Raiden

Raiden is a 1990 vertically scrolling shooter arcade video game developed by Seibu Kaihatsu and published by Tecmo in Japan. The game’s story takes place in the year 2090, when an alien species known as the Crystals invaded Earth. Players assume the roles of the Vanquish Crystal Defense pilot duo, taking control of two state of the art Fighting Thunders aircraft to defeat the Crystals and save the Earth.

Raiden Gameplay

Raiden is a typical vertically-scrolling shooter. Players control a spacecraft equipped with a main, forward-firing gun, missile sub-weapons, and limited use of smart bombs. The craft can be equipped with different weapons by picking its corresponding item, with the weapon being strengthened by picking the same item multiple times. Weapon icons are dropped by specific enemies, floating around the center of the screen and cycling their color, each color corresponding to a specific weapon.

Raiden Features

Main weapons

• Wide Vulcan: The main spread weapon. The more upgraded it is, the wider its spread. Has 8 levels of power.
• Lightning Laser: Fires straight laser beams that do twice the damage of the Wide Vulcan. Has 8 levels of power.

Missiles

• Nuclear missiles: Fires missiles that travel forward while moving slightly horizontally along the way. Deals the most damage between the two missile weapons, but has the lowest rate of fire.
• Homing missiles: Fires missiles that home in on nearby enemies. Deals the least damage of the two missiles, but has the highest rate of fire.

Special weapons

• Thermonuclear bomb: A delayed detonation bomb. It generates a large explosion that instantly destroys smaller enemies, damages larger enemies, and clears all enemy bullets. This attack is used to save the player from difficult bullet patterns.

• “Starburst attack”: In Raiden when one player craft shoots the other, star-like projectiles are generated, traveling in random directions in a wide cone in front of the craft that is shot. These projectiles deal heavy damage to all enemies. Available in 2-player mode only.
• “Death shrapnel”: When a player dies, the their fighter’s shrapnel become projectiles that harm all enemies on-screen, deals 3x damage to bosses if near them.

Items

• Red item: Powers up the Wide Vulcan, or switches to it.
• Blue item: Powers up the Lightning Laser, or switches to it.
• “M” icon: Powers up the Nuclear Missiles, or switches to it.
• “H” icon: Powers up the Homing Missiles, or switches to it.
• 1-UP: Awards an extra life.
• “P” icon: Sets all player weapons (including missiles if equipped) to maximum power.
• “B” icon: Increases bomb stock by one to a maximum of 7.
• Medal: Awards 300 points when collected.
• Miclus: Seibu Kaihatsu’s dragon mascot. Worth 3,000 points.
• Fairy: Worth 10,000 points when collected. Also drops extra powerups when the player dies after collecting it in Raiden.

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