When Raiden reached the arcades in June 1990, it did not look like a game worth remembering. Stuart Campbell, writing its history for Retro Gamer, called it at first glance “just the latest in what at the time was a long line of shameless bandwagon-jumping rip-offs” of Toaplan’s 1987 hit Flying Shark, from a “little-known Japanese developer”, Seibu Kaihatsu. Then people kept playing it. It “spent over three years in the coin-op charts”, and Edge later called it “a huge success, both in Japan and overseas”. Its title, originally written as two words, Rai Den, means thunder and lightning.
Two guns, two missiles
One or two players fly the Raiden Mk.II fighter up a vertically scrolling screen; the second player’s ship is the blue Mk.IIb. Destroyed enemies and crates release power-ups that choose the main gun. The Vulcan cannon throws out a wide spread of shots that grows into a broad fan as it is powered up. The laser is a narrow beam that hits much harder. Below the guns sit two kinds of missile: nuclear missiles, which deal heavy damage, and weaker homing missiles that find their own targets. Collecting the power-up for the weapon already fitted makes it stronger; collecting the other one swaps weapon without losing the power level. A limited stock of bombs does heavy damage over a wide area and wipes out enemy bullets.
Campbell thought this “simple but clever armaments system” was the secret of the game’s success. With just two guns and two missiles, switchable at any time, the player had “more flexibility and depth than the average shooter of the era”. The choice between “fierce, focused fire” and “wider-spreading, weaker weaponry”, he wrote, “has been copied by countless clones ever since”. Two hidden characters became series favourites: a fairy who hands out extra weapons, and a bonus-point creature called the Miclus.
Tanks, planes and battleships
Raiden has eight stages, with tanks, planes and battleships to destroy and a large guardian at the end of each, over land, sea and finally space. Campbell admired its “Spartan, gimmick-free nature”: though it became “extremely frenetic” early on, its enemy attacks stayed “realistic”, with “none of the over-the-top screen filling geometric ‘bullet-hell’ attacks” of later shooters. Beat the game and it starts again from Stage 1 with the music “funked-up with some extra drums”. The arcade machine also lets a player who loses a life carry on from the same spot, where almost every home version sends the player back to a checkpoint, a change Campbell called “a baffling and significant hike in the difficulty”.
At home
The conversions varied wildly. Raiden Densetsu for the Mega Drive, published by Micronet in 1991 and sold in America as Raiden Trad, was “a good solid conversion” with a drab palette and a large status bar. The FM Towns version, for Fujitsu’s Japanese computer, was “basically arcade-perfect” and added competition modes. Hudson Soft’s PC Engine version was “a superb piece of work”, using the full screen, and in 1992 Super Raiden for the PC Engine CD-ROM added a guitar-rock CD soundtrack and two new stages; Campbell thought it the best version of the first game.
The Super Famicom version, also called Raiden Densetsu in Japan and Raiden Trad in America, was, ACE noted, the first vertically scrolling shoot-’em-up for the machine. Reviewing a Japanese import in February 1992, ACE found it “pretty formulaic stuff”, reminiscent of “Slap Fight, Flying Shark, Sidewinder, Xevious and several others”, though “a laugh” in two-player mode. It liked the “laser beams and homing missiles” but not the smart bomb, “a rather pathetic red cloud”. ACE warned that arcade players would find it too easy. Campbell later went further: whole chunks of stages had been “crudely hacked out”, so that the game was over in “barely half” the 40 minutes the other versions took.
In Britain, Imagitec converted the game for the Atari Jaguar and for PCs running DOS. Edge called the Jaguar version “pedestrian”; it was only the third game released for the machine. An Amiga version for AGA machines was finished but never published, apart from a one-level demo on a magazine coverdisk. A Lynx version, coded in 1994, was released by Telegames in 1997. The PlayStation finally had a near arcade-perfect version in January 1995, when Seibu itself released Raiden Project, which put Raiden and Raiden II on one disc less than two months after the console’s Japanese launch.
The series
Raiden II followed at the end of 1993. Its one new weapon, the purple Plasma Laser, which locked on to its target, was soon nicknamed the “Toothpaste” laser. Raiden DX reworked Raiden II with new modes and stages, and Campbell rated its 1997 PlayStation version “the finest shmup of its generation”. Raiden Fighters began as an unrelated game called Gun Dogs and was brought into the family after market testing; it let players choose from seven planes, and was followed by Raiden Fighters 2 and, in 1998, Raiden Fighters Jet.
Seibu’s own run ended there. Raiden III (2005) brought back the original style after an 11-year gap, and Retro Gamer welcomed it as “a wonderful return to form”. The licence passed in 2005 to MOSS, a company set up by Toshinobu Komazawa and other former Seibu Kaihatsu staff. MOSS tested Raiden IV in an Akihabara arcade in July 2006 and went on to make Raiden V (2016) and new x Mikado editions of Raiden III and Raiden IV; Raiden III x Mikado Maniax came out in 2023. “We will definitely continue to expand on the series,” Komazawa told Retro Gamer that year.
Sources
- Retro Gamer issue 26, 2006, pp. 64–69: Stuart Campbell, “The Ultimate Guide: Raiden” (the 1990 debut and Flying Shark; Rai Den; three years in the charts; the Mk.II, the weapons and their “flexibility and depth”; the fairy and the Miclus; “Spartan, gimmick-free”; the music on the second loop; checkpoints in the home versions; Raiden Densetsu on the Mega Drive and FM Towns; the PC Engine and Super Raiden; the Super Nintendo version; Raiden 2 and the Toothpaste laser; Raiden DX; Imagitec’s Jaguar, PC and Amiga versions; the Lynx version; Raiden Fighters, Raiden Fighters 2 and Jet; Raiden III).
- Retro Gamer issue 28, 2006, p. 9: Raiden IV location test in Akihabara on 22 and 23 July, developed by Moss.
- Edge issue 16, January 1995, pp. 42–43: Raiden PlayStation preview (the arcade release in June 1990; “a huge success, both in Japan and overseas”; Raiden II “at the end of 1993”; both games on one disc).
- Edge issue 19, April 1995, p. 78: Raiden Project review (Seibu Kaihatsu; “out now” in Japan; the Jaguar version “pedestrian” and “only the third game for that system”).
- ACE issue 53, February 1992, p. 74: Super Famicom Raiden Densetsu import review by Gary Whitta.
- Sega Retro, “Raiden Trad” (web, secondary): the Mega Drive version, published by Micronet, released in Japan on 6 July 1991; the Wide Shot and the laser; nuclear and homing missiles and how power-ups cycle; bombs. https://segaretro.org/Raiden_Trad
- Damien McFerran, “You can expect more Raiden games, says MOSS CEO”, Time Extension, 7 July 2023, from an interview in Retro Gamer issue 258 (web, secondary): MOSS founded by Toshinobu Komazawa and former Seibu Kaihatsu staff; Raiden V (2016); Raiden III x Mikado Maniax; Komazawa’s words. https://timeextension.com/news/2023/07/you-can-expect-more-raiden-games-says-moss-ceo
- Wikipedia, “Raiden (series)” (web, secondary): Seibu Kaihatsu’s games from 1990 to 1998; the licence bought by MOSS in 2005; the release years of Raiden DX (1994), Raiden Fighters (1996) and Raiden Fighters 2 (1997). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raiden_(series)