Raiga: Strato Fighter

Gameplay Overview
Long before Deathsmiles existed, Raiga: Strato Fighter (or just Strato Fighter) existed as an early example of a horizontal shmup where you could freely fire left or right as you pleased. Instead of having two different buttons to fire depending on the direction you wanted to shoot however, Raiga simply features a shot button and a separate button to change directions.

It's pretty easy to 1CC the first loop at least. You're exceptionally powerful when your shot power is maxed out, allowing you to easily sweep enemies and bosses away, and there's a very large number of extends/1UPs available. You do however get depowered heavily if you die (what some folks call "Gradius syndrome") so it's the kind of game where your first clear will likely also be a deathless clear.

Its scoring system basically just rewards killing as many enemies as possible. The bosses don't appear to be terribly milkable in terms of point value, with the exception being the final boss which rewards a tremendous amount of points if you milk it in both loops and then kill it prior to it dying due to timeout. There do not appear to be any checkpoints in any version, and dying results in an immediate respawn (albeit severely depowered).

It's also pretty fun to play cooperatively. Just note that if you start the game with two players, the enemy count is nearly doubled and there's also extra powerup items that appear.

Controls

 * Button 1: Shoot (holding it shoots slowly, tap it rapidly to shoot much faster)

The game has a way too slow built-in autofire rate, so don't bother holding it. You're meant to be tapping the button constantly to keep a good number of shots onscreen. Autofire improves it immensely as there's little to no reason to ever stop firing. About 10 hz autofire on Button 1 as a good speed to use which works well as a balance between screen coverage and shot power, and also is effective when you're at low power as well as high power.


 * Button 2: Change Direction (tap it to switch which direction you're facing)

Ships
1P is red, 2P is blue. You can freely play the game alone on 1P or 2P side. Both appear to have the same movement speed and damage, with the only differences being which one appears in the cutscenes between stages and at the end of the game.

Powerups
Powerups are dropped at fixed points in the game, often by item carriers that have two boxes, or by shooting individual boxes found in the environment.

There's also a few item carriers that appear which drop 4 random powerups when killed. These can include extends. There's two in Loop 1, Stage 5, two in Loop 2, Stage 5, and one in Loop 2, Stage 6, that look like these:

https://i.imgur.com/lJs37mE.jpg

There's 3 different types of weapon powerups (Primary, Secondary, Auto Guard) as well as miscellaneous items. Please click here for an English version of the game's flyer for a quick overview, further details are below:

Primary Weapons

Note that dying will strip you of all powerups, but will keep your current Primary Weapon type and simply depower it to the lowest power level. This can be an issue for Spread Gun and Vertical which are rather weak at low shot power. Every time you collect one of these, your shot power increases, and this increase applies even if you switch weapons (like going Ion -> S.Gun -> Ion in Stage 1), which makes this game a bit friendlier than games like Mahou Daisakusen which do not power you up unless you collect the same weapon icon repeatedly. It appears to take 3 powerups to reach max power, at which point all three weapon types change to a distinct shade of purple.

Ion Launcher (ION.L): The weapon you start the game with. It's the strongest of your weapons when at low shot power, and at maximum shot power it can absolutely melt bosses in seconds with ease. The thin shot isn't too big of an issue if you also have two Beam Rifles with you, but at some points in the game you may wish to switch weapons to have a bit more spread.

Spread Gun (S.GUN): Fairly weak at low show power, but gets pretty powerful when at max power, at least for stages. It has a good deal of coverage, but because most bosses in this game have pretty small weak points, damage output drops drastically during boss fights, where Ion Launcher outclasses it. Perhaps better for scoring during stages because it's easier to score kills without having to chase down enemies?

Vertical (VERTICAL): Fires 3 energy waves, one in front of your ship, and 2 fired vertically above and below slightly in front of you. They're pretty useful for sections where a lot of enemies appear above and below you, or if you don't have the auto aiming of Beam Rifle for some reason, but their damage to sturdier targets is underwhelming. You generally want to switch to something else before you reach the bosses of each stage, and fortunately the game is kind enough to give out appropriate powerups to do so.

At low shot power damage is minimal, so dying with this equipped will put you at risk of further deaths from being unable to kill things in a timely fashion!

Secondary Weapons

Missiles: Fires a pair of homing missiles. They're slow and you're limited to one volley onscreen at a time, but they're pretty decent damage whenever they connect. The best of the two secondary weapons, generally speaking.

Bombs: Drops a bomb at a short arc in front of you, similar to the Spread Bomb found in some Gradius games, but with a much smaller blast radius. It deals a good deal of damage and is useful in some specific sections such as early in Stage 2 (where they conveniently first appear), but generally speaking missiles are better suited to most encounters.

Auto Guards:

Note that despite what the game flyer calls them, they do not block shots. They're little helper mechs that fly above and below your ship, that come equipped with one of three guns. With the exception of the Blaster variety, they will turn to face the same direction you do. They also have lightsabers and will attack enemies and enemy homing missiles with them when in range (enemy missiles can also be shot down, they're rather slow). Collecting one adds one above your ship, and the next one you collect adds it below. Any time you grab one of these icons, the guns both Auto Guards use is changed to that gun type.

Beam Rifle (BEEM.R): The rarest, and most useful of the three types of Auto Guard. The only guaranteed ones are in Stage 1 and in Stage 4. They fire auto-aimed blue bullets at enemies, and are able to aim in a more or less 180 degree angle from the direction you're facing. Damage is pretty decent, and they can handle plenty of enemies on their own. Use them along with Ion Launcher to maximize your boss killing potential.

They don't seem to be very aggressive about using the lightsaber against enemies touching them, but their shots do plenty of damage at close range, so this isn't a practical issue.

Solid Shooter (SOLID.S): This type of Auto Guard stays above and below your ship at a fixed distance, firing rockets at a decent rate of fire in whatever direction you're facing. If you don't have access to a Beam Rifle for some reason this is probably your next best pick. It's not bad by any means, but Beam Rifle's auto aiming allows for dealing with enemies from multiple directions as well as concentrating fire on bosses that have relatively small weak points, so you'll usually want to stick with Beam Rifle when possible. Solid Shooter may be better for sweeping the screen though as its projectiles are faster, and Beam Rifle can occasionally miss fast targets. Its shots don't appear to be stronger, if at all, per hit compared to other Auto Guards.

Blaster (BLASTER): The only one of the three Auto Guards that doesn't aim in the same direction as you. These trail along after you, similar to Gradius Options/Multiples. They do not turn to fire when you change directions, but keep firing in the direction they were firing. To change their firing direction, you have to first change direction, then move around so you drag the Auto Guards past their current position. When pulled far enough, they will switch firing direction to the direction you're currently facing. This quirk makes them generally extremely awkward to use compared to the other types of Auto Guard.

They're the only Auto Guard in the game that lets you fire in both directions at once which has some theoretical niche uses, but because of how difficult they are to control, how thin their shots are, and how quickly and effectively you can switch directions normally, Beam Rifle or Solid Shooter should always be preferred over Blaster. Blaster does have an advantage over Solid Shooter in that it's thin enough to line up shots on very small boss weakpoints, but it's generally much harder to use it effectively and thus Beam Rifle or Solid Shooter should be preferred over it.

Other Powerups

Speed Up (SPEED.UP): Increases your movement speed. You're too slow to dodge anything effectively at the default speed, so these are rather crucial. Collecting 2 or 3 of these is recommended and will allow you to deal with whatever the game throws at you. If you collect too many of them and make yourself uncomfortably fast, there's no way to reduce your speed level aside from dying.

Because dying drops you back to your extremely slow default speed, one death tends to lead to multiple chaindeaths until an item carrier appears.

Extend (EXTEND): Gives you an extend / 1UP / extra life, etc. There's a couple to be had from fixed item boxes in stage 5, and a few more from the random item carriers in stage 5 as well as potentially the ones in loop 2, stage 6. The game generally is quite generous with extends and it's entirely possible to clear both loops with 12 or more lives in stock (which is handy for your end-of-game score).

Rank
The game does not appear to have an aggressive rank system, if it even has one at all.

Loops
The game features 6 stages per loop, with 2 loops to play through. The game automatically loops upon completion of loop 1, stage 6, and starts what it refers to as "Professional Mode". You can tell you're in loop 2 by the word PRO written in red at the top of the screen.

Interestingly, while stage 6 in loop 1 starts you in front of the final boss, loop 2 reveals an entirely new stage in loop 6, where you go through a boss rush of most of the bosses in the game before finally encountering the final boss.

Scoring
Score comes from three elements. You get points per enemy killed, you get points per extra life remaining at the end of the game, and you can squeeze additional points out by milking bosses. The final boss in particular is milkable in both loops for a notable amount of points (you'll also need to kill it before it times out, about 2 minutes on the timer or so, or lose out on those points).

Because of randomness in extra life drops from the large item carriers, scoring probably isn't the most fun thing to do in this game. It's still a fun game to play for the 2 loop clear.

Version Differences
JP version's called Raiga: Strato Fighter, the English/US release was renamed to simply Strato Fighter. More details are needed as to whether or not there are any meaningful gameplay differences between them. It was released in arcades, and later received a port on the original Xbox as part of the "Tecmo Classic Arcade" compilation. It's not yet known how accurate this port is.

Video References
''BKR's note: Somehow I apparently have the highest scoring recording known? I have no idea where the world record gets those additional points. There may be a scoring glitch, but this game lacks checkpoints, so there'd be no checkpoint milking available. Possibly the world records start in 2 player mode which increases the number of enemies spawned, and thus points available? I'm told this isn't the case, but given the lack of footage available there's no way to know for sure. At any rate, here's a no-miss run of both loops of the game I managed to get when I was aggressively trying to score attack it. I'm afraid I haven't figured out how to squeeze any more points out yet since then, and there doesn't appear to be any video footage available from the world record holders, alas.

And for fun, a dumb video showing off the countless stupid deaths I had in the months I was working on this.

References & Contributors
BKR: This game is neat! I apologize in advance for any inaccuracies or formatting issues. >w>;