The Raiden Project is a shoot’em up for the PS1. I don’t normally associate this genre with the PS1, as I tend to care more about the RPGs on this system. There is something nice about changing things up and playing something a little different.
This is a collection of Raiden and Raiden II. These were arcade games released in 1990 and 1993. This is the first time I’ll be playing these games on the PS1.
I’m looking forward to this. It has been a while since I’ve played one of the Raiden games. The last one I played was Raiden V, and that was a few years ago.
TLDR: A Nice Collection of the First Two Games
Narrative
Since this is a compilation, I’ll get a brief recount of the story for both games. Thankfully, there isn’t too much of a story for either game.
In the first game, you’re fighting against an alien race called the Crystals. Earth has rallied together to fight them and formed the Vanquish Crystals Defense. Their plan to defeat them is to have you fly the only ship they have. Unless you happen to be playing two player, then they managed to build two ships.
In the second game, three years have passed, and the Crystals have regrouped and come back to invade Earth again. If you were thinking that the Vanquish Crystals Defense had come up with a better plan to fight them, then you would be wrong. They send one ship to fight them, unless you have a friend, in which case it is two ships.
For a shoot’em up, the story is fine. It tells the player what is going on, and that is more than it has to do. I don’t remember anyone really caring about the story of games like this, so they don’t have to be anything special.
Gameplay
Both Raiden and Raiden II are vertical scrolling shoot’em ups. They have stages that end with boss fights, and along the way, you collect power ups, bonus points, and extra bombs. It is what you should expect from a shoot’em up from the early 1990s.
One thing that I thought was odd was that there is only one ship in the game. At this time, some shoot’em ups added more options for the ship you’re flying.
Raiden has a limited number of power ups for weapons. They do upgrade over the course of the game if you keep collecting the same color. This is the same as the second game, but Raiden II has more weapons.
Both games have secondary weapons and bombs. Just like the standard weapons, Raiden II has a few more options for the player. Neither game overwhelms you with options, which I liked, but compared to other games in the genre, it falls short.
At times, both games can overwhelm the player with enemies and projectiles. It isn’t too bad, but it will happen regardless of the difficulty setting you choose. The games have four difficulty settings:
- Captain – Easy
- Major — Medium
- Colonel — Hard
- General — Very Hard
At least that is how I think it goes. The games default is Colonel, so that could be medium. I don’t think it changes things too much. Captain is still the easiest setting.
Some enemies feel like bullet sponges, especially when it comes to the ships that have your weapon power ups. It was an odd choice to do this, and it was quite annoying.
When you die, you don’t lose all your power ups. They stay on the screen for a period of time, which is nice, so you don’t have to start over. I really hate it when you die in these games and have to deal with having the starting weapon, which is often way too weak to kill the bosses.
The gameplay in both games is very good. They rely on memorization and quick reflexes. There’s nothing to complain about with either game. The controls are solid, and they aren’t unfair like some games in the genre.
Visuals
This is the weakest part of both games. I can forgive the graphics on Raiden, but it didn’t look like much was changed when the developer made Raiden II. Both games look the same to me.
The player’s ship looks like a generic red spaceship. The standard enemies aren’t anything special, but the bosses look very good. The explosions are also excellent.
These games look like SNES or Genesis games. There isn’t anything wrong with that, but they don’t look like the other shooters on the PS1. I actually prefer this style to the 3D polygons.
The graphics are good. These are both arcade ports, and they look good compared to the other games released in the early 1990s. Neither game looks like it was made for the PS1.
N/A. Both of these games are great. I prefer Raiden II to the original game.
Conclusion
I like that companies put out these collections on the PS1. The system could do more than other systems, and putting together a few shoot’em ups on one disc was a great idea. While both games looked like they should be on the Genesis or SNES, they still look good on the PS1.
There isn’t too much to say about these games. They’re both fairly generic shooter’em ups, and have the sale tropes that have become staples of the genre. While they are both good, they didn’t separate themselves from other vertical scrolling shooters.
Raiden II is the one I prefer out of these two. It has more weapons and better graphics. The gameplay in both is the same.
If you liked this post, check out my other shooter reviews like Thunder Force V and Raystorm.