"If someone was insane enough and crazy to actually make a TV Tropes page for me, not only would I feel sorry for them, but I would question their integrity of a human being.. Because anyone who is into me, you must be crazy, and I love you."
— Thunder, ''describing what his opening quote on this page would be.
"
"ThunderTHR, often shortened to just "Thunder", is a Canadian content creator and LPer largely dedicated to racing games (though there has been other genres seen on occasion). Originally opening the channel in late 2014 as "HGCentral", it received a branding overhaul by the end of 2019, with the name change to "ThunderTHR" being done as a way to "identify his content closer to himself". Over the years, the channel has largely morphed from being solely Let's Play focused, to going through multiple phases of varying content types, all relatively focusing on the racing genre that he's known for. In recent years however, Thunder's content has begun to slow down, with him focusing more towards semi-regularly livestreaming over on Twitch, with many of his broadcasts being exported and viewable on YouTube. Though the channel is solely run and operated by Thunder, it occasionally sees content uploaded from other content creators from time to time (though this has since decreased in recent years).
All LPs are covered below (in order of upload):
- Demolition Racer: No Exit
- Crash Bandicoot (1996)
- Tokyo Xtreme Racer (Replayed in 2020.)
- Need for Speed: High Stakes
- Stuntman
- Test Drive: Eve of Destruction
- The Simpsons Hit & Run
- Grand Theft Auto III
- Colin McRae Rally
- Blur
- Tokyo Xtreme Racer 2
- Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing
- Auto Modellista
- Gran Turismo
- Hot Wheels Turbo Racing
- ATV Offroad Fury
- Burnout
- Gran Turismo 2
- Donkey Kong Country
- WarioWare Inc.: Mega Microgames!
- Burnout 2: Point of Impact
- Colin McRae Rally 2.0
- Tokyo Xtreme Racer Zero
- Midnight Club Street Racing
- Driver
- Midtown Madness 3
- Test Drive 6
- Need for Speed II Special Edition
- GRID
- Sega GT
- GRID (2019) (Cancelled)
- Import Tuner Challenge
- Project Gotham Racing 2
- Sled Storm
- Need for Speed III: Hot Pursuit
- Sega GT Online
- Demolition Racer
- Rallisport Challenge
- Ford Racing 2
- Lamborghini (2003 one-make racing game that was cancelled before release due to its developer shutting down.)
- The Need for Speed
- Re-Volt
- Need for Speed Unbound
- Need for Speed II
- MotorStorm
Videos provide examples of:
- Audience Participation: Many of Thunder's Let's Plays have had friends (and fans on some occasion) make appearances throughout certain playthroughs. This was more frequent in earlier videos, but has largely died down with only the occasional appearance from others every now and then.
- Catchphrase: Many of his earlier Let's Plays had him blurt out "Huzzah!" enough times that it was safe to call it one.
- "The/This X is too god-damn Y" was another one, though rather short-lived.
- "Dingus" has become a very frequent catchphrase in more recent times, largely inspired by DankPods.
- Gass Hole: He's burped several times in his videos.
- This even caused a viewer to unsubscribe from his channel, as the viewer was disgusted that someone was trying to "gain subscribers" by burping in his videos. This has since become a running gag amongst some of Thunder's close friends.
- I Have Many Names: Formerly known as "RacerPlanetZX1", "RZX", and "HGCentral", also known as "BloodyThunderX".
- Metal Head: When he used to sub-title his Let's Plays, many videos would make direct reference to particular metal tracks:
- Part 4 of Crash Bandicoot was subtitled "Machines of Barrels", referencing the line "Machines of Hate" from the Fear Factory track "Self Bias Resistor".
- Part 20 of Tokyo Xtreme Racer was subtitled "Obey Your Speed Master", an add-on play to the line "Obey your master" from the Metallica track "Master of Puppets".
- Part 20 of Need for Speed: High Stakes was subtitled "Bulls on Patrol", a reference to the title of the song "Bulls on Parade" by Rage Against the Machine.
- Part 7 of Test Drive: Eve of Destruction was subtitled "Hay Man, Nice Jump", a reference to the title of the song "Hey Man, Nice Shot" by Filter.
- Part 2 of Tokyo Xtreme Racer 2 was subtitled "Night of Little Forks", a reference to the title of the song "Night of Long Knives" by Machine Head.
- Part 22 of Gran Turismo was subtitled "Dimensional Rotary Portal", a reference to the title of the track "Dimensional Time Portal" by comedy metal band Psychostick.
- Thunder also made references to songs not within the metal genre, such as;
- Part 8 of Test Drive: Eve of Destruction was subtitled "Blitzkrieg Smash", a reference to the title of the song "Blitzkrieg Bop" by Ramones.
- Part 4 of Crash Bandicoot was subtitled "Machines of Barrels", referencing the line "Machines of Hate" from the Fear Factory track "Self Bias Resistor".
- Schedule Fanatic: This was prevalent in his earlier days when he'd often get a video out once a day. In recent years, this has completely died off.
- Shout-Out: Thunder started up a "Car Build/Mod Showcase" series for Need for Speed: Most Wanted, where he takes cars in games (and later car mods) and see how fast of a time they can go around the "Petersburg" Circuit track, with each car's best lap time being placed onto a leaderboard. This idea was heavily inspired by Car Build videos done by FailRace, whom he gives a shoutout to at the first part of his Car Build series.
- Speech Impediment: He stutters in just about every video, which he's been unable to help. Frequent stuttering can get Thunder often annoyed by this, at times even proclaiming "Wow I can't talk today." or "I can't English."
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Spiritual Successor: Back when it was called "HGCentral", it had originally been designed to be a new home for his LPs with Thunder and his friend David, where they went by the alias of "The Hyper Gingers" (Hyper Gingers being what "HG" originally stood for). However, due to David's largely busy schedule at the time, Thunder decided to go ahead with the channel on his own. - Sudden Name Change: Thunder's earliest LPs referred to himself as "RZX", a shortened name of "RacerPlanetZX1", which was the then name of his secondary channel. However, as he had already been using the Thunder name outside of the channel, and that several referred to him as such, he ditched the name in favour of "Thunder" for more familiarity. "RacerPlanetZX1" has since been completely retired, his second channel now renamed to his "BloodyThunderX" moniker.
- In late 2019, due to growing dissatisfaction with the "HGCentral" moniker and wishing to go forward with a name that he felt better reflected his content, he completely overhauled the channel with a name and rebranding, and to this day is now known as "ThunderTHR". The "THR" in his name stands for "The Highway Runners", a tongue in cheek nod to some of his more popular content.
- The Show Must Go On: In case of an accidental lost file or time constraints, Thunder may resort to post-commentary as a backup.
- Averted with Stuntman, where he decided to dedicate the entire LP to Post-Commentary after he forgot to record commentary for one of the parts.
- Happened yet again with Need for Speed II: Special Edition. Thankfully there was only about two parts to that LP.
- Also averted with Part 8 of his Colin McRae Rally LP, where after growing amounts of frustration (due to failed attempts) and the time of night he was recording (when he was still living with his parents), Thunder decided to record the part off-screen and then provide post-commentary for it later.
- Averted with Stuntman, where he decided to dedicate the entire LP to Post-Commentary after he forgot to record commentary for one of the parts.
- We Are Experiencing Technical Difficulties: He's cursed with these during streams.
- In his one-off of Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing, the game unexpectedly crashed twice, one of which occurring after he was originally meant to finish his recording of the game. To be fair though, the game is known for crashing often, which he mentions in the video.
- Thunder saves all of his videos on a portable hard drive for safekeeping.. but during his Gran Turismo playthrough, the hard drive he had at the time ended up failing, losing 12 parts of his Gran Turismo LP at the time.
- For whatever reason, more than once in his GRID LP has he dealt with the game crashing when trying to apply sponsors onto his car.
- Some games in his original PlayStation demo videos either refuse to load or crash during gameplay. Perhaps he should've tried playing this on the actual hardware.
