Why does Operation Thunderbolt have purple ninjas?

cspacefan

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I love Operation: Wolf and have many fond memories of it but I never played or saw its sequel Operation: Thunderbolt. Having now looked at the screenshots one question hits me immediately. Why are the enemies purple ninjas? They look ludicrous.

I know the enemy forces were made to be fictional so as not to piss anyone off (whoever our enemies were back in '88 ... Libya??) but did they have to look like fancy-pants ninjas from Joseph's Technicolor Dreamcoat Brigade?

Operation: Wolf's soldiers looked much more normal with the green and brown uniforms, what reason did they give for the sequel going so ... "fabulous"? I can't find any info other than the Wikipedia entry discussing the raid at Entebbe.
 
I love Operation: Wolf and have many fond memories of it but I never played or saw its sequel Operation: Thunderbolt. Having now looked at the screenshots one question hits me immediately. Why are the enemies purple ninjas? They look ludicrous.

I know the enemy forces were made to be fictional so as not to piss anyone off (whoever our enemies were back in '88 ... Libya??) but did they have to look like fancy-pants ninjas from Joseph's Technicolor Dreamcoat Brigade?

Operation: Wolf's soldiers looked much more normal with the green and brown uniforms, what reason did they give for the sequel going so ... "fabulous"? I can't find any info other than the Wikipedia entry discussing the raid at Entebbe.

They do look rather festive, but I don't think the arcade world was too concerned about offending our political rivals too much in the 80s (Rush N' Attack, anyone?). The head scarves, desert setting, and theme of a hijacked airliner are all pretty much aimed directly at our relationship with Libya in the 80s.

Besides, I think Ghadafi himself would look right at home with an army of purple ninjas.

Joko_Londo-a-3.85754280724E+28.jpg
 
Just thought I'd resurrect this post because of something I recently discovered that might have something to do with the purple ninjas (besides that sweet robe Ghadafi is wearing). It turns out that at least for the home version, purple ninjas and yellow uniform soldiers are a necessity to get light gun console games to work properly.

I am the proud owner of a very minty Nintendo Super Scope and I tried it out last night for the first time.

Mostly an awesome light gun but there appears to be one quirk to this device that I never saw on any reviews online so I thought I better warn anyone else thinking of getting one.

It makes the color scheme in a lot of games putrid.

When I tried Tin Star for the first time using my new Scope, I thought something was defective because the normally nice graphics for the game went super bright and purple. What the heck? If I disconnect the Scope it goes back to normal. Then I tried T2: Arcade. Holy hell! The normally black sky has turned mauve! The cement wasteland is now baby blue! What is going on here?

Strangely though Super Scope 6 (the pack in game) looks fine.

So I looked online and lo and behold I discovered this little nugget on the Wikipedia entry:
The Super Scope ignores red light, as do many guns of this type, because red phosphors have a much slower rate of decay than green or blue phosphors

Great, so obviously T2 and Tin Star need to change any red into purple and mauve? Yuck!

I don't suppose anyone knows if this color swap can be disabled or anything, do they? I can live with the weird colors I guess but I'd sure prefer to go back to arcade-accurate colors for T2, even if it means a little less accuracy with the gun.

My only concern now is do X-Zone and Operation: Thunderbolt also swap pallete when using the Super Scope? Anyone got those games that can verify this for me?
 
A better question is why they used a mounted light gun instead of a mounted analog joystick?
 
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