations ring hollow. They're just bad excuses. The fact is that I should never have forgotten such a game--one that was so very important to me. That's not what I do. That's not who I am.

Call it my greatest video-game lamentation.

It wasn't until 2009, when Nintendo announced that they were introducing a Virtual Console Arcade and that Rolling Thunder was going to be one of the first games to appear on the service, that the fond memories resurfaced. "Oh yeah--that game," I said to myself upon seeing the image of its title screen. "How in the world did I forget all about it?!" (It's kind of incredible that I never saw its name mentioned in any of the articles, essays or retrospectives I'd read in the previous nine years. You'd think that even a simple screenshot of it would pop up somewhere.)

It all happened at that moment--one of the handful of times in my life when such an event triggered a sudden recollection and consequently unlocked a flood of memories. It all came rushing back. Then I could remember everything about my experiences with Rolling Thunder: the sequence of events that led to my discovering it; how much I loved its shooting action and its balcony-hopping mechanic; how it was always the first game I'd seek out whenever I'd go to an arcade; and all of the interactions I'd shared with friends while playing it. Also, I remembered the unpleasant aspects of my Rolling Thunder history, like when I rented the blasphemous NES version, which failed miserably in its attempt to adequately replicate the original's look and feel. What a yucky version of the game; the less said about it, the better.

For a couple of reasons, I didn't purchase the Virtual Console Arcade version: (1) I'd always had an awful time trying to control fast-paced side-scrollers with the Wii Remote and the Classic Controller, each of which featured terrible ergonomic design and a mediocre d-pad. (2) I was always short on hard drive space. And (3) I didn't yet trust digital services. The use of the word leasing in user agreements always seemed kind of iffy to me.

But now that Rolling Thunder was once again back at my mind's forefront, I was absolutely interested in finding a way to reconnect with it and play it. So what I did was turn to MAME, the arcade-game emulator. All I had to do was download the necessary ROM files, place said ROMs in a correctly named folder, bring up a command prompt, and type the proper loading command. Then, after 16-plus years, I was able to play Rolling Thunder again--amazingly, now, in my own home!

Though, this time I was intent on actually beating the game--on coming face-to-face with and destroying that green-colored scourge who used to gleefully mock me every time I failed. In preparation for my return, curious about who that green punk was and why I was after him, I went over to Gamefaqs and sought out the storyline details (which weren't displayed anywhere on the arcade cabinet). It turned out that "Rolling Thunder" was not the hero's moniker but instead the name of an undercover arm of a police organization; it was hunting a man called "Mabu," who was the leader of Geldra, a dangerous secret society. The protagonist, Agent Albatross, was ordered to infiltrate the group's base and rescue Agent Leila, who had been captured by the group a few days earlier when she tried to sneak into the base.

The document described what was probably fairly obvious to anyone who had paid attention the between-stage cut-scenes, yeah, but I was still happy to know the exact details. I mean, shouldn't you know what your favorite games are actually about? (Asks the guy who's still not sure about what's going in Solomon's Key, one of his NES favorites.)

So then I started to play it. And quickly I was reminded that Rolling Thunder was a brutally difficult game even by arcade standards. It had no mercy. Though, because my reflexes and general gaming skills had greatly increased since the late-80s, I was able to perform well and even make significant progress. I could now make it as far as Area 5, the heart of the enemy's base. It featured your typical (read: extremely challenging) Rolling Thunder action, yes, but also something I was delighted to see--something that quickly became my favorite piece of decor: Near its exit lied that control center/large telescreen you'd see at the title screen and in the between-stage cut-scenes wherein the game's main villain could be seen conducting his minions' activity!

I loved it when such a thing would occur in a video game--when the action would suddenly spill into a location that previously appeared on a title screen or in a cut-scene in which a game's big boss was barking orders from an office that was assumed to be part of a separately-existing graphical asset and thus completely off-limits.

Why I loved it, though, I'm not completely sure. Maybe it's because of how my entering into such an environment felt somehow verboten--that the game was making me feel as though I'd entered into a restricted zone and therein somewhere I probably wasn't meant to be. I can't really say. All I know is that I loved being in those spaces and observing them from up close. And I was excited to come across that control center in Rolling Thunder. Simply being there, in the place in which the robed mastermind was commanding his troops just seconds before, was surreal; it made me feel as though I'd cornered him--delivered him a message that he was running out of places to hide.

Though, what was waiting for me beyond that section would remain a mystery. I simply couldn't get any further. There was too much to overcome; at that point in the game, the enemy-rate was set to "overwhelm," and I couldn't survive the frequent storms of bullets and grenades. It didn't help that the stages' time-limits were growing ever-stricter and consistently cutting down on the amount of time available for me to momentarily pause and survey screens' activity before pushing forward.

As much as I desired to advance even deeper into the game, I knew that I probably wasn't going to be able to progress any further than the middle portion of Area 5. My well-honed skills didn't mean much to Rolling Thunder, no; it was still happy to treat me as though I were that same ol' incompetent rookie.

Luckily, someone had made a cheat-code patch that allowed for players to modify every game with which MAME was compatible. For Rolling Thunder, there were options to have infinite time, ammunition and lives. By taking advantage of the third such option, I was able to play the game through to the end. I decided to do this not because I wanted a cheap and easy path to victory but because I wanted to see what the game's later stages held. If my experiences with arcade games told me anything, it was that there were likely to be great things ahead--impressively-designed stages, wondrous settings, and cool artwork--and I didn't want to miss the chance to see all of it.

And in the process, I learned a lot about the game. In particular, I discovered that Rolling Thunder's was more than just a five-stage campaign--that its first five stages amounted to only one "Story." If you want to achieve true victory, you have to play through those five stages again, in a second "Story" (it's the Ghosts 'n Goblins formula, basically). But it isn't so simple, you see: In the second loop, each stage is redesigned to a varying degree. They introduce new mechanics and level-design features--new obstacles, hazards, and platforming challenges. Area 6, for instance, introduces a Super Castlevania IV-style plane-shifting mechanic that allows you to move between the background and foreground layers and specifically between the stage proper and the spaces that lie behind the dividing gates and fences; this mechanic adds a worrying layer of complexity to the action, yes, but it also opens up the door for a new type of strategic maneuvering (read: enemy-avoidance).

In the second half of this stage, you encounter ceiling-mounted devices that periodically fired down lasers, and you have to find a way to avoid their fire while perilously traversing your way across the tops of tire stacks within which hide nasty hoods.

Some stage sections have been fully restructured. The best example is Area 8's lava section: Instead of simply reproducing Area 4's lava section as is (that is, with not much beyond a series of narrow rocky platforms), it builds upon it by adding concrete decks, pillars, and other new constructions (apparently the hoods have been hard at work since we last passed through here). Only the final area remains untouched structurally, which is neither good or bad news.

Also, the second loop shuffles the enemies around, so now you'll be running into giant bats ("Geruzos") and mutated apes ("Breakers") as early as its first two stages. Oh, and all enemies now move one-and-a-half-times faster than they did in the first loop! Fun!

Admittedly, though, the new platforming segments have a way of revealing the flaws in the game's jumping controls. It's obvious that they weren't really designed with platforming in mind. Albatross' jumps can be modulated, yes, but only to very limited degree; exerting influence only works to slightly halt his momentum and thus does little to alter the trajectory of his jumps. This results in the jumping controls feeling stiff and sometimes resistant, which proves to be a pretty big issue in platforming sections wherein you to jump from one narrow platform to the next and do so with extreme precision. Also, there's an annoying collision issue: Surfaces' bounding boxes don't fully extend to their edges, which technically don't exist. This means that have to execute your jump before reaching a platform's edge; if you don't, Albatross' jumping input will be seemingly eaten and he'll walk right off the edge, into the pit.

Both issues were most apparent in Area 8's final segment, which features a nasty sequence wherein you have to jump across a series of unevenly placed 12-pixel-long pillars and do so while dealing with the self-replicating humanoid flame creatures ("Flamers") that emerge from the lava below. All I can say is good luck trying to accurately land jumps under these conditions. And that's not even taking into account exacerbating factors like the looming time-limit expiration or your performance-stunting out-of-control heart-rate. And if that weren't enough, you'll also have to contend with the cruelly positioned final enemy, who suddenly spawns in and collides with you when you're in the middle of a jump and thus knocks you into a pit; the only way to avoid such a scenario is to let off a shot a second before you start the jump--to lead a bullet so that it stays onscreen as you maneuver forward and consequently hits the creature right as it appears.

This segment is an absolute killer. It'll certainly prove to be the breaking point for most players--particularly those who lack precognitive abilities.

So no--Rolling Thunder doesn't handle platforming well. Fortunately the majority of its action takes place on solid ground.

After struggling mightily for several hours, I was finally able to reach the game's final room and confront the robed Mabu (who surprisingly wasn't green-skinned, as was suggested in the cut-scenes). It was an impossibly difficult fight, of course, so much so that I was left wondering if the game was actually beatable under the current conditions. "This guy is way too fast, and he leaves me no opportunity to counterattack," I thought.

"Maybe he's only vulnerable to a hidden weapon that I've never heard about?" I started to think.

In desperation, I consulted a Youtube walkthrough. It showed the player defeating Mabu by planting himself on the screen's right edge, dodging Mabu's charges with high jumps, and firing rapidly in the time between. It wasn't a conventional strategy, no, but it appeared to work reliably (I didn't see how else you could beat him). So I put it to use and subsequently defeated Mabu in what turned out to be a heart-pounding showdown.

Of course, it wasn't a glorious victory, no, since I used cheats to attain it, but, really, I wasn't looking to rank it anyway. The nature of the win didn't really concern me. I wasn't looking for any accolades. All I was seeking was the complete Rolling Thunder experience, and that's exactly what I got. Though, honestly, I was kinda disappointed with the game's ending. The reward for victory was a short, single-screen ending in which (a) the unaffected-looking, inanimate mugs of Albatross and Leila projected onto that aforementioned telescreen and stood there for the duration, and (b) a bunch of hooded goons walked from terminal to terminal and occasionally turned toward the camera, looking confused, as if the only question they had was "S-so do we just here wait here, then?" Also, for some reason, unfitting marimba music was playing.

Maybe that tune was the source of the hoods' confoundment?

It certainly was the source of mine. I mean, what the hell?

But you know what? At some point, I really did start to believe that I had what it took to beat Rolling Thunder legitimately. "Though, if I'm ever actually going to pull it off," I would always think, "I'm going to need a huge confidence boost."

Well, that boost eventually came. It was an outgrowth of the confidence that had been instilled within me in the early portion of 2017, at a time when I was in a special place--at a time when I was finding my greatest success in my mission to conquer all of those super-difficult Commodore 64, NES and arcade games that tormented me when I was a kid. Fueled by this newfound self-assurance, I purchased 2017's Namco Museum (Nintendo Switch version) mostly with the intention of getting a hold of Rolling Thunder in a format with which I was most comfortable and finally beating it. That was the journey on which I embarked over the following months.

And in early 2018, it actually happened: I was able to beat Rolling Thunder without having to use either cheats or continues. It was a mighty struggle that required a ton of memorization and an exhausting amount of repetition, yes, but it worked to earn me a true victory. I'd finally done it; I'd beaten Rolling Thunder, which I once considered to be the personification of "games that people like me could never hope to finish." And I felt really good about it.

In one of my successive attempts, I was even able to beat it in one life. How's that for a 180-degree turn?

And I'm not even close to being done, no. I'm going to continue to strive for greater achievements--for more-efficient runs and faster completion times. Because attempting to do so is a while lot of fun. Because Rolling Thunder is a whole lot of fun. It's still one of the most engaging, satisfying action games around.

Rolling Thunder really is one of the all-time greats. I hope that more people become aware of it. I hope that the current generation's most-curious members play it and come away with a strong understanding of 80s-era arcade values and why they're so special. There's nothing quite like them, they'll realize. And there's nothing quite like Rolling Thunder.

And because of the existence of arcade compilations and wonderful series like Arcade Archives, they have plenty of opportunity to discover all of the old arcade classics. They have plenty of opportunity to closely examine these games and learn about what makes them so unique. And if they take this opportunity, they'll hopefully feel inspired to spread the word and help to keep the arcade's spirit alive.

Personally, I'm lovin' this arcade renaissance. It's allowing me to reconnect with old favorites that I haven't been able to play in over 20 years, since the day when arcades disappeared from my life. Revisiting all of these games has been a blast.

Though, I have to say, these emulated versions aren't perfect replications. They're clearly missing something. I sense as much whenever I play one of them; I'm made to feel as though having the ability to play an arcade game on a console, a portable, or a PC is great, yes, but not quite the same as playing it within the noisy interior of a dedicated gaming space while standing in front of a big, colorful arcade cabinet with friends at my side and like-minded enthusiasts swarming about all around me. Those aspects simply can't be replicated. Try as they might, consoles, portables, PCs and mobile devices will never be able to provide that experience.

Still, emulated arcade games do have their value. They're fun to play, even in a more-intimate environment. They're filled with amazing artwork. They sound great. And, perhaps most importantly, they remind us of why we loved spending our summer days bouncing between the walls of our favorite local joints and pounding away at the control panels of action-packed games like Rolling Thunder.

That's what Rolling Thunder will continue to do for me. And this time, I won't ever forget its message.