Taito Legends -- Day Six.

Operation Thunderbolt was released by Taito in 1988 and is the sequel to Operation Wolf. This time the story has you flying off to the "Mediterranean See" to the fictional country of "Kalubya" (Libya) because some terrorists have hijacked a plane and are holding the Americans hostage. So you need to go in and meet up with an informant that will help you. The game features a semi logical level progression as the last game. The informant leads you here, which leads you there, which leads you here and so on. What they've added this time around is simultaneous two-player cooperative play. They've also added in levels where it's supposed to be your point of view going into the screen. So level one is you running down the middle of a road. It's the same sort of gameplay with everyone popping out and entering the screen from all sides and throwing knives, or lobbing grenades, or shooting at you. The graphics aren't as good in Operation Thunderbolt as they were in Operation Wolf because of them attempting the pseudo 3D effect. What they were going for wouldn't be fully realized until games like SEGA's Virtua Cop. It's a fun romp to play through, but it's not as charming as the original.

Taito released The New Zealand Story in 1988. The game has you playing in the role of a flightless kiwi bird out to save your fellow kiwis who have been kidnapped by an evil walrus and taken to zoos all across the country of New Zealand. You can jump and shoot during the traditional platform action. You can use balloons and other items to help you fly. You'll have to avoid or kill the enemies while avoiding the spikes and other instant death type obstacles along your way. The progression within the levels isn't straightforward. You can see the goal on the map in the lower left. The game will scroll in all four directions and the path to the goal can be complex and winding. You need to reach the end of each zone before the time runs out. At the end of each zone is a kiwi to be set free. There are four levels to each zoo. At the end of the fourth section there is a boss battle.  The levels are large and very colorful. The graphics were impressive at the time. The game is massive. There are some seventy some kiwi to rescue. It's easily one of the weirdest games I've ever played. It's fun though, and just a tad too hard.

In 1989 Taito released Plotting. The game is a Tetris like puzzle game where the object is to clear the blocks from the screen. There aren't any falling blocks or shapes to twist, instead the blocks are specifically marked and you need to throw the same block into an identical block to remove it. They can be marked with a blue A, a red circle, a black X, and so on. You control a slime thing that can climb up and down the left wall of the play field. The blocks are all in the lower right corner. The wall on the left extends about twice as high as the blocks are stacked. The top right of the play field is like an upside-down staircase. You can either throw the blocks straight into the left side of the stacked blocks, or go above them on the left wall and throw them into the steps which will cause them to bounce down onto to the top of the stacked blocks. So that's the gimmick. You have to think in angles and banking your shot down to hit the correct block. Graphically the game is unimpressive, even taking into consideration that it's a game about blocks and the era it was made. This game is just all-around bizarre.

Volfield was released by Taito in 1989. The game is the unofficial sequel to Qix. It furthers the same basic gameplay found in Qix. You again have to claim eighty percent of the play field by drawing shapes and connecting the lines which then clear the field. Again there is the Qix like main enemy moving around the field and the lesser enemies who move along the lines. This time as you're drawing in the level, you reveal the next level's background underneath as you go. You can power up the orb you control so that it now can shoot at the enemies for a limited time which will help you clear the last bits of the field when there is less space and the enemies are all cramped together. The enemy can now fire at you randomly. This is actually a true evolution of Qix. It's still as fun, and as hard as the other versions of the game.