Shmup Club July 2022 - Raiden Fighters (Summer Of Raiden)

[MetalFRO]

After the success of the initial couple titles in the Raiden series, Seibu Kaihatsu knew they had a hit on their hands, and needed to capitalize on that. But with the shifting winds of the arcade marketplace, and changing tastes of shooting game fans, they couldn't just released a 3rd game and simply rest on their laurels. Rather, the development team needed to shake things up, both to keep audiences engaged, but also to make sure they weren't just making the same game over and over again. After 2 tremendous arcade hits with a proven formula, they took a chance at making something different, yet still felt familiar. They found a way to strike a balance with the very different game play of the next game, Raiden Fighters.

While it wasn't initially supposed to even be a part of the larger Raiden series, Seibu Kaihatsu wisely used the name recognition of the established series, and created an offshoot that developed into its own unique branch. A new threat has emerged on the world stage, and it's up to you and your squadron to take it down. Thankfully, you have access to a new line of aircraft known as the Gun Dogs. These state-of-the-art flying weapons can help put an end to the oppressive dictator's regime. Join the RF Generation Shmup Club as we continue the Summer Of Raiden in July with Raiden Fighters!

Available to play on Xbox 360 via the Raiden Fighters Aces collection, as well as on PC and mobile via The Raiden Legacy release.

Participants:
MetalFRO
Addicted
FauxMacho
Geriatric.Danmaku
Normatron
Corkman
Drake Tungsten (via Discord)
SPM (via Discord)
Schlarp (via Discord)

[FauxMacho]

Excellent! I only got a 360 a few years ago, but I'm going to pick this up. Thanks for the early announcement on this one, it definitely has plenty of time to arrive before the start of the month.

[MetalFRO]

Excellent! I only got a 360 a few years ago, but I'm going to pick this up. Thanks for the early announcement on this one, it definitely has plenty of time to arrive before the start of the month.

Very good! The 360 version is definitely the way to go, assuming one doesn't have access to an arcade board, outside of straight up emulation. I've heard nothing but good things about the 360 collection.

[Geriatric.Danmaku]

It's a small detail that nerds will enjoy:   This Arcade Board series runs on x86 32 Bit CPU.   Some boards are Intel 80386, 25mHZ, some are AMD 386 40 mHZ.

[Geriatric.Danmaku]

The last time I tried out the Steam PC port, it was NOT up to the task.   To much emulation lag and emulation errors.   If possible, Raiden Fighters Aces series should be played on a PC Emulator, with a Variable Refresh Rate monitor and emulator.   I use MAME 232, which can support GSync.   We are looking at ONLY one added frame of input lag due to using an Emulator.

Here's the ROM list we have to choose from in MAME.   For all three Raiden Fighters Aces, the German ROM is selected by MAME as the "Base" ROM Version.   Does anyone know why that is?   Might be a great story there.

Each ROM needs a setup step where the Virtual program is copied to a Virtual Hard Drive.   Once this completes, and we turn off the "Update" Jumper, we are ready to play.

[Normatron]

I will try and participate in this one If I find it. Packed it in a tote somewhere.

[Corkman]

 
  I'm totally in. I love me some Raiden Fighters and have been meaning to play it more to really dive into the scoring and mechanics. I picked up a 360 and a bunch of shmups for it all at once. It was too many at once but it was back when they were cheap. Raiden Fighters really stuck out to me, even though I got the 360 to play Cave games.

[Normatron]

We still set our scores here?

[MetalFRO]

We still set our scores here?

As I mentioned on Discord, here or Discord is fine, though I like to post both places, because they tend to get lost on Discord after a while.

Speaking of scores, I upped my PB by quite a bit! There are a lot of scoring tricks in the game, so I would recommend looking some stuff up. Here are a couple sites that might be useful:

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/944128-raiden-fighters-aces/49453661

http://web.archive.org/web/20020404201423/http://alluro95.tripod.com/raiden/

http://rf-emporium.ghegs.com/rf1/index.html

[Geriatric.Danmaku]

 

[FauxMacho]

I'm having a lot of fun with this. I played dozens of runs just selecting the Random Plane option. Destroyer and Beast Arrow emerged as the planes I was doing the best with.

There's so much risk/reward in this game. I only just now noticed if I give the fairies a few second they'll give up a bomb. But you have to balance your positioning, holding your fire, knowing what's coming next, and the speed of your ship. Is a bomb worth it if you miss the 100,000 pts from collecting the fairy?

Just had a great run, I got to the 4th stage and with a score of 5,442,450.

I'm hoping to get a 3CC by the end of the month.

Also I'm team Defend The House.

[MetalFRO]

Very nice, FauxMacho! I guess I'll take the opposite position and say I'm Team Let The Houses Fall, because the bonus you get for saving them, in my mind, isn't worth using up all those bombs. Now if you can exploit every fairy for bombs, and know enough of their locations to be able to do that, it's probably worth it, and of course if you're going for a fully optimized score run you'll have to, but in normal play, I think it's hard to justify unless you can do it consistently and always replenish your bomb stock in the next stage.

Also, if you want to follow the strategy guide that I posted earlier from Shmups forum player Ghegs, you'll want to choose the 1st fixed stage order in the 360 port of 1-2-3-4-5. That's how you get the forest stage first, and then will have to follow that guide to medal up as quickly as possible. Speaking of medaling, one thing that's important to know is that you will medal down if you lose one of your Slave ships, which is very inconvenient, so you have to be careful in making sure they're not tanking hits for you. I think grabbing S icons will replenish their health, at least it seems that way, but then you have to deal with formations that don't give you as much control, so then you're grabbing every S until you can get back to a formation that works better for you. Again, lots of risk/reward built into the game. I think that's why a lot of folks tend to prefer the Raiden Fighters series to the original games, because there's so much going on under the hood.

[MetalFRO]

NEW PB! I managed to finally get some handle on the medal upgrade mechanics, and got a run tonight that I was able to get to 100K medals relatively early, which made the 3rd area MUCH more lucrative, and I demolished my previous PB of 10 million with over 16 million now! The Aegis Slave is my go-to at this point, as it has a good speed that isn't too crazy fast, and by not having to worry about whether I'm picking up L or M icons, the only thing I have to concentrate on is the medal sequence, and only picking up the S icons when I want to for medal leveling purposes.

[FauxMacho]

Big score jump for me. 16,870,580. I finally learned the medaling mechanic from watching Guru streams.

I actually went Desert stage first. I can get to 90 by the time the first S icon appears. Get a Miclus and sit on it to get up to 900 immediately, then get the second S, get the fairies, and finish the stage at about the 3000 pt medal level. Get to 9000 pt by the end of the Quick Shot segment, release another Miclus and have the medals all onscreen to trigger the climb to 100k medals.

I didn't get the farthest I've been on my first credit, but I think I made it to the final boss on my last life of credit 3. I'd really like to get a 3CC and see the end.

In case I don't have better news to post, final thoughts and random thoughts.
- Stage 6 is a snoozer.
- I love that no matter how bad your score is, they'll say you got 8th place on the high scores but then only track the top 7. Great little manipulative encouragement.
- I'm still team Defend the House, but if I try to get that fairy I WILL DIE making it all worthless. It's kind of a check that I'm playing well in a run though.
- Great game, could keep playing for another month.

[MetalFRO]

Awesome work, FauxMacho! And here I thought I was the one to beat for the month, but between you and SPM, you guys stepped up your scoring game. I'm pretty happy with the results this month, despite a smaller crowd than OG Raiden.