Raiden
Title screen.
| Developer: | Seibu Kaihatsu |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Tecmo (JP) Fabtek (US) |
| Producer: | Hitoshi Hamada |
| Music: | Akira Satou |
| Program: | K. Kondo Tetsuya Kawaguchi S. Mori |
| Art: | T. Wada H. Matsuo Toshinobu Komazawa T. Matsuzawa |
| Designer: | Tetsuya Kawaguchi |
| Release date: | April 1990[1] |
| Previous game: | Scion |
| Next game: | Raiden II |
Raiden (JP: 雷電) is a vertical scrolling shoot em' up developed by Seibu Kaihatsu in 1990. The game is well known for its detailed spritework, two-player cooperative gameplay and high difficulty inspired by Toaplan games such as Same! Same! Same!, becoming a financial success the year it was released. Raiden was then followed up with the release of Raiden II and Raiden DX, alongside the Raiden Fighters series before Seibu closed its doors in 1999, though sequels continued to be released under development at MOSS.
The original Raiden has been ported several times to different platforms such as the PC-Engine, Super Nintendo, Sega Megadrive/Genesis, Atari Jaguar and PlayStation just to name a few. Most recently, it has been rereleased under the Arcade Archives series by Hamster.
Contents
Gameplay Overview
Raiden has 8 stages and infinite loops. Finishing a loop will grant a 1,000,000 points bonus, it increases by an extra million with each subsequent loop finished. Extends are granted at 150,000 points and 400,000 points, plus a hidden extend.
Controls
- A button (Press): Fires the player's main weapon and missiles.
- B button (Press): Deploys a bomb if one is in stock.
Weapons
Main weapon
There are two different weapons the player can use:
- Vulcan: Regular shot that becomes increasingly wider with each power up collected, remarkably strong when pointblanking. By default, this is the weapon the player starts with.
- Laser: A beam with concentrated damage, while it is stronger than the Vulcan from far away the coverage is much more narrow.
Missiles
These are the player's secondary weapons obtained by collecting the M and H letters.
- Nuclear: Missiles fired forward dealing heavy damage to its target.
- Homing: Missiles fired in multiple directions that automatically tracks enemies.
Bombs
Bombs are used by pressing the B button. They will detonate in a circular area-of-effect in front of the player. Bombs are quite delayed and don't grant full invincibility, they also aren't very strong on their own.
Items
| Icon | Description |
|---|---|
 |
Red Powers up the Vulcan shot. |
 |
Blue Powers up the Laser. |
 |
Nuclear missiles Powers up the nuclear missiles. |
 |
Homing missiles Powers up the homing missiles. |
 |
Bomb Adds an extra bomb up to a maximum of 7. |
 |
Fairy Found hidden in stages. Releases several power ups once the player dies. |
 |
P Instantly maxes out the main weapon and missiles. |
 |
1UP Grants an extra life. |
Loops
Higher loops considerably increase enemy bullet speed.
Scoring
The best way to reach a high score is to simply finish as many loops as possible, collect medals and surplus items.
| Icon | Description |
|---|---|
| |
Power ups 5,000 points surplus. |
| |
Missiles 5,000 points surplus. |
|
Bomb 5,000 points surplus, contribute toward the end of stage bonus. |
|
P 10,000 points surplus. |
 |
Medal 500 points when collected during stages, contribute toward the end of stage bonus. |
 |
Miclus 3,000 points. |
The end of stage bonus is calculated with the following formula:
|
1,000 points * Bomb stock * Collected medals |
Collected medals only takes into account the medals collected during the current stage. After a death, the medal counter will be reset to 0, and only the medals collected after this point will count toward the bonus. In the event of one, or both of these values being equal to zero, they are replaced by 1 for the calculation, meaning that the player is guaranteed at least 1,000 points from the end of stage bonus.
Strategy
See Raiden/Strategy for enemy and boss descriptions, walkthroughs, and advanced play strategies.
See Raiden/Stages for a detailed information on the stages in Raiden.
See Raiden/Bosses for a detailed discussion on the boss fights in Raiden.
Player side differences
Besides the different color scheme, the 2P side ship in this game has lower difficulty. Furthermore, rank increases when using Laser and Nuclear missiles but decreases with Vulcan and Homing missiles[2], while this works the opposite way with 1P?.
Starting rank
There are 4 different starting ranks depending on when a coin is inserted during the demo cycle. For the lowest rank, enter a coin during the stage 7 demo after the first boot up of the machine[3].
Boss HP
Having the lower-rank Vulcan equipped when approaching a boss area (more specifically, when the Boss BGM starts) will spawn the stage boss with lower HP. You can then switch to Laser to attack the weaker boss with a more powerful weapon.[2]
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.
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.
Version Differences
The initial Japanese release has a checkpoint system after the player dies, while subsequent releases changed this in favor of instant respawns after dying.
Editor's note: There are probably a ton more differences with all the ROMsets but I haven't really investigated.
The Super Nintendo Version (Trad), would have it's stage 6 boss replaced.
The three new bosses and stages in the ports being the Great Spider, Shadow Janet and Nova, with the first two being in the PC Engine version (Super Raiden) and the third in the Mega Drive Version of Trad respectively.
Trivia
- Cool facts and random tidbits go here!
Gallery
See (Template Page)/Gallery for our collection of images and scans for the game.
Video References
If the game already has an existing entry in the Video Index, please link to the page here. If you want to link to smaller clips perhaps not included in the Index, you can also leave them here.
References & Contributors
- Page creation and primary info provided by Andrew98
