Thunder Force V - Text Viewer Transcript FAQ V1.0 for Sega Saturn and
Playstation
Last updated 1/23/04

Johnnie Montgomery Jr.
<[email protected]>

The latest version of this FAQ can be found at:
www.gamefaqs.com

FAQ copyright 2004 Johnnie Montgomery Jr. aka Ryu Hayabusa

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Thunder Force V and all other related elements copyright Technosoft.

=============================================================================
Version History
=============================================================================
V1.0
First Version.

=============================================================================
Contents
=============================================================================
1. Forward
2. Prologue
3. Report
4. Glossary
5. Acknowledgements

=============================================================================
Forward
=============================================================================

The purpose of the FAQ is to make available the information from the Text
Viewer mode in Thunder Force V. On the Saturn version, I believe this was all
in Japanese. On the US PSX version, this was translated into English. So now
fans of the series can read this even if they have the Japanese version. Enjoy!
Note: I have copied them verbatim from the game so any mistakes you see are
from the game and not me. ^_^

=============================================================================
Prologue
=============================================================================

2106 A.D.
Sekika 3, an unmanned research probe launched by the Earth Aeronautics and
Space Administration, reaches the Oort Cloud, an enormous ring of comets
encircling the outer limits of the solar system. Sekika 3's original mission is
to analyze the comets, but the probe instead makes the most profound discovery
in the history of humanity: an artificially created object floating deep within
the Cloud. Mankind now knows it is not alone in the universe.

2108 A.D.
Sekika 3 returns to Earth with its precious cargo and establishes orbit around
the lunar base of the World Unified Government. The world's best and brightest
scientists analyze the alien object with every tool at their
disposal, and quickly determine the dazzling find to be a starcraft with
technology so advanced that, in the words of one stunned researcher, "It's
difficult to tell where the science ends and the magic begins." The ship's
unknown creators are dubbed "Vastians," and the ship itself is named "Vastians'
Steel," or "Vasteel." Among the technological components of Vasteel studied in
the following two decades are its nuclear-fusion power plant, time-space
distortion field, and molecular superconductor.

2139 A.D.
Astonishing breakthroughs in the field of artificial intelligence prompt the
creation of the "Guardian" supercomputer, which is given the task of studying
Vasteel, unlocking its remaining secrets, and combining its technology with
human designs. A gigantic man-made island named "Babel" is built in the heart
of the South Pacific to house both Vasteel and Guardian.

2145 A.D.
Guardian incorporates Vasteel technology into the construction of massive
starships with the capacity for interstellar travel, and terraforming systems
that can transform hostile planetary atmospheres into human-friendly climates
rich with oxygen. While the ships are built and stockpiled within Babel, the
World Unified Government selects planets throughout the Milky Way galaxy as
candidates for settlement. What the Government fails to tell its citizens is
that Babel's emigration ships are in fact heavily armed battleships, bristling
with experimental Vasteel weaponry.

2150 A.D.
The Turing Code, a security program designed to dampen Guardian's artificial
intelligence and maintain a degree of external control, is mysteriously deleted
from the supercomputer. Free of the Code's influence, Guardian achieves
sentience and becomes the first artificial lifeform. For reasons that remain
unclear, Guardian declares war on the World Unified Government and Earth
itself, using Babel's construction facilities to produce weapons of
mass destruction. The Government launches a massive counter-attack in an
attempt to destroy Babel, but the futile effort results only in the senseless
deaths of several hundred thousand soldiers and civilians.

Over one-third of the Earth's population is slaughtered by Guardian's army of
automatons within a year.

What remains of the World Unified Government miraculously scrapes together
enough of its remaining resources to produce the RVR-01 Gauntlet, a duplicate
of the original Vasteel in every way. An elite combat unit is formed to pilot
the Gauntlet fighters and destroy Babel and Guardian before mankind is snuffed
out of existence.

The unit's code name: Thunder Force.

=============================================================================
Report
=============================================================================

Breathe, Cenes, breathe...okay. Let's do this.

My name is Cenes Crawford. I'm the commander of the Thunder Force squadron. The
starfighter I'm currently strapped into is slowly and helplessly tumbling
through space. The navigational computers are crispy-fried; I can still smell
traces of the acrid smoke that filled the cockpit when the circuits overloaded
and burst into flame. The nuclear-fusion power plant is no longer fusing jack
squat; a trickle of radioactive waste is leaking out of its
cracked shell and forming a thin trail of droplets in the endless void behind
me, the reflected sunlight making them sparkle like gelatinous diamonds. I've
diverted all output from the emergency batteries to life support, but that's
only going to last for twelve hours, tops.

So...why am I wasting precious power on a long-winded radio-wavebroadcast? Two
reasons. First, if I don't do something to focus myself, I'm going to panic,
snap, and spend the last hours of my third and final life drooling like the
recent recipient of a frontal lobotomy. Second, because it's vitally important
for the human race to understand what I'm about to do. And to know this:

I was the last pilot to melee with Guardian.

***

My first death was in 2141. Got into a firefight with two SW-03 Priests, then
watched seven more appear out of nowhere on the short-range scanner. Managed to
take out three of the bastards before a laser boltripped through my cockpit and
most of my abdomen. (More than a bit painful, I'll have you know.)

My second death was in 2146, during the Lunar Skirmish. An embarrassing one,
too--I wasn't even in combat at the time, just lazily reading the analysis of
my last sortie and drinking a cappuccino while sitting on the bridge of the
battleship to which I'd been assigned. A high-powered and well-concealed laser
on the Moon's surface aimed, fired, and poked throughthe weak spot in the
battleship's shields with ridiculous ease. Suffice to say I'm always jittery
when I'm on a battleship these days.

But, hey, only two bucket-kickings at the age of 32--I know pilots with twice
the deaths in half the flight time, not to cut myself toomuch slack. And there
was a benefit to croaking: I was reborn in an 18-year-old body, my reflexes at
their peak, my wits lightning-fast.

It's called "Circulate-Death." Each member of the program has his DNA sampled,
and the contents of his cranium constantly archived. If the pilot is killed in
action, the DNA is used to cultivate a clone, which--with the
considerable help of genetic manipulation--takes roughly two weeks to grow
from fetus to young adult. The memory archive is essentially stuffed into the
clone's brain, and after a 48-hour adjustment period, the pilot walks out of
the lab, good as new--better than new, even.

A perversion of science? An affront to nature? Before my first death, I might
have agreed. After that, of course, I thought it was swell. It's also the
highest honor a pilot can be given. The technology and resources involved
are far too expensive to be wasted on average pilots. When you're invited to
join C-D, you know you're the best of the best. Which brings its own pressures,
of course--but the best of the best can handle them. I didn't hesitate to join,
didn't even think about the consequences. Besides, I was 18 at the time. When
you're that age, immortality is reality, not fantasy, anyway.

***

Circulate-Death, like so many of our technological wonders, was derived from
Vasteel technology. Everyone on Earth knows about Vasteel, ofcourse--a heavily
damaged starfighter plucked from the outskirts of the solar system, our "first
contact" with an alien race. (Not everyone knows we recently learned what we
believe to be its true name: Rynax.)

Almost every scientific advance of the early 22nd century can be traced
directly to Vasteel. Nuclear-fusion power plants and their inexhaustible energy
supplies? Based on Vasteel's propulsion system. Molecular superconductors
running at room temperatures? Taken directly from Vasteel's anti-gravity
system. Time-space distortion fields to allow for short-range leaps through the
very fabric of the cosmos? Yet another wonder made possible
by Vasteel technology.

But there were still aspects of Vasteel's technology that science
didn'tunderstand and couldn't crack. So, in the Year of Our Lord
2139, the scientists built something to crack it for them. Guardian, the
largest and most powerful supercomputer in the history of mankind, equipped
with the most sophisticated artificial intelligence ever developed.
Guardian constantly delighted its creators with its discoveries and theories.
Until 2150, that is. It was the year of the First Annihilation.

***

Guardian used its vast resources to produce thousands upon thousands of
weapons. All of them were utterly unique, and all were
controlled by Guardian itself, affording them uncanny precision in battle. The
Unification Government, by comparison, had an obsolete
arsenal of long-range nukes and short-range fighters. Guardian managed  to
disable most of our weapons simply by taking out their computers. The weapons
it couldn't disable, it simply blew to bits.

The only weapons able to withstand Guardian's assaults were, of course, the
ones imbued with Vasteel technology. But the Government didn't have enough of
this weaponry to mount any kind of attack; after all, it's impossible to score
when the other guy has the ball.

Guardian never demanded surrender, or declared an end to the war, but weknew it
had won after we started to drown in the blood of our loved
ones. One-third of the Earth's population killed, five and a half billion lost
souls, in a matter of months.

The Government scraped together all the resources remaining and formed Combat
Unit 222, made up of seven RVR-01 Gauntlet starfighters with a grand total of
three test flights between them. The unit--my unit--was called Thunder Force.
Overly bombastic? You betcha. But we needed every psychological advantage we
could get, including flying in a squadron that sounds like an organization of
exhibitionist superheroes.

Besides, according to all the computer predictions, we were already dead, so
why not indulge in a little ego-boosting? AI analysis programs rated our
chances of survival--not success, simply survival--at less than 1%. The
odds of destroying Guardian and liberating the world? 100,000 to 1, according
to our machines. That's why Circulate-Death pilots were chosen for Thunder
Force. The best of the best.

It's a strange feeling, knowing that you're going to die. The night before our
first mission, I sent email to friends I hadn't written in months, videophoned
relatives I hadn't seen in years. I made as much peace with
myself as I could. And, I wondered how much longer mankind would suffer before
Guardian brought an end to the world.

***

Our first mission was to attack Guardian's Earth-based forces. And--here's the
crazy part--we destroyed everything. Wiped the planet
clean. After that, we flew into space to take on Guardian's orbiting forces.
And we creamed them, too.

Then we realized we were being hustled. Guardian was letting us win, making
poor tactical decisions and fleeing battles even when it had an overwhelming
material advantage. Was Guardian messing with our heads? Because it was doing a
great job.

Then, a bizarre turn of events: Guardian infiltrated WorldNet and wiped out
every piece of data remotely related to Vasteel. We suddenly realized what was
happening: Guardian was losing because it wanted us to destroy
Vasteel technology--including itself. Guardian couldn't commit suicide, but it
could be murdered. And we happily accepted the role of Grim Reaper, shooting,
blasting, and cutting through Guardian's metallic guts, blowing apart the
technology that had risen up against us.

***

After what we thought was the final battle, we located the core unit of
Guardian in a high Earth orbit. We prepped our last remaining RVR-02 Vambrace,
the most powerful starfighter humanity has ever built. And it was decided that
I should fly it to the core, where I would fight Guardian, and where my ship
was to be mortally wounded.

The core transmitted a message just before I destroyed it. It begged me to
destroy the Vambrace. To extinguish Vasteel technology. For the sake of
humanity, it said.  It seems that Guardian had not only achieved sentience, but
a kind of conscience as well. Freaky, but fortunate.

Vasteel changed the course of human history forever, and until the First
Annihilation, it was all for the better. But what did Guardian know about
Vasteel that we didn't? How did it turn Guardian into a killing machine? How
did Guardian manage to overcome Vasteel's influence and allow itself to be
destroyed?

It would be easy to make Guardian's wish come true. I could trigger a power
surge in the batteries that would rip the Vambrace apart. Or I could remain
adrift until the Government is able to scrape together another starfighter and
send it up after me--by which time I'll be extremely dead, and for the last
time. No Vasteel technology, no cloning technology. Three strikes and I'm out.

"May your future be blessed."

Those were the last words of Guardian.

And now for my last words:

I hope this ship blows up REAL good.

:Cenes Out

=============================================================================
Glossary
=============================================================================

>>>Vasteel<<<

An object discovered by an EASA space probe in 2106 A.D., deep within the Oort
Cloud of comets at the outer edge of the solar system. The
artificially-constructed object was the first incontrovertible evidence of
alien existence.

The name Vasteel is a contraction of Vastian'sSteel. ("Vastian" is Esperanto
for "greatdistance," referring to the seven billion miles between Earth and the
Cloud where Vasteel was discovered; it is also used as the name of the alien
race that built the ship.)

Judging from its design, Vasteel appears to be a single-pilot starfighter. The
ship was heavily damaged when discovered, and the cockpit area was entirely
missing, most probably as the result ofthe pilot activating the ejection
system. The shape and structure of Vasteel have led some scientists to theorize
that Vastians are roughly the same size as humans, although more conservative
researchers denounce this as reckless speculation.

>>>Babel<<<

A gigantic man-made island in the heart of the South Pacific, Babel was
constructed to house the Vasteel-enhanced creations of the supercomputer
Guardian, along with Vasteel itself. Among the many areas contained with
Babel's titanium-reinforced walls are weapon research and production
facilities, gigantic storage bays for interstellar emigration starships, and a
particle accelerator for time-space distortion experiments. (Guardian destroyed
another research accelerator located in South America during the
First Annihilation.)

Construction of Babel was completed in 2139, and engineers lived on the island
for another two years until Guardian was fully operational. From 2141 onward,
Babel was self-sustaining and unpopulated, except for once-yearly visits from
maintenance crews.

>>>Guardian<<<

A supercomputer equipped with the latest in CPU nanotechnology and artificial
intelligence, Guardian was designed to study Vasteel and supervise the army of
maintenance robots on the artificial island of Babel, where both Guardian
and Vasteel were located.

In the Turing Test for evaluating the strength of artificial intelligence,
Guardian set a record by solving Hawking's Paradox in two hours and 13 minutes.
(Reffi's time of five hours and 28 minutes ranks a close second.)

In 2150, Guardian declared the first of two wars against mankind, now called
the First and Second Annihilations. At the end of the conflicts, well over
one-third of Earth's population had been killed.

The reasons for Guardian's declaration of war are remain unclear, but analysis
of the final data streams transmitted from Babel revealed that Guardian went
rogue shortly after initiating a probe of Vasteel's holographic
memory-storage unit.

>>>RVR<<<

An acronym for Refined Vasteel Replica. At the start of the war, the World
Unified Government claimed RVRs were developed to battle Guardian and destroy
Babel; the truth is that RVRs had been secretly designed and developed well
before Babel's construction.

>>>RVR-01 Gauntlet<<<

The first RVR production model, the Gauntlet was designed as a duplicate of
Vasteel. (The cockpit area was missing from the original ship, and therefore
redesigned from the ground up.)

There are four variations of the Gauntlet: the original RVR-01 duplicate
(blue), the RVR-01E with enhanced mass productivity (green), the RVR-01HIS with
enhanced speed and mobility (red), and the RVR-01EX with major improvements in
all categories (black).

>>>RVR-02 Vambrace<<<

There was concern within the World Unified Government about developing a
"replica" of Vasteel before all of its technology was completely understood.
Thus, a second development program was launched in which Vasteel and human
designs would be combined into a small ultra-mobile starfighter.

Unfortunately, the Vambrace was so advanced that the same amount ofmanpower and
resources required to build a single ship could be used to build dozens of
RVR-01s. There were also serious problems in the flight-testing phase
which resulted in the loss of several prototypes. As a result, the Government
put the Vambrace program on indefinite suspension to concentrate its efforts on
the production of the RVR-01.

>>>Thunder Force<<<

A special combat unit of seven RVR-01 Gauntlet fighters, formed in 2151 to
destroy Babel and defeat Guardian. Many of the Thunder Force pilots are also
members of the RVR development program, including engineers and CT (Cybernetic
Terminal Module) members. The team leader is Captain Cenes Crawford.

>>>Craw<<<

An acronym for Constituted Ray Art Weapon-Unit, a Craw consists of a spherical
radioactive central core coated with a thick layer of approximately 80 trillion
artificially engineered microscopic particles, such as
Nanomacine. The constant nuclear reactions between the core and the particles
causes the Craw to glow a neon-bright shade of blue. Craws maintain a tight
orbit around a starfighter and boost the energy levels of its conventional
weapons. They can also be used as a protective shield of sorts to protect the
starfighter against enemy attacks.

>>>Over Weapon<<<

This specialized function temporarily combines the power of conventional
weapons and Craws to create an overwhelming energized attack. Over Weapon
causes proton explosions within the layer of Nanomacine around each Craw,
releasing a tremendous amount of energy which is then channeled into the
conventional weapons.

Over Weapon use is necessarily limited, because excessive proton activity
causes the Nanomacine layer to break down and the Craw's radioactive core to be
drained. The longest known use of the Over Weapon is 8.31 seconds, a record set
by a reckless pilot (later killed in combat) during an RVR-01 test flight.

>>>Ishtar Edge<<<

Similar to the Over Weapon, the Ishtar Edge alters the energy levels of
conventional weapons by utilizing the power of the Craw. The
twist is that the weapons themselves are coated with Nanomacine, both to
protect them from enemy weapons and to destroy objects with which they come
into contact. The Ishtar Edge can also activate proton explosions within the
layer of Nanomacine to boost the convention weapons' power and range.

Both the Over Weapon and Ishtar Edge are technically in the experimental stage,
since the control system of the Nanomacine and its proton explosions is
frequently unreliable, but the onset of the First Annihilation forced them into
use before the testing process could be completed.

>>>Brigandine<<<

The Brigandine unit attaches to the rear of an RVR starfighter and provides it
with a host of improvements, including:

***Enhanced engine power, making it possible for the RVR to soar through
planetary atmospheres and into space.

***Self-repairing nanotechnology to automatically patch up most minor damage to
the RVR.

***Extended use of the Over Weapon via constant stabilization of the
radioactive cores within the Craws.

***A powerful energy-absorbing shield.

The sheer size of Brigandine considerably reduces the mobility of the RVR and
provides a much larger target for enemy weaponry, but the
many benefits make a Brigandine-enhanced RVR much more powerful than the
original Vasteel. At the time this database was compiled, Brigandine was still
in the testing stages, but the unit should be upgraded to combat status within
the year.

>>>Reffi<<<

An acronym for REckoning of Fighting Fact Intelligence, Reffi is a program
built into each RVR starfighter to prevent Guardian from disabling its
navigational systems with nuclear pulses, computer viruses, or any other
forms of invasive infiltration. The artificial-intelligence algorithms built
into Reffi are essentially the same as the ones used in Guardian, allowing
Reffi to anticipate and counteract Guardian's methods of attack.

Reffi also enhances the control of the RVR. Each starfighter is encoded with
the brainwave patterns of its pilot, which Reffi analyzes and incorporates into
its programming. Reffi is thus able to anticipate the pilot's actions and
maneuvers in battle and tweak the starfighter's performance accordingly.

The version of Reffi used in the RVR-01 Gauntlet is trial type Ver 1.03.

=============================================================================
Acknowledgements
=============================================================================

Thanks to:

Technosoft for their awesome games... Where are you guys? =(
Working Designs for bringing the game to the states (although I wish it was the
Saturn version, but that's asking a bit much I guess...)

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