The original poster that says Thunder Zone
- Many men were trained...
Only four were chosen.
A top-secret squadron operating undercover in the Persian Gulf.
And now...
Desert Assault, also known as Thunder Zone, is a 1991 Run-and-Gun arcade game made by Data East. It's an arcade-only Spiritual Successor to their previous game, Bloody Wolf.
Players take control of as member(s) of a four-man covert operation team based in the Persian Gulf, where a terrorist army is stockpiling war machines and assorted weaponry. And like every arcade shooter of the early 90s, they get things done, mano-on-mano, by charging into the enemy base guns ablaze shooting up everything in sight.
The game allows up to four players at once.
Desert Assault contains examples of:
- Absurdly Spacious Sewer: A stage is set in one which houses plenty of mooks. You need to cross the sewage waters in order to infiltrate enemy headquarters.
- Adaptation Name Change: The hostage you're required to rescue in the embassy raid, depending on the version, is either named Stein (American/PAL) or Brown (Japanese).
- Autobots, Rock Out!: Most of the boss fights (and some stages) have rock-and-roll music with a guitar solo, courtesy of Hiroaki "Maro" Yoshida and Akira "Raika" Takemoto.
- Car Fu: You can send hijacked vehicles crashing into enemies and running them over. Especially for the hovercraft transport, given its size and that it's obtainable in a relatively small area where mooks barely have places to run from its rampage.
- Cosmetic Award: Complete the game using one credit and the congratulatory screen you get also includes... a random anime girl saluting you. For some reason. Despite the entire game being nothing resembling an anime. Just because.
- Crew of One: Whenever you hijack an enemy vehicle, regardless of its size, you can pilot it, man the turrets, fire missiles all from the driver's seat.
- Crosshair Aware:
- The missile turret tank attacks by firing its batteries into the air, and its shadow indicates where it's going to land. Run!
- The battle in the city where you risk getting hit by offscreen enemy snipers if detected will have the enemy's scope chasing you onscreen, spraying bullets the whole way. You'll need to avoid it until it leaves, or get instantly damaged if you run into it.
- David Versus Goliath: You spend most of the game fighting enemies on foot. The bosses on the other hand are war machines, submarines and battleships that generally don't come close to fitting in one screen.
- Deadly Gas: An obstacle in one area, which you'll need to outrun to avoid getting damaged, along with blowing up a few doors that try to trap you.
- Exit, Pursued by a Bear: One that happens to the heroes rather than villains, but the game ends with the main characters being pursued and chased offscreen by a hungry shark after receiving intel that their superiors couldn't send their transport in time.
- Exploding Barrels: You'll frequently come across steel drums which can be blown up for points and for clearing an area of mooks.
- Expressive Health Bar: Four teammates each have a kind of health bar. A health bar in the blue indicates that they are fine, but as soon as you take damage, they each show a damage animation; if you get burned by a Fire-Breathing Weapon, they each have a kind of a fire dance animation (complete with "I'm burning!"). If you eat food items that restore your health, they each get an ecstatic display (with a "Right on!"). If your health gets in the yellow, each teammate has a "hurting" animation; if it gets in the red, they each have a "dying" animation (with a voice clip of "Are you alright?"), and you have to be careful. The next time your health bar gets empty, each teammate has a "death" animation, with the words "Sorry, guys."
- Homing Projectile: One of the power-ups you can use is a bazooka that fires small, homing missiles that chase the nearest enemy.
- Jet Pack: Enemy soldiers on rocket packs serves as Airborne Mook variety in a few outdoor stages.
- Man on Fire:
- The fates of enemies either when incinerated by flamethrowers or caught point-blank by explosions. Some even run a bit as their entire bodies are set alight, and some will explicitly try to run right into you if this happens.
- Your player characters can get partially set alight if they're too close to a fire source or can't avoid flamethrower attacks in time. Where you'll need to spin the joystick in circles (Button Mashing if you're not playing in an arcade) to shake the fire off or get damaged.
- Military Mashup Machine: The boss you fight in the desert is a naval ship that can somehow move through the sand. In the desert.
- This makes a little more sense in the Japanese version, where Stage 2 actually takes place in an Arctic area (it's actually not that obvious that the whole stage was a Palette Swap overseas) where it's more easily implied (especially with the giant splash the helicopter makes as it falls due to the boss's entrance) that it is in fact in the water.
- Notice This: You won't need to worry on where you need to head next. The game will helpfully throw in a large "SHOOT!" pointer onscreen, usually on walls or doors, telling you to shoot at said object to open up another area.
- Obstructive Foreground: One of the obstacles in the game is that foreground objects, like crates, construction cranes, torn-down buildings, and even some of the bosses could easily block you from seeing your characters. More often than not you'll blindly run into bullets because of that.
- Outside Ride: The final stage have you infiltrating the enemy's airborne base while on the back of an airborne jet. It's flying so high that sometimes passing clouds will obscure your character onscreen.
- Shout-Out: The shark that unexpectedly pops out in the game's final scene looks exactly like the same shark on the poster for Jaws.
- Spread Shot: Collecting the shotgun turns your default firearms into a gun that fires an arc of six bullets per shot.
- Stuff Blowing Up: From buildings to tanks to enemy ships, you'll be dispensing explosions in large amounts throughout the game. And then some more.
- Threatening Shark: The game ends with your hero(es), having destroyed the enemy's aerial base, crashing into the ocean. They then receive intel that they'll need to swim to the nearest coastline, just as a shark appears, with the end credits being plastered over them swimming like crazy with the shark's fin on the water surface in pursuit.
- Villain: Exit, Stage Left: The (unnamed) enemy warlord you encounter in the final stage will sic a legion of mooks on you as you made it to the center of his base. You defeat everyone and blow up the computers threatening to fire missiles across the world, and then realize he's in a flying battleship about to take off, leading to the last stage.
