Game 407: Mission: Thunderbolt (1992)

At least the enemies look as silly on the title screen as they do in-game.

         

Mission: Thunderbolt

United States

MegaCorp (developer); Casady & Greene (publisher)

Based on a module originally released as Doomsday 2000 on mainframes in 1987

Released in 1992 for Macintosh, 1993 for Windows 3 

Re-released as JauntTrooper - Mission: Thunderbolt in 1995 for Macintosh

Date Started: 16 March 2021

    

Exposure to the roguelike subgenre is one of the best things to have come out of this project, and I'm always happy when I see a roguelike coming up on the list. It is, however, difficult not to think of them as variants of the same game. (I suppose that to some degree they are; hence, Roguelike.) If they don't offer enough new or fresh or original, I often find myself wishing I could just play Rogue or NetHack again. I imagine this will change as evolution leads roguelikes in very different directions and starts to introduce more complex plots and NPC interaction.

   

This leads to the fundamental problem with Mission: Thunderbolt. It's a good roguelike, no question. It just isn't as good as NetHack, and it doesn't do enough that's new and interesting, like Ragnarok, so at some point I wonder why I'm playing it except to catalogue its existence for my insane project. (These things are true so far, in any event.) But it's quite competent and fun if I force myself to stop comparing it to other roguelikes. Players who take more readily to science fiction games will rate it more highly. 

    

Like most roguelikes, Mission: Thunderbolt has complex characters, maze-like maps, detailed inventories, and a variety of statuses. Unlike most roguelikes, it has graphics.

      

Mission: Thunderbolt began on the VAX mainframe of Digital Equipment Corporation in Massachusetts. Employee Dave Scheifler conceived of it as a multi-mission game with the overall title of Doomsday 2000. Operation: Thunderbolt was the first module, released in 1987, and it was followed by Operation: Firestorm and Operation: Quicksilver. Operation: Tsunami was planned but never finished. The game was such a hit with Scheifler's co-workers that he founded MegaCorp (of Natick, Massachusetts, famous as the eponym of becoming naticked in crosswords) to sell the game commercially. He ported the first module, Mission: Thunderbolt, for Macintosh in 1992 and published it through the California-based Casady and Greene. (The prefix was changed from Operation to Mission because of an action game from Taito called Operation Thunderbolt.) The game sold poorly, but Scheifler tried again in 1995, self-publishing an upgraded Macintosh release of Mission: Thunderbolt as well as Mission: Firestorm. For the 1995 releases, both games had the master title of JauntTrooper. A Windows 3 version of Thunderbolt happened somewhere in there, but sources differ as to whether it came out in 1992 or 1995. The 1995 version has long been the only one available online, so I was fortunate that a reader and fan of the game was able to provide a copy of the 1992 version.

        

The backstory is related in-game.

       

The setup is that in the year 2000, aliens spur mankind into a global biological, chemical, and nuclear war, then invade the wreckage. A small group of survivors forms a resistance group called "Operation Thunderbolt." Its first mission is to recover an anti-matter bomb from the underground research labs of MegaCorp International. Unfortunately, the team is wiped out by aliens early in the mission, leaving a sole survivor to brave the ruins and return with the bomb.

     

The default character is named "Captain Hazard," but you can change this. You also set a difficulty level on a scale of 4 options from "beginner" to "expert." (I'm playing on "Normal.") Character creation involves rolling values from 3 to 18 for strength, dexterity, speed, constitution, intelligence, wisdom, and charisma. The difficulty setting determines how generous the rolls are. You begin with only a laser pistol (which only has a few shots) and a butcher knife.

         

Character creation.

   

The rest will be familiar to anyone who has ever played a roguelike, although the game is notable for how it deviates as much as for how it adopts the standards. Some examples: 

     

• As you can see, Thunderbolt offers iconographs and a GUI rather than the ASCII characters and keyboard-only interface of pure roguelikes. The graphics are quite tiny in the main window, but see below.

• There are several dozen commands using the full range of the keyboard, such as a)ttack, e)at, g)et, and o)pen. As with most roguelikes, many keys have to do double duty with the SHIFT key, as in the case of w)ield and W)ear. Unique to this game is the use of the TAB key to push letters into triple or quadruple duty, as in f)ire, TAB-f)ill, F)ix (something adjacent to you), and TAB-F)ix (inventory item). There are also menu commands for everything, and many commands can be executed by clicking in the map window; for instance, clicking on a door opens it and clicking on an enemy attacks it. I mostly get by with keyboard commands, but there is a particularly useful option to click a part of the map and have the character automatically proceed there.

• Levels alternate between those with a fixed layout and those that are randomly generated. Even the randomly generated ones completely fill the available space, which makes it easy to find areas that ought to have secret doors.

• As you kill enemies, you gain experience, which leads to occasional leveling.

         

Always a welcome message.

       

• Unlike most roguelikes, you can save this one, but you're assessed a penalty to your score based on your level and how frequently you save. Various other blunders can cause penalties. The manual advises newer players not to worry about penalties and just save whenever they want. I've been limiting myself to once per level.

• There is an economy. It runs on found coins. (I'm not sure what to do with equally-common "oddly-shaped" coins.) Instead of NPCs and stores, Thunderbolt offers ATMs, auto-docs, and vending machines. 

   

An ATM lets you deposit and withdraw funds.

      

• Health doesn't auto-regenerate as you move, but you can retreat to a safe area and "rest" to fully restore it.

• Weapons include both melee and missile options, the latter of which require ammunition. Armor options are jackets and helmets and such. The game has a "weapon class" statistic that helps you track the relative power of weapons.

• Pills take the place of potions in fantasy roguelikes. Their colors are randomized for each new game. However, the penalty for eating a bad pill can be disastrous. Pills of Ineptitude permanently damage your dexterity, for instance. There are supposedly machines (I haven't encountered any yet) that tell you what pills do; I wouldn't think of taking one, except in a dire emergency, without consulting these machines.

• There is blessedly no hunger mechanic in the game. You do have the option of eating corpses, but I'm not sure if this ever provides any benefit. The manual doesn't mention any.

• Although the progression of levels is generally linear, there are occasional holes that connect across multiple levels, plus "transmat booths" that will move you from one place to another in the dungeon if you have a code.

   

So far, I've only survived up to Level 5 ("Region" 5 as the game has it). The early levels featured a lot of junk on the floor that appears to have no use, like rocks, broken bottles, and dirty rags. There were lots of pills and coins--so many of the latter that I was often in danger of over-encumbrance; fortunately, ATMs let you deposit coins for safekeeping. Enemies have included mutated animals like giant bats, spiders, ants, and rats, as well as aliens like eyeless things and hairy things. So far, the most frustrating (hostile) creature has been "slimy things," whose slime attacks destroy your entire inventory of pills, plus leave you "slimy," which prevents you from clicking to walk. There have also been "Kiddie Kommando Units" with paintball guns that blind you with paint.

   

The "fog of war" effect in this game is such that until you've explored an area, you can only see one square away. This makes missile weapons of questionable utility since you can rarely shoot at an enemy from a distance. Perhaps I'll find some device that lets me see across more squares and that will change. Melee weapons have included rusty pipes and crowbars; armor has included jackets and a cap.

       

Fighting a couple of enemies early in the game.

       

There have been lots of unusual events that I suppose I'll have to learn the significance of through experience--things like power drains, crackling of energy, getting drowsy after noticing the scent of violets, "unseen forces" that prevent me from accessing certain squares, and various noises in the distance of the dungeon.

    

By far, the most annoying creatures have been non-hostile automatons called utility bots. You start to meet them on Level 2 or 3. Once they acquire you, they follow you around mercilessly asking for information about where they should clean. They do perform some helpful services, such as automatically cleaning you of paint or slime. The problem I keep having is that they trap me in dead-end corridors and won't get out of the way. They're too dangerous to attack (and thus turn hostile). You can try to jump over them, but if you fail, you end up crashing into them--and they turn hostile. I lost a couple of characters to them.

        

A utility bot won't leave me alone.

     

Like NetHack, however, Thunderbolt offers a relatively complex set of interactions between inventory items and between inventory items and the environment. The solution to my utility bot problem was just taking the crowbar to the nearest wall and carving my own way out. These are the sorts of things that you have to learn through trial and error--or by looking at spoiler sheets. I've tried to avoid the latter so far, but some spoilers have been impossible to avoid; a lot of sites have them in the basic description of the game. Thus, I know that when you encounter a hazardous waste spill, you can dump rubble into it until a pathway becomes clear. Instead of throwing individual grenades at very hard enemies, you can store multiple grenades in a box and then throw the box at them. You can fill the same containers with radioactive waste and use them as missile weapons. Somehow, there's a way to tame animals. Unfortunately, it's unlikely that I'm going to be with the game long enough to develop true mastery of all of these options the way I did with NetHack. I realize that if I did, I would start to better differentiate Thunderbolt from other roguelikes and thus temper my first two paragraphs. 

      

One area in which the author is to be particularly commended is in the interface. The four default windows--character, status, messages, inventory, and the main view--are all movable and sizable. The status and inventory windows can even be dismissed. There are additional windows not activated by default that players might find helpful, including a command window that lets you play by double-clicking commands, a button window that lets you do the same with buttons, a zoom window that zooms out and lets you see the entire level, and a detail window that zooms in and shows you larger iconography for a smaller area. I confess I've mocked some Mac games in the past for being so obsessed with their individual windows, but there's something to be said about offering such customization to the user. Plus, at least Thunderbolt arranges its default windows tightly so you don't see the Mac desktop underneath everything. 

      

An alternate configuration of windows.

     

Things just got a little hairy for Captain Chet. Shortly after discovering that I could lure enemies to holes in the floor and let them fall, I fell down a hole myself. There was a horde of enemies waiting for me, so I retreated to a nearby hallway to try to take them on one at a time. Fortunately, I found a power pack for my laser pistol and was able to use it to good advantage. On the unfortunate side, my klutziness caused me to drop my pile of coins and my crowbar, and I was never able to get them back.

        

An enemy is swallowed by a hole--or something in the hole.

      

By the time I was done with the combat, Chet's status effects were "klutzy," "spotted," "slimy," "injured," and "paint-spattered." I saved the game and tried to experiment with some pills to see if I could get rid of some of those effects. Most of the pills turned out to be bad--forgetfulness, monster agitation, clumsiness--but one group turned out to be "pills of perception," which allow you to see the entire level map. That was helpful. I'd also been carrying two "strange devices"; activating one showed them to be light beacons. Between the two of them, missile combat (and simply avoiding enemies) became easier for the rest of the level.

   

I eventually found my way back to Level 4 and a utility bot who cleaned off the slime and paint. But shortly after I returned to Level 5, I got a sudden message that said "you briefly feel a bit lighter," and then found myself on an unknown level. I'll end there.

        

My first character didn't make it very far.

     

For those who have played this game before, feel free to be liberal with spoilers. I simply don't have time to learn all of the game's secrets for myself, so at least help me document it in the comments, and hopefully I can pull off a win.

 

Time so far: 4 hours