Talk:Thunder Force IV

Soundtrack
Added a brief description of the game' soundtrack, as it was felt needed due to the games excellent music.


 * While the music IS good, I think a little more is needed than 'notable'. Why it's notable would be better. Spottedowl 15:46, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

I remember this game very well. It has possibly the best soundtrack of any game I've played! Wjfox2005 15:15, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm going to have edit the soundtrack description. I severely disagree with the current description of the soundtrack being mainly hard-rock with backing synth. While the bosses do have this BGM, most levels certainly do not have it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.145.235.177 (talk) 14:22, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

It has been edited. If anybody does not remember the soundtrack I will gladly post the main level tracks here for anybody to listen, you will see they definitely do not consisnt of 'hard-rock'. They are the more synthesized, synthetic atmnosphereic sounds, while the 'hard-rock' sounds take the role in the boss sections of the game. Both genres of music now get a fair mention in the article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.145.235.177 (talk) 14:40, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

PAL/NTSC difference
Although the PAL version does indeed have a country lock out which can be bypassed it is not optimized for 50hz.

Thus running the 50hz version at 60hz will not show more slowdown than a regular (JAP or US) 60hz version of the game.

Witnessed this personally as I own both a JAP and EURO version of the game.

Claim in Wiki removed.80.57.198.38 22:26, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Yep, it sure is optimised. I have both cuts and the PAL version is as quick at 50Hz, as the Jap is at 60Hz.

Lightening POSSIBLY misspelled?
How is it only possibly misspelled? The word is spelled lightning, so obviously lightening is a misspelling. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 69.216.115.149 (talk) 05:08, 26 March 2007 (UTC).

Only Sega knows--because they requested the name change because they felt there were too many sequels on their platform. I have a theory why it was misspelled however. Near this time, in 1991, there was a syndicated television show called Lightning Force. This was a very low budget show that was only around for two seasons. It would seem that Sega didn't want a Thunder Force 4, and thought Lightning Force would have been a quick switch, yet whoever thought this up probably did not know about the TV show. The property could have easily defended its trademark with the name and won, so after deciding on a name change and finding that name taken? Sega decided "hey, let's misspell it." I sure can't think of any other reason that they would actually let a misspelled game get on the shelves, a few bits of script or something wrong in the manual is understandable, but this just takes the cake. Aleksael 05:18, 5 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Have you ever heard of Occam's razor? Somebody goofed the spelling and nobody noticed. Simple as that. Jason Quinn 23:41, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

That's as maybe, but 'lightening' is a still incorrect spelling, deliberate or not. Ergo, the 'possibly' should be removed, IMO.


 * Well, the mispelling depends on the context. "Lightening" is a proper word, an extension of "lighten", but I doubt that's what they had in mind. Kelvingreen 13:30, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

"natively ported form"
That's an odd phrase, and I don't know what it means. Harizotoh9 (talk) 06:51, 27 July 2018 (UTC)
 * It means the game is ported and not emulated. TarkusAB talk 11:47, 27 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Actually it could be an emulated saturn release. Will wait for further information. TarkusAB talk 23:14, 27 July 2018 (UTC)

Magazine pdfs
The article links to a lot of magazine pdfs, as well as the instruction manual. These are all still copyrighted materials correct? Would this count as a copyright violation? I'm not familliar with retrocdn.net, but it doesn't look like any official kind of archive project with permission from the publishers. That would go for archive.org as well. They upload entire romsets, and other material that is obviously copy-righted, so we shouldn't assume that just because it's on archive.org that it's okay to link to it. Is there some exception that I'm not aware of? Harizotoh9 (talk) 10:23, 28 July 2018 (UTC)
 * I'm not familiar with the copyright violation rules, but it's being used as a source and I believe it's very useful to have the link there so people can check the source. TarkusAB talk 10:45, 28 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Copyright and external links are covered in WP:ELNEVER and WP:COPYLINK. It would be okay if the publishers themselves uploaded it and made it freely available online. As far as I can tell, these magazines still under copyright, and the sites are user upload sites where anyone can upload anything. It is convenient, but there's no convenience exception that I'm aware of. Now in practice, no one cares about 30 year old magazines. And some of the might even be in copyright limbo, where they are copyrighted, but no one actually owns the rights anymore. But WP rules seem pretty clear on this. Harizotoh9 (talk) 11:35, 28 July 2018 (UTC)

Print sources:
I see this article cites the online page of Retro gamer. The Print Magazine did a full retrospective on the series, with some emphasis on IV in issue 103. The print version of Retrogamer is a bit more in depth than the online version, but it costs money to subscribe to. The publisher page lists the issues and what they cover. Link. Harizotoh9 (talk) 09:48, 30 July 2018 (UTC)