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Raiden is a vertical scrolling shoot 'em up released in September 1990 by Seibu Kaihatsu for Arcades. It is the first installment in the Raiden series and Seibu Kaihatsu's first major hit.

Story[]

AD 2090: The Earth was suddenly invaded by lifeforms from outer space. In the midst of a fierce battle, the World Allied Forces gathered the world's best engineers to create the Raiden, an ultra-high altitude fighter-bomber based on a destroyed enemy fighter, but it was so powerful that only two pilots in the world could pilot it. And so, the Raidens took off to fight back against the extraterrestrial menace.[1]

Japanese[]

AD 2090地球は、突如として現れた外字宙生命体の侵略を受けた。激戦の続く中、世界連合軍は破壊された敵の戦闘機を基に、世界中の優秀な技術者を集めて超高空戦闘爆撃機雷電を作り出したが、あまりにも高性能、高機動であったために、実戦に耐えられるパイロットは、僅か二名しか残らなかった。

AD 2090 chikyū wa, totsujotoshite arawareta gaiji chū seimei-tai no shinryaku o uketa. Gekisen no tsudzuku Chū, sekai rengō-gun wa hakai sa reta teki no sentōki o ki ni, sekaijū no yūshūna gijutsu-sha o atsumete chō kō sora sentōbakugeki-ki raiden o tsukuridashitaga, amarini mo kōseinō,-kō kidōdeatta tame ni, jissen ni tae rareru pairotto wa, wazuka ni-mei shika nokoranakatta.

Gameplay[]

Raiden is a typical vertically-scrolling shooter. Players control a spacecraft equipped with a main, forward-firing gun, missile sub-weapons, and limited use of smart bombs. The craft can be equipped with different weapons by picking its corresponding item, with the weapon being strengthened by picking the same item multiple times. Weapon icons are dropped by specific enemies, floating around the center of the screen and cycling their color, each color corresponding to a specific weapon.

Features[]

Raiden ArcadeGameplay

Gameplay screenshot

Main weapons[]

  • Wide Vulcan: The main spread weapon. The more upgraded it is, the wider its spread. Has 8 levels of power.
  • Lightning Laser: Fires straight laser beams that do twice the damage of the Wide Vulcan. Has 8 levels of power.

Missiles[]

  • Nuclear missiles: Fires missiles that travel forward while moving slightly horizontally along the way. Deals the most damage between the two missile weapons, but has the lowest rate of fire.
  • Homing missiles: Fires missiles that home in on nearby enemies. Deals the least damage of the two missiles, but has the highest rate of fire.

Special weapons[]

  • Thermonuclear bomb: A delayed detonation bomb. It generates a large explosion that instantly destroys smaller enemies, damages larger enemies, and clears all enemy bullets. This attack is used to save the player from difficult bullet patterns.
  • "Starburst attack": When one player craft shoots the other, star-like projectiles are generated, traveling in random directions in a wide cone in front of the craft that is shot. These projectiles deal heavy damage to all enemies. Available in 2-player mode only.
  • "Death shrapnel": When a player dies, the their fighter's shrapnel become projectiles that harm all enemies on-screen, deals 3x damage to bosses if near them.

Items[]

  • Red item: Powers up the Wide Vulcan, or switches to it.
  • Blue item: Powers up the Lightning Laser, or switches to it.
  • "M" icon: Powers up the Nuclear Missiles, or switches to it.
  • "H" icon: Powers up the Homing Missiles, or switches to it.
  • 1-UP: Awards an extra life.
  • "P" icon: Sets all player weapons (including missiles if equipped) to maximum power.
  • "B" icon: Increases bomb stock by one to a maximum of 7.
  • Medal: Awards 300 points when collected.
  • Miclus: Seibu Kaihatsu's dragon mascot. Worth 3,000 points.
  • Fairy: Worth 10,000 points when collected. Also drops extra powerups when the player dies after collecting it.

Stages[]

There are 8 stages in the game (note: the Mega Drive port features an additional bonus stage, whereas the PC-Engine Super Raiden port adds two more stages for a total of 10). When continuing after the player's defeat, they resume from a predefined checkpoint.

At the end of each stage, the player gains a stage bonus equals the number of medals gained in a stage with current life, multiplied by the number of bombs the player possesses, multiplied by 1000. If the medal or bomb stock is 0, the count is equal to 1 for each affected field for scoring purposes.

After defeating the Stage 8 boss, the mission is completed, and the player receives 1 million bonus points. Afterward, it will start back to Stage 1. This time around, enemies shoot faster and at a more rapid rate. After completing the second 8 stages the player is awarded 2 million bonus points, after completing the third 8 stages, the player is awarded 3 million bonus points, and so on. After the tenth 8 stages, the player is awarded 10 million bonus points. However, for the eleventh 8 stages and later, the amount of bonus points is variable (usually between 7-9 million).

The maximum score is 99,999,999. After reaching this score, the player can continue playing, but the score stays at 99,999,999. After reaching 99,999,999 points, free play is enabled - the credit counter stays at 9 (the maximum number of credits) for all subsequent games until the arcade game is rebooted. This may be a software bug rather than an intentional feature as the sample gameplay sequences prior to starting a game are also disabled after reaching 99,999,999 until the arcade game is rebooted.

Stage Name Boss BGM
1 Countryside Desert Spider Gallantry
2 City Flying Fox Lightning War
3 Ocean Phalanx MK-III Rough and Tumble
4 Ruins Gijido Gallantry
5 Wasteland Land Crown Fighting Thunder
6 Floating Continent Guardian Rough and Tumble
7 Space Station Antonov Ma-27 Lightning War
8 Enemy Final Base Doreineji Core Fighting Thunder
EX1* Space Fortress Great Spider Original BGM 01
EX2* Final Fortress Shadow Janet Original BGM 03
SP** Special Stage Nova Gallantry

* Stages exclusive to the PC-Engine CD Super Raiden port.
** Stage exclusive to the Mega Drive Raiden Trad port.

Ports[]

Raiden was ported to many home consoles and home computers in the early 1990s. Ports made in the 21st century were released on mobile platforms and download services, in addition to ports to game consoles of the era. Some ports received different names depending on the console they were ported to.

Platform Port name
FM Towns Marty Raiden Densetsu (雷電伝説)
NEC PC Engine

NEC TurboGrafx-16 (USA)

Raiden
NEC PC Engine CD-ROM Super Raiden
Sega Mega Drive

Sega Genesis (NA)

Raiden Densetsu/Raiden Trad
Super Famicom (JP)

Super Nintendo Entertainment System

Raiden Densetsu/Raiden Trad
Atari Jaguar Raiden
IBM-PC (MS-DOS) Raiden
PlayStation Network Store (Japan only)

PlayStation 3 PlayStation Portable

Raiden
Mobile (Android and iOS) Raiden

The oniginal Raiden and Raiden II were included in a compilation for the PlayStation, The Raiden Project (Raiden Project in Japan). It was developed by Seibu Kaihasu and published by them on the console in Japan. Sony published The Raiden Project outside of Japan.

The MS-DOS port was coded by Nigel 'Freddy' Conroy, Steve Cullen and Martin Randall, and was spearheaded by Martin Hooley.

The original Raiden (not The Raiden Project) is available as a download from the Japanese PlayStation Network store. The downloadable version can be played on the PlayStation 3 console or PlayStation Portable.

The original Raiden is included as part of Hamster's Arcade Archives series on the Nintendo Switch[2] and PlayStation 4.

Gallery[]

Videos[]

Trivia[]

  • The title in Japanese translates to "Thunder And Lightning". Rai means thunder, and den means lightning. The closest English approximation of the pronunciation is /RHY-den/, not /RAY-den/.
  • The name of the Western ports on the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis and Super Nintendo, Raiden Trad, uses part of the word "Tradition", which is one of the English translations of densetsu (伝説), part of Raiden Densetsu (雷電伝説), the Japanese name of these ports (along with being the FM Towns port's name).
  • Out of the known Western localizations of Raiden, the Sega Genesis (Mega Drive) Raiden TradUS English-language manual has the most accurate English translation of the Japanese story[1]:

"A.D. 2090...Suddenly the world is attacked by aliens from outer space. The world has united forces which fight back fiercely. Top world scientists have analyzed wreckage of enemy planes shot down and created a supersonic fighter bomb (sic) named "Raiden". However, since these aircrafts (sic) are so technically sophisticated, there is only one pilot in the world (The 16-bit Sega Raiden Trad is a one-player only game) able to handle it. The Raiden is just about to take off, and the fate of the entire world is depending on this Raiden!"

External Links[]

References[]

  1. 1.0 1.1 https://archive.org/details/raidentheaceshigh/page/n2/mode/1up (in Japanese): AD 2090地球は、突如として現れた外字宙生命体の侵略を受けた。激戦の続く中、世界連合軍は破壊された敵の戦闘機を基に、世界中の優秀な技術者を集めて超高空戦闘爆撃機"雷電"を作り出したが、あまりにも高性能、高機動であったために、実戦に耐えられるパイロットは、僅か二名しか残らなかった。(AD 2090: The Earth was invaded by a sudden appearance of an extraterrestrial race. During the fierce battle, the World Allied Forces gathered top engineers from all over the world to create the ultra-high altitude fighter-bomber "Raiden" based on a destroyed enemy fighter, but it was too high performance and high mobility. As a result, only two pilots were left to withstand the actual battle.)
  2. https://nintendohill.com/2021/06/the-classic-raiden-is-coming-to-nintendo-switch-on-1-july-as-part-of-arcade-archives/
Raiden video games
Raiden series RaidenRaiden II (DX) ● Raiden IIIRaiden IV (Overkill) ● Raiden V (Story)
Raiden Fighters series Raiden FightersRaiden Fighters 2: Operation Hell DiveRaiden Fighters Jet (text transcript)
Compilations The Raiden ProjectRaiden Fighters AcesRaiden Legacy
Other Seibu Kaihatsu/MOSS shmups StingerScionAir RaidViper Phase 1Caladrius (Blaze)
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