Raizing Shooters

[Discoalucard]

www.hardcoregaming101.net/raizing/raizing.htm

So, I was familiar with Soukyuugurentai, and had played a bit of Battle Garegga before, but had never really mucked with any of the others. This article got me looking into all of them. Kingdom Grand Prix really has some fantastic music.

It's also a bit of a cheat, in that the 1944 part is incomplete, because it's going to be part of another upcoming article. (It's also not REALLY a Raizing game, because while it was developed by them, it's really more in line with Capcom's series, of course.)

[roushimsx]

ahh man, I loved Armed Police Batrider and Battle Bakraid back in the day, though I've always preferred Cave's general output to Raizing's. FWIW, the reason why Brave Blade looked like a PSOne game is because it was partially based on PSOne hardware. I was a bit surprised we never saw a home port of it, though I guess it was maybe a bit too late? Didn't seem to stop Takumi from porting Night Raid

Wish I had the Saturn version of Soukyugurentai. Picked up the budget PS1 rerelease and while it was a blast, man...that slowdown...

[Gendo Ikari]

The article mentions Battle Garegga as made on the ST-V hardware but it's not, the Saturn port is just excellent. Only Sokyugurentai was made on Sega's hardware firsthand, and it shows.

[Vokkan]

Really liked the article, but there's some things left out that I feel is very important to the identity of some of the games.


Like how the backgrounds in Garegga, Batrider and Bakraid are full of objects that when bombed releases medals. It's pretty much the primary source of medals, and a large part of those games are that you're moving on routes not based on where enemies will appear on the screen, but where there's objects to bomb. Making sure your bomb stock lasts is of course of high importance.


In Batrider the Garegga/Mahou-bosses are secret, and only appears if you have an alive character from that game and fulfill certain conditions. So if you want to score high, you need to build a varied team, and if you play for survival pick and choose carefully what bosses you want to actually trigger. Accidentaly triggering an extra boss after the final one can be quite a bummer.


The insane multiplier system in Bakraid also deserves a mention. Where skillfull use of bombs and suicides can give you up to a x64 multiplier, and an expert could keep that multiplier for most of the game.
The first boss for example, if killed as normal nets you what? 150k? While an expert could use bombs and suicides to make that into over 10 milion.

[Discoalucard]

Not super familiar with Batrider beyond a few runs I played to take screenshots, how does the multiplier system work?

[Vokkan]

Killing 2 large enemies in quick succession nets you a x2 multiplier that lasts for a second or so. Kill another large enemy during that time and your multiplier increases to x4 and the timer extends. Kill another and it goes up to x8, then x16, x32 and finally x64.

There's not that many large enemies on the stages though, so you must extend the timer through other means.
The timer is paused as long as a bomb is active on screen, but it will run out precisely afterwards unless you managed to increase the multiplier during the bomb.
When you die, the timer stops until you gain control of your new ship. You also gain bombs as you respawn, making death pretty much a good thing, as long as you keep increasing that multiplier and bathing in millions (and the extends that comes with them).

It can be disheartening knowing you could be constantly making millions while you're not, but if you stop looking at the horizon and see what's in front of you the game offers alot of freedom and experimentation (since you could improve everywhere).
I'd say the scoring is what makes the game unpopular, but it's a fairly easy 1CC and it teaches alot of concepts for people new to the genre.

[nickz]

Thanks for the help, Vokkan!

I've been a bit busy lately, but I will work on revising the article. Also, I always thought the bonus bosses in Armed Police Batrider just appeared with no real rhyme or reason, but now that you mention it, there is a clear pattern. Once again, thank you for helping.

[Vokkan]

No problem. I'm a big fan of Raizings shooters and have played these games pretty passionatly.

Btw, I personally feel that Dimahoo is a lot harder than Batrider, but that might be because I'm too caught up in it's ('hoo's) complex scoring system to actually survive past the third stage.
I'm feeling pretty inspired to return to both of these games right now though.

[nickz]

I sent in an edit, so everything should be fixed now.