In a surprise attack, a cloaked alien invasion force has crippled Terra's defense forces and is in the process of eradicating the planet's population. In response, Earth's leaders have mobilized Project Raiden, which puts you at the helm of the untested but undeniably powerful Raiden 1200 11:1 Thunderbolt. This mighty ship is equipped with three main weapon systems: cannon (plasma and auto), missiles (Ramrod HE and Firefly Homing) and smart bombs (mini-nukes of mass destruction).
Your job is to blast any and every alien vessel you see while avoiding their firepower. Enemies launch both air- and ground-based attacks. To aid you in your desperate battle to save mankind, you can pick up a variety of power-ups, which turn on your various weapons systems and increase or upgrade effectiveness and firepower. Other items you can pick up include fairies and medals, which give you bonus points, and 1-ups for extra lives.
Depending on how long you survive, Raiden offers eight levels of play including mid-west America, Koyoto, Japan, the Suez Canal, ruins near the Mediterranean, Cologne, Germany, orbit around Terra, the Alien Headquarters and a cloaked alien asteroid.
In the year 2090, Earth is invaded by extra-terrestrials. The World Alliance of Nations has developed a supersonic attack fighter, Raiden, to defend the Earth. A pilot must take control of the experimental fighter to destroy the alien warships that just happen to look like odd variations of typical military tanks and planes with gadgets attached to them. Raiden (called Raiden Trad on the Genesis and SNES) is an over-head vertical-scrolling shooter, based on an arcade game of the same title. It features two forms of weapon upgrades and two types of missiles (normal or homing). You start the game with several bombs which you can use to destroy most enemies on the screen to get yourself out of a jam. Each level ends with a large boss or bosses.
Somewhere in the future the earth is being attacked by space pirates. You, a brave pilot, have the mission to stop them. Sounds like an arcade game directly ported from a coin machine? No wonder, it is one.
As a matter of fact, you need to destroy everything that appears on the screen. We have tanks, ships, planes, helicopters, super-duper enemies and lots of power-ups. What else do you need for a shoot'em up? Right, a two-player mode! Well, Raiden has all this stuff, and it's fun!
In the beginning you have nothing but a little cannon and a few bombs. With the bombs you prevent all enemy fire from hitting you for a few seconds, in which you can easily destroy them without any risk. For the weaker enemies one hit is enough to take them down, but for some you first have to destroy their weapons and then take care of the rest. The job is easily done once you have the triple laser cannon with the quadrupled missile. For destroying special vehicles, ammunition depots or fuel tanks you will earn extra points, power-ups and medals. At the end of the level you will get some boni - of course. To finish each level you finally have to kill the stage-boss-fortress-ship-whatever. Take your bombs here for having an easy job.
The variety of graphics in the eight levels is great. You fly over forests, cities, lakes and meadows killing a lot of different enemies and leaving lots of scrap behind you. The vertical scrolling is mostly fluent. It is a bit slower when there is lots of enemies and speeds up when you killed them.
The sound is ... well, let's better do not talk about it.
You can set the difficulty to three different levels, but this does not increase the amount of enemies - it just changes the amount of credits you have. Raiden is a nice little game that is OK for some time of fast shoot'em up fun - as long as you do not expect the ultimate challenge for genre-specialists. Due to the nice multiplayer-option and my opinion that sound is a secondary thing I give 4 points.
You control a fighter place/ship in which you destroy the on coming pilots/boats/groud units. Very simple and quite fun, though it does get a little repetative, this game gets very hard. As it's one hit, one kill for the enemy.
Quite a good game with decent graphics and fitting sound as well but only a 7 because of the over and over style gameplay it has which is a bit sad as it would otherwise be a much better game.
Raiden is a good PC translation of a popular console shoot-em-up. Standard fare here-- shoot baddies, collect power-ups, and overcome end-level bosses. The plot: Mother Earth has fallen to deranged aliens. Now, as pilot of the Raiden Supersonic Attack Fighter, you must rip through the enemy lines and mount a daring counterattack. Raiden successfully enhances the vertical-shooter excitement of an all-time arcade favorite with brilliant sounds and exceptional speed and motion. All the ingredients of a great shooter are here, but the extremely unforgiving gameplay will leave newbies wishing for an easier game. Recommended to expert gamers only or those looking for a real challenge! Also be sure to check out the excellent but little-known sequel Raiden II, also on this site.
One of those top-down shooters that flooded the scene during the late eighties and early nineties, Raiden is no different than the others. Fly around and shoot at anything you see is all you gotta do, but good thing is that you can do it with a friend instead of flying around alone.
As you shoot at everything you will be able to collect various gun and rocket upgrades as well as to collect bombs and extra lives. Brainless shooter for the end of the hard working day.
How to run this game on modern Windows PC?
People who downloaded Raiden have also downloaded:
Raiden II, Raptor: Call Of The Shadows, RayForce (a.k.a. Layer Section), Prince of Persia 2: The Shadow and the Flame, RayCrisis (a.k.a. Layer Section III), R Type, RayStorm (a.k.a. Layer Section 2), Rastan
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