RF Generation Message Board

Welcome to the Summer Of Raiden! We're spending the summer concentrating on the classic Raiden series of games, and we're kicking things off with the very first game in the series. Developed and published by Seibu Kaihatsu in Japan in 1990, and brought to the West courtesy of Fabtek, Raiden took some established elements within the shooting game genre and further solidified them into a simple, but potent mix. Their no-frills approach proved to be popular in arcades, and over the next couple of years, inspired a slew of imitators who took the basic Raiden formula and put their own spin on it. What is it about this game that caused it to become such a big hit?

Taking many cues from legendary shooting game developer Toaplan, Seibu Kaihatsu took the basic elements codified in Twin Cobra and changed a couple things around to simplify the approach in a couple ways, but expand upon those ideas in other ways. An extra element added to coop play helped set the game apart from its contemporaries. In the year leading up to the release of Street Fighter II, it was the right environment for a game like Raiden to find its audience and succeed. The game not only spawned multiple sequels, but also received many home conversions.

The year is 2090. Alien lifeforms known as the Crystals have invaded Earth. The Crystals took control over most of Earth's military hardware to use in the invasion. In response, the world organization known as Vanquish Crystal Defense develops the Fighting Thunder attack craft, a cutting-edge weapon based on Crystal technology. To survive against the invaders and fight back, VCD deploys Fighting Thunder as the only hope for humanity. Blast off with the RF Generation Shmup Club in June 2022 as we play the original Raiden!

Participants:
MetalFRO
Addicted
Silius
Mightysquirrel (via Discord)
orccommander (via Discord)
SPM (via Discord)
Dubs (via Discord)
scowsh (via Discord)
Corkman
Geriatric.Danmaku
EZ Racer
FauxMacho

In preparation for the Summer Of Raiden, here's some study material for the original Raiden to help us all learn and practice:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jh28rbWNols

Just got the announcement video uploaded!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSNx6YX15kI

Interesting thread on the Shmups forum with some reviews of various Raiden ports:

https://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=54216 (https://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=54216)

  You know I'm in this month. I'll probably go between the PS1 version and the Genesis versions.

I'll have to compare them but the PS1 version seems pretty close to the arcade version. I forgot how much this game allows you to scroll left or right. I've been playing Twin Cobra and Fire Shark recently and those games don't let you scroll as far laterally. It's cool because it makes the game feel bigger and allows you more room to not get cornered. But sometimes you scroll left or right into the firing range of an unseen tank. 

The Genesis version seems to be generally easier than the PS1 version on Normal difficulty (Don't forget to go to the options menu for Normal difficulty. It defaults to Easy). There doesn't seem to be as many enemies and maybe the bullets are slower. It doesn't allow you to scroll left or right as much so it's a little of a smaller playing field. The scoring will not be as high in the Genesis version. I've gotten to about the same spot on Stage 3 on both versions with just about the same number of bonuses. I got 320k on the PS1 version and 258k on the Genesis version.

That's all for now. Happy blasting everyone!

Hello Players!   I'm IN!!!  Real competition requires somebody to finish last!   Played a few hours so far on MAME.  Looking to watch for strats, and get much better.    ;D

Usually in a MAME ROMset collection, the top listed version is the most "official".   BUT...   If anyone has recon that one of the other versions is the most "official" or accepted for competition, I could switch to it.

You're doing fine Geriatric Danmaku. You got the top 9 spots on the Hall of Aces!

I'd be curious to know if set 1, 2, or 3 is what is the "Japan version" in the Arcade Archives port, and then which of the 3 "US set" entries would be the "International version" in the ACA port. I might have to throw that out there on the podcast Twitter account, and see if anyone has identified that.

I'm in on this. So far my score is 332,970, getting to stage 1-3, on the Japanese Arcade Archives release on PS5. I've been doing single runs, but as I've grown a bit tired of the first stage, I should start credit feeding to get more time in on the later stages.

My favorite part so far is upon death, the score continues to climb a bit. Really helps lessen the defeat, which usually hurts because deaths come fast in this game.

I'm guessing the score climbing upon death is due to your ship exploding into a bunch of shrapnel and damaging enemies. Everything in the game gives you tick points, so even if you only take out 1 or 2 popcorn enemies, if your shrapnel is coming into contact with stuff that takes more punishment, you're still scoring on them, even in the end. It is kinda neat, yeah.

I had a strange glitch when playing Raiden Trad on the Genesis. Halfway through the game, all the enemies disappeared. The bosses too. You can see in the attached picture that the first boss didn't appear and the panel that it comes from wasn't there either. Just a black square. I could move and bomb normally the whole time.

The game scrolled up a little from where the bosses are and then stopped. I could still move and shoot but couldn't get stage 2 to start. Very strange.

Started my summer of Raiden a bit late, but i played some runs last saturday. Can't believe i made it to stage 2 !!! xD

(https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/52165350619_6f0e89f801_z.jpg)

I also played a few runs of Raiden Trad for MD and SNES today. It seems a little weird but as Trad MD seems to try staying closer to the arcade version, Trad SNES has some changes like other bullet patterns and an instant respawn (which is very welcome). But still i guess the MD version is the better pick.

That's an interesting glitch! Where you playing on real hardware with the cartridge, or some other means? I'd be curious to know if it's something that could be replicated or not.


Raiden Trad on SNES is just...weird. It's as if Micronics barely tried to make it a real Raiden game, and just sort of did their own thing, with the general Raiden framework, but only loosely based on the source material. I'm not quite sure what to make of it.

Yes, real hardware Genesis Model 1 with the cartridge. With cartridges, sometimes the contacts can act funny I understand. Maybe that was it?

 
  I'm not sure if I'll have time to play any more Raiden this month but here are my scores for the PS1 and Genesis versions (Genesis on the CRT in the pictures below). I used the red ship for both and played on Normal difficulty on both.

  I like both of these versions. PS1 seems to be really close to the arcade version. I tried the Arcade Achives version to compare and the only thing I noticed are the music and sound effects are a little different. The PS1 version does not have checkpoints like the Genesis version which is nice since you can get some serious Gradius syndrome on the Genny version. But, the PS1 version is definitely more difficult than the Genesis version with more enemies and faster bullets.

 I got to past midway of stage 3 in both versions. I think I really could go a lot farther in the Genesis version but one little mistake or an enemy sniping you really kills the run. I could see myself having that magical run. With PS1 version, I felt like I slowly lost resources as I progressed.

 I felt like this game in general can be annoying since there seems to be a little randomness to it. I don't know how to describe it other than that. Sometimes you lose a life on stage 1 when you know it like the back of your hand.

 I still really enjoy this game. I enjoyed when it was at my local pizza place back in the day. I would put in a quarter the handful of times I was there and before it got replaced by a Neo Geo cabinet with World Heroes and Samurai Showdown. Good to know I can still have fun with it and I'm sure I will in the future. The gameplay, the music, the explosions, the cows....keep me coming back.

That could very well be, either the cart wasn't well seated, or you need to clean the pins or something.

As we wind down the month, does anyone have any final thoughts about Raiden to share?

Raiden is 2 Old Skewl.   Bombs take a effect about  a half second after they are fired.   Sniper tanks take aim straight at you.   Baddies shoot you in the backside from behind.   All classic Shmup tropes.   But I've reached my limit for a while.   It's a been a few years since I've picked up Raiden Fighters.   Will it be as murderous?   Probably more!

Sorry, I don't have or make the time to do more in-depth takes on these, but MetalFRO really wanted my take as I have no memory of this game from back in the day. My first impression is that the landscape with the houses reminds me a little of Tiger-Heli, a game I do remember from back in the day. I noticed the floating back and forth power-ups that cycle through the options, which reminds me of Battle Squadron, as a game that did that too (I think Battle Squadron came late, though).  I am aware of it being in other games but can't remember which ones off the top of my head. The gameplay is solid and the graphics are nice and pretty to look at even today. I don't feel like any aspects are too derivative, nor do I know specifically what aspects were originally in this game and used in other places.  It's quite simple and straightforward compared to many later games with complex mechanics and scoring, but that's not a bad thing. Like most shooters, this game is difficult. The bombed out overpasses became a joke on stream because they vaguely resembled Chicago infrastructure, fortunately not in the bombed aspect. The PS1 version of the game plays great on the Mister and is probably the best version with the possible exception of the Arcade Archives version or a real arcade, neither of which I played this month. Shout out to MetalFRO for meeting me at Galloping Ghost during the Summer of Raiden even though we played Darius I and II together there.

Final Score: 10/10 cows.
SNES version: 0/10 no cows.

I definitely warmed up to this game over the month.

The first level was getting quite dull when I wasn't improving much in Stage 2.

I found the bomb delay was just short enough to be tolerable. If I knew a certain bullet pattern was coming I could still use it for self-defense. Any longer and it would have been useless for anything except faster damage strategies against the stronger enemies and bosses.

I started as the red jet on the Japanese version and eventually moved over to blue jet on the international version. I like the international version more, which has instant spawns instead of restarting at checkpoints. It keeps the momentum up and runs feel more enjoyable to me. But! The fairy assist is more generous in the Japanese version.

My best score was 603,370 (International 2UP - as they say), which I think ended in stage 4. Happy to get above 500k which was the last PSN trophy I needed to get.

Excited to play more Raiden games and get a feel for the series as a whole.

As a sidenote, Limited Run recently announced a combo release of Raiden IV and V on the Switch, which is great because the Raiden V Switch release got pricey in the resale market. Though it's also on sale digitally for less than $10 right now.

Here's my final score for the MD-Version (jp/easy):

(https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/52192673942_c6551770e0_z.jpg)

Despite of checkpoint system, floating power ups, sniper tanks straight from Toaplan-Hell and a ship that always feels a tiny bit too slow for me, i can see why the original Raiden and the series as a whole is so popular.

It's not necessarily one of my favourite shmups but i love the soundtrack which is in my opinion still one of the best classic shmup soundtracks.