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THE RAIDEN
PROJECT
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By
Seibu Kaihatsu Sony
Playstation 1995
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(Above)
US release published by Sony
(Below) Original Japanese release
(Top of page) UK/Europe release by Ocean
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Raiden Project -
Near-as-dammit
Arcade-perfect Raiden and Raiden II
on Playstation! The first time I ever
played a Raiden game was at a Pizza Hut (which in
my area always have better games than the
arcades) back in 1993... and I must
have wasted 5 bucks on the thing. I liked the
game so much that I soon went looking for the
SNES port known as Raiden Trad...
but I never could find a copy. Supposedly the
SNES version was a crappy port, so perhaps that
worked out for the best. A few years later, it
came to my attention that this new-fangled Sony
device was receiving a two-in-one deal known
simply as "The Raiden Project".
Needless to say, I was sold on the PSX right then
and there. Toshin-what? Ridge who? Now, it was a
full year after the PSX's launch before I got
one, and by then RP's great popularity was
apparent; I had the hardest time finding a copy,
and when I did I paid only $19 for it, brand new.
I almost feel sorry for ripping off that poor
Kaybee store like that. :)
STORY: Standard shooter fare...
Raiden: Aliens are invading
Earth, and have utterly
destroyed our defenses! Some
nameless group of
scientists have managed to capture an alien
fighter
and used the technology to create a super-fighter,
which naturally is humankind's last hope.
Raiden
II:
Aliens come back for revenge
blah blah blah.. Well, if you're looking for some
sort of deep plotline in your shooters, learn
Japanese and go play Radiant Silvergun.
:)
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GAMEPLAY: RP's greatness
lies not with
what it does, but how it does it. Gameplay
wise, Raiden and Raiden
2 are little removed from Xevious, though you do get a
few new weapons. In both games, your ship has
three sets of weapons. The main cannons can
fire vulcan shots,
lasers, or this neat looking homing plasma
(R2 only). Once the coolness of the plasma
weapon wears off, you'll realize it pretty
much sucks and start using the other two
weapons. The laser is supposed to be the most
powerful weapon (since it only fires in a
small area ahead of your ship); however, the
vulcan shots can cover the entire screen when
powered-up fully, and at point-blank range
the vulcan is actually more powerful than the
lasers. Of course, fighting bosses at
point-blank is usually quite risky. You also
have missiles at your
disposal. Normal missiles
fire straight ahead and are more powerful
than the homing missiles,
which are weaker but fire more quickly. Also,
you have a limited supply of Bombs.
Normal Bombs create a large
blast radius that causes heavy damage to
anything in its range and absorbs enemy fire.
Cluster Bombs (R2 only)
spread over a larger area but cause less
damage.







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CHALLENGE:
You want it, you got it. The
game has four difficulty settings, and even the
easy setting can prove a challenge. Unless you do
something wimpy like jack up the continue
settings. :) (True Raiden-junkies might like
to turn on the 'start-back' feature in the
options menu to make the games a lot more
exciting.. finish either R1 or 2 in this mode and
you'll feel a hero I can tell you.. Mike). Raiden Project can flood
the screen with bullets quite a bit, but they can
usually be avoided with skill or using the bombs.
Fear not, though, for RP doesn't fall nearly as
far into the Smart-Bomb Trap as Darius Gaiden or RayStorm do.
GRAPHICS: Raiden
looks a bit dated, but you have to consider that
it came out in 1990. Raiden 2
has much better graphics, which IMO hold well
even today. It's all straight 2D sprite graphics,
though, so if your graphics must be some form of
polygonal mish-mash, you might want to look
elsewhere. Surprisingly, slowdown is quite rare,
usually only occuring in 2P mode when both
players are fully powered-up. My only complaint
here is the shrapnel that Raiden 2's enemies
create when destroyed can sometimes make it
difficult to tell what's harmless and what's
actually a bullet. But it just takes some getting
used to.
AUDIO: The original music from
the arcades sound quite weak; fortunately, you
can select "remixed" versions of the
music for both games that sound much, much
better. And the music is not really that bad at
all. My favourite selections are R1, Level 1 and
R2, Level 2 (remixed, of course).The sound FX
from R1 are a little dated, but again what do you
want from a game from 1990? :) R2's are much
improved, especially the explosions. Be sure to
crank up the volume before you destroy something
big, like a boss.
CONTROL: My only complaint in
this department is what happens when you try to
rig the game to horizontal scroll, where you turn
your TV on its side to recreate the arcade
experience. Unfortunately, there is no option to
reconfigure the controller to adjust to this, so
if you choose this option, you have to play
holding your controller sideways. It's not
difficult to get used to doing that, but it would
have been nice to include the option.( Note:
only the US version seems to have this problem,
the Japanese/European releases include an option
to reconfigure for arcade-style vertical controls
-Mike ). Other than that, the game controls
quite nicely.
OVERALL: 10/10. Raiden 2
remains to this day the standard to which I
compare all vertical shooters. It might not have
the innovation or graphics of, say, Radiant
Silvergun, or the awesome Zuntata
soundtrack of Darius Gaiden, but
makes up for that by still being a blast to play.
A must have for anyone with a PSX. Don't just sit
there, go grab yourself a copy now!
Score
out of Five:
    
Zach Keene
Zach is the
author of many FAQs including G-Darius,
Gradius III, Einhänder,CSOTN, and the AGVS FAQ
ftp://members.aol.com/fnlfanatic/arcanelore/
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