Raiden Fighters
Title screen
| Developer: | Seibu Kaihatsu |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Seibu Kaihatsu Fabtek (US) |
| Producer: | H. Hamada S. Mori |
| Music: | G. Satoh |
| Program: | Y. Kasai T. Saitoh |
| Art: | N. Machino T. Sasaki H. Azuma C. Takahashi W. J. Seo Y. Yoshihara T. Wada |
| Designer: | S. Yano |
| Release date: | Arcade JP: November 1996[1] US: December 1996[2] Xbox 360 JP: March 27, 2008[3] US: May 5, 2009[3] iPhone: December 13, 2012[4] PC: 2013[4] |
| Previous game: | Viper Phase 1 |
| Next game: | Raiden Fighters 2: Operation Hell Dive |
Raiden Fighters (JP:ライデンファイターズ) is a vertically scrolling-shooter developed by Seibu Kaihatsu in 1996, being the first game in the Raiden Fighters series. It is known for its soundtrack and several secrets that heavily contribute to scoreplay.
Raiden Fighters was planned to have a Sega Saturn port in 1997 developed by Electronic Arts but was cancelled. An Xbox port titled Raiden Fighters Evolution that would have the first 2 Raiden Fighters games was planned for release in 2003, but this was also cancelled. A few years later, Raiden Fighters Aces came out in 2008 for the Xbox 360 which featured the entire Raiden Fighters series. The Raiden Fighters trilogy along with the original Raiden also made it to mobile phones and PC via Raiden Legacy.
For replay videos, visit the Video Index.
Contents
Gameplay Overview
Raiden Fighters has 7 stages with a single loop. There are no extends granted at any point.
Controls
- A button (Press): Fires the player's main weapons and slaves' bullets.
- A button (Hold): Charges the player's special attack.
- B button (Press): Activates the player's bomb.
Ships
The attributes of each ship are represented the following way:
| MOV | Movement speed |
| DEF | Defensive spread |
| POW | Attack power |
| RPD | Rapid fire-rate |
Default ships
The player can collect missile and laser items, which add a secondary weapon and power-up the main shot. Holding the A button charges a unique special attack (how long it takes for the attack to be ready depends on the ship and secondary weapon). The ships start with 2 bombs per life. When used, the player can control the bomb detonation by holding the B button, where pressing it lightly detonates the bomb immediately and holding it for about a second makes it go off at the top of the screen.
Furthermore, "slaves" can be collected, these are option items that follow the player and shoot. Slaves can be destroyed by enemy bullets and collision.
The numbers in the Speed bullet point represent it in a pixel per frame measure for horizontal and vertical movement respectively (X-Axis and Y-Axis).
| Aegis |
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| Beast Arrow |
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| Chaser |
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| Devastator |
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| Endeavor |
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Hidden ships
The hidden ships have the following differences:
- No special attack.
- 3 bombs per life instead of 2 (Raiden mk-II/Judge Spear).
- Bomb detonation can't be controlled by holding the B button (Raiden mk-II/Judge Spear).
- Smaller hitbox (Slave).
- Raiden mk-II and Judge Spear borrow all of their weapons from their respective games. They only have a missile secondary weapon and it doesn't power-up their main shots, instead this is done by laser items, making them take the longest to max out their weapons. Slave doesn't have secondary weapons at all and can collect items in any order.
| Raiden mk-II |
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| Judge Spear |
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| Slave |
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Items
| Item | Description |
|---|---|
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Missile Powers-up the missile weapon, grants 5,000 points when maxed out. |
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Laser Powers-up the laser weapon, grants 5,000 points when maxed out. |
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Slaves Adds a slave, grants 5,000 points when 2 are equipped. |
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Bomb Adds a bomb up to a maximum of 7, grants 5,000 points when at full stock. |
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Medal Score item. |
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Fairy Grants 100,000 points when collected, but drops a bomb item before leaving. |
Rank
Rank affects bullet speed, enemy fire-rate and the duration of certain attacks. Rank decreases considerably after dying.
Scoring
Medals
There are 3 types of medals that appear depending on how many slaves the player currently has. Medals only increase in value after every one on the screen has been collected, this means it's better to collect them one at a time.
Gray medals appear when the player has no slaves.
 10 points |
20 points |
30 points |
 40 points |
50 points |
60 points |
 70 points |
80 points |
90 points |
Blue medals appear when the player has 1 slave.
 100 points |
200 points |
300 points |
 400 points |
500 points |
600 points |
 700 points |
800 points |
900 points |
Green medals appear when the player has 2 slaves.
 1,000 points |
2,000 points |
3,000 points |
 4,000 points |
5,000 points |
6,000 points |
 7,000 points |
8,000 points |
9,000 points |
After each medal group has been maxed out, they will be replaced by gold medals worth 10,000 points. Gold medals can increase their value as well through different means: when nine 10k medals are on screen at once they will explode, now their maximum value is 100,000 points. This can be done in the train and final stages, though it's easier to achieve by discovering a Miclus as they release 9 medals. Dropping a 100k medal will reset their value back to 10,000 points, though the unlocking method doesn't have to be done again and the player can build back to 100,000 points any time.
| 10,000 points |
20,000 points |
30,000 points |
40,000 points |
50,000 points |
60,000 points |
70,000 points |
80,000 points |
90,000 points |
100,000 points |
Hidden bonus
By performing different tasks the player can trigger several hidden score bonuses. A message appears near the top of the screen when a bonus is done successfully.
- QUICK SHOT! (10,000 points - 100,000 points)
- Quickly destroy a large enemy.
- DESTROYED AT A TIME! (100,000 points)
- Destroy two specific targets under roughly 1 second.
- DISCOVERED THE FAIRY! (100,000 points)
- A fairy will appear when achieving multiple bonuses in a row, stalling the destruction of a large enemy, or other tasks. The fairy can be collected for 100,000 points, but drops a bomb item before leaving.
- DISCOVERED FAIRIES! (100,000 points)
- Similar to the above, but no bombs are dropped.
- KILLED THE FAIRY! (10 points)
- Fairies can be killed by the player's weapons when damaged too much.
- DISCOVERED THE MICLUS! (100,000 points)
- A Miclus appears when flying over a specific spot or by doing other tasks. They release up to 9 medals when shot at and subsequently explode granting 100,000 points.
- DEFENDED THE HOUSE! (100,000 points x 4)
- Forest stage only. Prevent the boss from destroying the houses.
- DESTROYED HOVERSHIP FIRST! (10,000 points x 2)
- Stage 3 only. When the two hovercrafts at the beginning are destroyed, some of the tanks will be worth 10,000 points if they weren't destroyed before.
Grazing
When a bullet makes contact with the player's grazing hitbox points will be granted per frame, starting at 10 and increasing by 10 points every frame until reaching the max of 1,110 points per frame.
Mission bonus
Raiden Fighters is divided on 3 missions: Mission 1 (stages 1 through 3), Mission 2 (stages 4 through 6) and Final Mission (stage 7). At the end of each a special bonus is awarded, the total amount of points is calculated by the following formula:
| Target Destroy Rate * Earned Medals * 100 |
Clear bonus
There is a 1,000,000 points bonus for finishing the game without using a continue.
Strategy
Stage order
Normally, the order of stages 1-2 and 4-5 is swapped at random. However, by holding Up, Down, Left or Right when starting a credit the player can set them to a fixed order.
| Direction | Stage 1 | Stage 2 | Stage 3 | Stage 4 | Stage 5 | Stage 6 | Stage 7 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Up | Forest | Airship | Battleship | Arctic | Train | Flying Fortress | Final Mission |
| Down | Forest | Airship | Battleship | Train | Arctic | Flying Fortress | Final Mission |
| Left | Airship | Forest | Battleship | Arctic | Train | Flying Fortress | Final Mission |
| Right | Airship | Forest | Battleship | Train | Arctic | Flying Fortress | Final Mission |
Depending on the machine configuration, Raiden mk-II and Judge Spear may already be available to select. If they aren't and the player has access to the Service Mode they can be unlocked the following way:
- Enter the Service Mode.
- Go to GAME SETTINGS.
- Go to RAIDEN & VIPER and set it to ON.
- Press Start to exit.
- Go to EXIT.
Otherwise, if Raiden mk-II and Judge Spear aren't available:
- Highlight Endeavor and hold Right then press the A or B buttons, this will select Raiden mk-II.
- Highlight Chaser and hold Down then press the A or B buttons, this will select Judge Spear.
The Slave can be selected by holding any direction when highlighting a ship and pressing Start+A+B at the same time. If Raiden mk-II and Judge Spear aren't unlocked, the method to play as their Slaves is similar to the one described previously.
- Highlight Endeavor and hold Right then press Start+A+B at the same time, this will select Slave of Raiden mk-II.
- Highlight Chaser and hold Down then press Start+A+B at the same time, this will select Slave of Judge Spear.
Slave formations
The slaves assume different formations depending on the sum of lives and bombs the player has. The formations are active for a limited time when using the special attack, but activate immediately and are permanent for the hidden ships since they don't have one. To trigger a formation, the player simply has to collect a surplus slave item.
This system is also present in Raiden Fighters 2 and Raiden Fighters Jet.
| #Lives + #Bombs | Formation |
|---|---|
| 0, 4, 8 |
Slaves positioned ahead of the player fire spread twin shots. |
| 1, 5, 9 |
Both fire narrow twin shots. |
| 2, 6 |
Slaves move sideways and fire 3-way shots. |
| 3, 7 |
Slaves home-in on enemies and fire at pointblank range. |
Development History
Raiden Fighters was developed for the Seibu SPI board, released after Viper Phase 1 which was on the same hardware. The Raiden Fighters series was headed by Takayuki Saito, who handled game balancing and would later go on to become the main programmer of Raiden III. During development, making an interesting scoring system and fleshing out ideas was far more present than prior Seibu games, mentions artist Toshinobu Komazawa.[5] The final scoring system was heavily influenced by Sato, according to programmer Yoritaka Kasai.[6] "The Raiden series took an enormous amount of time to develop, and we couldn’t just stop developing games. So the new strategy was to diversify our STG offerings and be constantly releasing new games. The Raiden Fighters series having short development time was a prerequisite".[5]
The team wanted to include a variety of playable ships for a wider appeal to new players, alongside this wider appeal came a name change as the project was being developed under the title Gun Dogs, "It would be the successor to the spirit of Raiden, but with different fighters...so we called it Raiden Fighters" says Komazawa.[5] Remnants of this original title are present in the final game and prerelease material. During the opening sequence, the Aegis has "GD-1" painted on its back (GD stands for Gun Dogs). Furthermore, the Gun Dogs logo can be seen in the background during the score ranking and mission briefing screens.
Version Differences
US version
This is an international release published by Fabtek. It has the following differences:
- Raiden mk-II and Judge Spear are available by default.
- A second loop has been added. The second loop must be finished in order to see the credits and receive the clear bonus.
- Upon continuing after losing all their lives, the player can select ships instead of respawning with the one they first chose (this option is present in the Japanese version but is disabled by default).
Gallery
Gun Dogs prerelease flyer.
References & Contributors
- Page creation by Andrew98
- Raiden Fighters Emporium
- Ship movement speed in pixel per frame by trap15 | via shmups.wiki Discord
