Thunder Hoop Collection Rescues Two Spectacularly Strange Gaelco Arcade Games From the 1990s

QUByte Interactive announces Thunder Hoop Collection for October 8 release on modern platforms, preserving Gaelco's offbeat Spanish arcade run-and-gun classics.

QUByte Interactive is bringing two of Spanish developer Gaelco's more obscure arcade creations back into circulation with Thunder Hoop Collection, scheduled for October 8 on PC, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation and Xbox Series systems. The compilation contains 1992's Thunder Hoop and its 1994 sequel TH Strikes Back, two run-and-gun platform games that demonstrate how magnificently unrestrained arcade design could become when nobody in the room was asking whether subtlety might be useful.

The original stars a bio-engineered hero battling Professor Genbreak and an assortment of mutants with projectile attacks, platforming and the sort of visual energy that immediately identifies the early 1990s even before somebody produces a fluorescent tracksuit. TH Strikes Back then turns practically every dial clockwise. The hero becomes enormously more muscular, the imagery becomes considerably stranger and the action incorporates shooting sequences alongside its platform combat.

Neither game achieved anything approaching the household recognition of Street Fighter II or Metal Slug, which is precisely why this sort of collection matters. Arcade preservation becomes rather boring if publishers only preserve games everybody already owns six times. Gaelco produced a distinctive catalogue of Spanish coin-op hardware and software that was common in some European arcades but far less visible elsewhere. Both Thunder Hoop titles have previously appeared in Evercade's Gaelco collections, but the new release makes the pair conveniently available on mainstream contemporary hardware. The 1990s arcade has apparently returned, questionable taste and all.