Raiden DX

Raiden DX

Title screen

Developer:	Seibu Kaihatsu
Music:	Go Satou Akira Satou
Program:	Tetsuya Kawaguchi
Release date:	July 1994
Previous game:	Raiden II
Next game:	Viper Phase-1

Raiden DX (雷電DX) is an arcade game developed and published by Seibu Kaihatsu in 1994. It is an updated version of Raiden II, featuring the same 8 stages but with updated mechanics, enemy placement, bullet patterns and item locations. Additionally, three game modes and two new stages were also introduced.

Raiden DX has been ported to Playstation by Hamster.

For replay videos, visit the Video Index.

Gameplay Overview

Raiden DX uses 2 buttons. There are 3 different difficulty modes: Training, Novice, and Expert. Training has 1 stage, & allows the player to play Novice & the last 3 Expert stages upon meeting certain requirements. Novice has 5 stages. Expert has 8 stages with infinite loops along with a secret 9th stage if the player has not used a bomb or lost a life.

Controls

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• A button (Press): Fires the player's weapons.
• B button (Press): Activates the player's bomb.

Unlockable Secrets

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Starting bomb - On the course select screen, the lightning bolt in the DX logo alternates between red and yellow. When you select a course, the color of the bolt will determine which bomb type you'll carry at the start of the game and after each death.

- Training mode Loops - Upon completion of the Training mode/stage, the game will calculate your bonus & determine if you "advance" to the next mission through the following requirements:
- No miss & no-bomb
- >99.0% enemy destruction rate
- Destroying all 6 gold radars

This will allow you to access the Novice course on a higher difficulty. If you meet the above requirements after the end of stage bonus is calculated in stage 5, the game will "advance" you to Expert course stage 6 at a higher difficulty. The game will then follow the same rules as Expert course.

Expert course Stage 9 - If the player does not lose a life or does not bomb, the game will allow them to access a hidden 9th stage. Completing this stage awards the player with a end of loop bonus before sending them back to stage 1 on a higher difficulty.

Characters / Ships / Styles

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This section should include the characters or ships, if any, that the player can select in the game. Ideally, different "styles" (for games that use them, such as DoDonPachi) would also be included here.

If there is only one playable character and no elements to augment/customize your ship, this section can be omitted from the page.

Weapons

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There are 3 main weapons, 2 secondary weapons and 2 types of bombs the player can use in Raiden II. These are obtained almost exclusively from item carriers.

Main shot

These are the most frequent items and determine the player's main shot. In order to power up any of them the weapon item picked up must match the one the player currently has. For example, going Red->Blue->Red->Blue->Red, or any pattern where the items don't match essentially the weapon won't strengthen at all.

Vulcan

This is the weapon the player starts with. The shots are fired in sets of 2, 3 then 4 as it is upgraded along with gradually gaining a wider range. Vulcan is considered the best choice for the vast majority of situations due to its wide coverage and pointblank damage. It primarily suffers from excessive mashing needed when not using autofire (one tap fires one volley).

Laser

A concentrated narrow laser. It starts as individual shots, turning into a thick beam at max power. Deals respectable damage even from far away and light tapping will provide a consistent stream of fire unlike Red. High autofire frequencies fire the laser in smaller "chunks" with gaps in-between, but they are higher damaging than tapping at a slower speed. Laser is generally saved for targets that are small and/or difficult to get up close with vulcan, not much use outside of that as it is severely inefficient at dealing with popcorn enemies even when paired with homing missiles.

Plasma Laser

Added in Raiden II. Initially, it's fired as individual shots that grow thicker when tapping fast enough, eventually morphing into a purple laser. As a laser, it has the ability to attach to enemies with a high enough HP and can bend to hit other targets nearby. Out of the 3, plasma laser has the least damage difference when used at pointblank range (non-existent aside from missiles), can suddenly detach from enemies and has similar shortcomings to laser in regards to popcorn control. The damage is slightly higher when fired as regular shots but only by a small amount.

Power-ups increase the number of shots fired (similar to laser again), make the purple laser thicker and improve its lock-on capabilities.

Missiles

Missile items are in fixed locations inside a cage and follow the same rule when upgrading as the weapon items. Usually 2 of them appear per stage.

Homing

Missiles with homing behavior. Subsequent power-ups increase their speed, homing capabilities and the number of volleys that can be fired is raised from 1 to 2 when maxed.

Nuclear

These missiles move forward and release a sizeable explosion upon impact, increasing their size and explosion radius with every power-up that is picked up. They have a slower travelling speed compared to homing but outperform them at pointblank range.

Bombs

Normal bomb

Obtained by picking up the red bomb items, this is the bomb from the first Raiden. Detonates in front of the ship with considerable delay into a wide circular explosion.

Spread bomb

A new type of bomb added for Raiden II obtained by picking up the yellow bomb items. The spread bomb releases several smaller bombs around the player that proceed to detonate, with a much shorter delay compared to red bombs. Unique to them is that the small bombs have actual collision before exploding. When used close to a flying enemy with an enough amount of HP, it can cancel the blast of whatever bomb it collided with, instead causing it to explode similar to a nuclear missile.

Items

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Item	Description
Vulcan	Powers up the vulcan, or changes to it.
Laser	Powers up the laser, or changes to it.
Plasma Laser	Powers up the plasma laser, or changes to it.
Nuclear missiles	Powers up the nuclear missiles, or changes to it.
Homing missiles	Powers up the homing missiles, or changes to it.
Normal bomb	Adds a red bomb to the bomb stock.
Spread bomb	Adds a yellow bomb to the bomb stock.
Fairy	Drops several items after the player loses a life.
P	Maxes out the shot and missile weapons.
1UP	Grants an extra life.

Hitbox

The precise hitbox size is unknown. However, when the ship is fully tilted while moving in either direction the hitbox will shrink in width.

• Left: Medal is not picked up while the ship is fully tilted.
• Right: Medal is picked up as soon as the animation and hitbox change.

When the player upgrades the main shot 4 times or the missiles 3 times the ship will transform and become slightly larger, this makes the hitbox size bigger as well.

Loops

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If a game features a loop system, elaborate on it in detail here. Otherwise, omit this section.

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Scoring

Raiden DX introduces a dedicated scoring system with "flashing medals" similar to later Psikyo titles. The following factors can make a difference when aiming to optimize a score: picking up medals/Miclus at the right time, collecting surplus items and clearing more loops.

Medals

Medals are found in predetermined spots throughout the stages. Shooting certain objects will uncover medals. An exposed medal will gradually dull and decrease in value. 40 frames (or two-thirds of a second) after turning completely dark, it will flash and be worth its maximum value for 15 frames. It will then return to its minimum value state forever. Blue medals are much rarer than yellow ones and seem to appear randomly.

At the end of every stage in Novice mode there is a hidden medal with a randomized horizontal position.

Medal	Exposed Medal Score	Flashing Score
Gold medal	10-500 points	3,000 points.
Blue medal	100-3,000 points	10,000 points.

Whenever you collect three medals at full value, the next medal hiding spot will reveal a Miclus. After being revealed, Seibu's mascot will walk in place for several seconds before pausing. Exactly one second after halting, he'll flinch for 10 frames (one-sixth of a second) before resuming his march. A cringing Miclus is worth 50k. If collected at any other time, you'll only get 10k. If uncovered at the very top of the screen, you'll have two opportunities to get a 50k Miclus--once in the middle of the screen and again at the bottom edge.

Medal	Score	Flinched Score
Miclus	Grants 10,000 points	50,000 points.

Medals contribute towards the end of stage bonus (Micluses don't contribute to this total). The end of stage bonus follows the following formula:

((Bomb stock * Gold medals) + Blue medals) * 1,000

Blue medals take the value of the bomb count. For instance, a stage is finished with 4 bombs and 2 blue medals, this means the blue medals are worth 8. If there aren't any bombs or gold medals then they are simply omitted, so the formula never multiplies by 0.

Unlike the first Raiden, losing a life does not reset the medal count.

Surplus items

Picking up the following types of items when they are maxed will grant a certain amount of points.

Item	Score
	5,000 points.
	10,000 points.
	5,000 / 50,000 points.

When all 7 bombs are of the same color their bonus will jump from the usual 5,000 points to 50,000 points. This along with the end of stage bonus makes them the most valuable resource in regards to scoring.

Picking up surplus bombs pushes the bombs currently in stock to the left (right when using 2P), making the 5,000 point bonus still obtainable when fixing an incorrect bomb grab.

Clear bonus

Clearing the first loops grants 1,000,000 points. This bonus keeps increasing by another million with every subsequent loop that is cleared. You will only receive the clear bonus by accessing & completing Stage 9.

Strategy

See Raiden DX/Strategy for stage maps, enemy and boss descriptions, walkthroughs, and advanced play strategies.

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This section details some particular strategic information about the game and its gameplay, such as hidden 1UPs and some basic scoring tricks. For anything particularly deep or highly complex, you can probably leave it in the Strategy page.

(Currently evaluating whether or not this specific section should even include information outside of the separated Strategy pages. Worth thinking about as a community.)

Story

Basic story breakdowns, plot information, and endings are included here.

If there is no story at all, or any information about the setting, then this section can be omitted. Try to include at least small things here when you can.

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Development History

If available, you can include information here about the hardware, the development of the game, and its general reception. Try to have as much information in this section cited as possible.

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Version Differences

• Include information here about differences in a game between various versions. This includes regional differences, patch updates/bugfixes, and the like.

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Trivia

• Cool facts and random tidbits go here!

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Gallery

See Raiden DX/Gallery for our collection of images and scans for the game.

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