Hearing the Thunder Force series traced back to its PC-88 and Sharp X1 roots is genuinely wild. Technosoft's collection puts Thunder Force I and II side by side across four different platforms, and you can literally hear the hardware evolving.
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The PC-88 Main Theme sampling the William Tell Overture is so charmingly ambitious for that era. Then "Knights of Legend" on the Mega Drive version of TF II just sounds like a completely different universe, all that FM punch and drive.
The X68000 versions sit somewhere in between, richer than the 8-bit originals but with their own character. "The Wind Blew All Day Long" with vocals is a trip too. Anyone who loves the later Thunder Force games owes it to themselves to hear where it all started.