A rock soundtrack on a CD, with a cover painted by the man who drew Ghost in the Shell.
Winds of Thunder went on sale for the PC Engine Super CD-ROM² on April 23, 1993, built by Red Company and put out by Hudson Soft; North America knew it as Lords of Thunder. The player wore armour that changed elemental type, altering shot patterns and special attacks, and spent gold between stages on upgrades and repairs.
About this game
Masamune Shirow drew the manga Ghost in the Shell. After he finished it, he painted the box art for a PC Engine shooting game called Winds of Thunder. Hudson Soft put it on sale in Japan on April 23, 1993 — a month after North America had it, on the TurboDuo, under the name Lords of Thunder. Satoshi Miyashita wrote the score and signed it Groove King. A swordsman in enchanted armour, called Randee in Japan, fights through six worlds in whatever order the player picks, buying repairs and upgrades in between. None of it was synthesised: the disc holds full Red Book audio, the same specification as a music CD — which is why, when you put the disc in, the guitars sound like guitars.
Key Features
Six stages playable in any order — choosing sequence affects resource management. Armor system: equipping different elemental armor changes weapon type and special attacks. Shop between stages: spend accumulated experience on health, shields, and weapon upgrades. CD audio heavy metal soundtrack. Boss designs drawn from mythology and dark fantasy.
Gallery
The Story Behind
The PC Engine's CD-ROM add-on had been on sale in Japan since December 1988, and by 1993 most developers were spending the extra room on voice acting and animated cutscenes. Red Company spent it on recorded music instead, and left nothing over for anything else.
Tricks & Tales
The score came out of T's Music, a studio founded three years before the game, in 1990. Most shoot 'em ups of the time ran their stages in a fixed order; this one let the player choose which of the six worlds to take first.
Collector's Guide
Region & Compatibility
Japan: Winds of Thunder, PC Engine Super CD-ROM². North America: Lords of Thunder, TurboGrafx-CD. Same gameplay with different regional title. The NA release brought the game to TurboDuo owners in North America.
Maintenance Tips
HuCard contacts are the most common maintenance point on the PC Engine and TurboGrafx-16. The card's edge connector oxidizes over decades of storage, causing failure-to-read and graphical glitches. Cleaning with 90%+ isopropyl alcohol on a cotton swab—gently wiping the gold contacts on the card itself—resolves most contact issues; stubborn oxidation responds to dedicated contact cleaners such as DeoxIT. Never blow into the card slot with your mouth, as moisture accelerates the very corrosion you are trying to remove. On systems equipped with the CD-ROM² or Super CD-ROM² add-on, the optical drive is subject to the same age-related laser and sled degradation seen in any CD system of that era; the laser assembly uses a KSS-220a-type unit on the Super CD-ROM² and replacement parts remain available.
Going deeper
Explore the machine this game ran on, and what to check before you buy or care for one:
What to Watch Out For
Before buying, these are the points worth knowing — from someone who handles original Japanese Lords of Thunder copies regularly.
Will this Japanese PC Engine game work on a North American TurboGrafx-16?
Not without a hardware adapter. The TurboGrafx-16's data bus lines are wired in reverse compared to the PC Engine, making the two regions physically incompatible at the cartridge (HuCard) slot level. A passive adapter such as the dbElectronics Turbo PC-Henshin bridges this gap for HuCard titles. For CD-ROM² software, the TurboGrafx-CD drive will run Japanese discs if they do not carry a software region check, but compatibility varies by title. In both cases, Japanese PC Engine software is designed for the Japanese market and carries no English text.
Is the North American Lords of Thunder missing anything the Japanese Winds of Thunder has?
Yes, though only the voices. The Japanese Super CD-ROM² release has a narrated opening and a voiced shopkeeper between stages; when the game came to North America, that spoken dialogue was cut and replaced with English text. Everything else — the stages, the weapons, and above all the heavy-metal soundtrack, which is Red Book CD audio on both — carried over unchanged. If you are here for the music, either disc gives you all of it. If you want the fuller presentation as Japan heard it, the Japanese disc is the one that still speaks.
Are early-1990s PC Engine CDs like this one at risk of disc rot?
The risk is real for CDs pressed in this era, though nothing specific to this title has been documented. Disc rot is oxidation of the aluminium reflective layer, caused by inconsistent lacquer sealing at some pressing plants through roughly the mid-1990s; once oxygen reaches the aluminium it corrodes, showing as brown or bronze discolouration and eventually as read errors. Lords of Thunder was pressed in 1993, inside the window collectors treat as higher risk purely because of when it was made. Ask the seller to photograph the disc held up to a light: a healthy disc reflects evenly, a rotting one shows brown patches or pinpricks.
Before You Buy
Things worth knowing before you buy Lords of Thunder
A short checklist for buying used PC Engine software wisely — useful with any seller, anywhere.
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Choose a seller who tests it before shipping
A copy that has actually been powered on and checked is a known quantity. An untested one is a gamble you only settle after it arrives.
Look for a seller who states it was function-tested and says what they confirmed. A serious seller can tell you exactly what was checked.
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Make sure it fits your console
Japanese PC Engine HuCards and CDs are not compatible with the North American TurboGrafx-16 — the formats differ. Use a Japanese PC Engine system.
Play it on a matching Japanese console or a region-free system, and confirm the listing states the region.
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HuCard or CD-ROM² — know which you're buying
PC Engine games come on HuCard chips or on CD-ROM². CD titles also require the right CD system and a working System Card.
Confirm the format in the listing, and for CDs check the disc surface and that saves are supported.
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Check that the contacts are clean
Dirty edge contacts are the most common cause of startup and sound trouble in cartridges of this age.
Choose a seller who cleans the contacts before shipping. A note that it was tested and cleaned means the basics were handled.
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Read the seller's reviews and return policy
A 100% positive record across thousands of sales is close to a guarantee — packing, communication and problem-solving all work for everyone. A return policy protects you if something is off.
Read the feedback and confirm a clear return window before you buy.
The last step before buying anywhere is knowing what it's worth.
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Rooms this game lives in
Wander deeper — explore the themed rooms where Lords of Thunder sits alongside its kin.
Memories from around the world
This is a young museum, and this page is still waiting for its first voices. The memories people send reach Taisei personally, and the ones that move him find a home here over time — always with the writer's blessing. Yours could be the very first for this game.
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