Raiden II

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Raiden II

Title screen.

Developer:	Seibu Kaihatsu
Publisher:	Seibu Kaihatsu
Producer:	Hitoshi Hamada
Music:	Go Satou
Program:	Tetsuya Kawaguchi Shuichi Mori Kazuki Sekimori
Art:	Harumi Azuma Masao Matsuzawa Takahide Wada Masaru Iijima Shoichi Yano
Designer:	Tetsuya Kawaguchi
Release date:	November 1993
Previous game:	Raiden
Next game:	Raiden DX

Raiden II (JP: 雷電II) is a vertical scrolling shoot em' up developed and published by Seibu Kaihatsu in 1993. It is the sequel to the original Raiden.

For replay videos, visit the Video Index.

Gameplay Overview

Raiden II uses 2 buttons. There are 8 stages with infinite loops.

Controls

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

Weapons

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

The only new main weapon 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

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.
Miclus	Grants 10,000 points.
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.

Scoring

Raiden II doesn't have a dedicated scoring system, but the following factors can make a difference when aiming to optimize a score: finding medals/Miclus, collecting surplus items and clearing more loops.

Medals

Medals are found in predetermined spots throughout the stages. They can be gold, blue or a Miclus. Whether a medal is blue or a Miclus instead of the more commonly found gold variants is random.

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

Medal	Score
Gold medal	500 points.
Blue medal	3,000 points.

Medals contribute towards the end of stage bonus (Micluses don't but are worth 10,000 points when picked up). 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 (when using 1P side at least).

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.

Strategy

Item order

Most of the items in the game appear following a fixed sequence. The item order does not carryover between credits.

1	2	3	4	5-24	25-30	31
				Repeats of 1-4

Fairy

A fairy can be found in stages 1 and 4 by shooting a specific tree and grants 10,000 points when picked up. A collected fairy is released when the player loses a life and will drop items in the middle of the screen. These follow the item order and occasionally missile items appear among the group. The player can have multiple fairies in stock.

Stage 1 location.

Stage 4 location. Destroying the circle of rocks will reveal the tree.

Player side differences

The player 2 side controls the light-blue colored ship. 2P starts with yellow bombs and has other important differences during play.

Checkpoints

Losing a life makes the player start over from a checkpoint. Some of them have an item carrier spawn that isn't normally present in the stage. If the player had a fairy in stock it will reappear at the start of the checkpoint to drop the items.

Oddly enough, losing a life as 2P does reset the medal count back to 0, unlike 1P.

Item order

2P side has a different (shorter) item order.

1	2	3	4	5-24	25
				Repeats of 1-4

1UP locations

Raiden II doesn't have any score-based extends, but there are two 1UP items the player can find by performing specific tasks. The 1UPs reappear in every loop.

Stage 3

Have the second tank that comes from the bunker run over the silver crate to release the 1UP. The crate can't be damaged by the player's weapons otherwise the 1UP will be a medal. As this involves stalling for time it is usually done by hugging the right side of the screen to spawn the item carrier far away from the crate, using a spread bomb at close range against the item carrier (otherwise, the explosions could destroy the crate), then slowly misdirect the bullets while moving down as the tank makes its way towards the crate.

Alternatively (when planning to not use a bomb), the 1UP is obtained by delaying the release of the missile item at the start of the stage and destroying the item carrier with nuclear missiles before switching to homing.

Stage 6

At the beginning of the stage there is a stationary red crystal that will escape once it has taken enough damage. To obtain the 1UP, the crystal must be destroyed as it is flying away.

• Using Vulcan: Practically impossible without the use of a bomb. The only way to do it is damaging the crystal until it is in the brink of escaping, then use a red bomb and continue shooting at it so the explosion destroys the crystal.
• Using Laser: Simply fly over it while firing with a high frequency autofire.
• Using Plasma Laser: Have the laser lock-on to the crystal and be below it. Out of the 3 weapons this is the most inconsistent method due to Plasma's low damage and tendency to detach from targets.