Trivia / Thunder Force

• Channel Hop: Sega acquired the rights to the series from Technosoft after the latter went under, and then produced Thunder Force VI and published ports of Thunder Force III, AC, and IV.
• Franchise Killer: Thunder Force VI. Not only it was released to mediocre reviews (and overwhelmingly negative fan reception) in Japan, its poor sales removed any plans of porting VI to other platforms (an arcade port was considered) and Sega aborting its plans to revive and reboot its Shoot 'Em Up franchises. After Sega acquired the rights to the series, only ports of AC and IV for the Nintendo Switch are released under the SEGA Ages label (with a port of V being considered), with no plans to release a new entry for the series. Its failure also killed plans by the same producer to launch revivals of other Sega shooter properties.
• No Export for You:
  • Thunder Force and Thunder Force VI. The poor commercial performance of the latter domestically had removed any chance of it being exported outside Japan.
  • Also, the Gold Packs and the Saturn version of V.
• Sequel First: The series didn't start getting released outside Japan until II.
• Similarly Named Works: The video game franchise has nothing to do with the 2021 Netflix film Thunder Force.
• What Could Have Been:
  • There were plans to port VI on the Xbox 360 and Playstation Portable as well as an arcade port, but its commercial failure and mediocre-to-negative reception has dropped any possibility for Sega to port VI to the aforementioned platforms.
  • Working Designs planned on localizing the Saturn Gold Pack releases for the West, pairing them with an additional notable shmup (Hyper Duel with Pack 1 and Blast Wind with Pack 2) before their acrimonious split with Sega as a publisher in 1997.

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