Raiden Fighters is a 1996 scrolling shooter arcade game by Seibu Kaihatsu. Contrary to popular belief, Raiden Fighters and its two sequels are not part of the Raiden series. It began development as an unrelated game named Gun Dogs until just before its release.
Gameplay[]
Charged attacks are a mechanic introduced in Raiden Fighters.
Raiden Fighters gives the player a choice from a roster of several fighter craft, each with different weapons and stats. The Slave is a small fighter craft that accompanies the player's fighter, giving support firepower and shielding the player from a limited amount of enemy attacks.
Plot[]
A dictator commands their army to attack various locations. A flight of new aircraft, code name Gun Dogs, is deployed with state-of-the-art weaponry to fight back the dictator's army and destroy the main headquarters.
Stages[]
Raiden Fighters has seven stages. The first six are grouped into two sets of three stages. The seventh and final stage takes the player to the Dictator's main fortress and headquarters.
In each of the two sets of three stages, the first two stages are randomly ordered by default, while the third is a boss area with a raid encounter with one of the Dictator's giant war machines. The player can force a desired stage order by holding the joystick in one of four cardinal directions before starting the game.
| Stage | Name | Boss | BGM |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1A | Forest | Wild Weasel | Forest Stage |
| 1B | Airfield | Jasper Virtuos | Arachi Stage (Task Force[1]) |
| 1C | Ocean | Carrier Ship | Ocean Stage
Giant Boss Area (Mui-Mui-Moo[1]) |
| 2A | Snow Field | Snow Tank | Snow Field Stage |
| 2B | Train Yard | Randall Gigas | Train Stage |
| 2C | Sky | Vahrstor | High Altitude Stage
Giant Boss Area (Mui-Mui-Moo) |
| 3 | Enemy Fortress | Wild Weasel II Rafflesia |
Fort Stage (Invade Your Mind[1]) |
NOTE: Boss names in italics are unofficial. BGM names in parentheses are taken from the soundtrack CD listing of Raiden Fighters Jet Original Soundtrack (ACPG-4039). It includes eight bonus tracks, four each from Raiden Fighters and Raiden Fighters 2. These song names are not to be taken as official either, until confirmation is found.
Fighters[]
The ship select screen with the two Seibu guest fighters on the left.
Raiden Fighters features a roster of five fighter craft that make up the Gun Dogs squadron. Each fighter carries a bomb whose launch distance can be controlled by holding down the bomb button and releasing it to detonate the bomb. Each fighter has a Laser-type weapon and a Missile-type weapon, one of which can be active at one time. The Gun Dogs fighters have a charged attack for each of their weapons.
- Aegis: Well balanced with no real strengths and weaknesses.
- Beast Arrow: A slow lumbering beast with a wide main gun and powerful weapons, particularly its Laser weapon and charged Laser.
- Chaser: A fast fighter with a rapid-firing, but low-coverage, main gun. It has a damaging charged Missile attack and a charged Laser attack that is the Bend Plasma from Raiden II.
- Devastator: A powerful, but slow-moving, fighter with a lock-on Laser weapon and a highly damaging Missile weapon.
- Endeavor: A quirky fighter with a Laser weapon that instantly deploys its charge attack, and a difficult-to-use Missile weapon whose explosions destroy enemy bullets.
Secret fighters[]
There are three secret fighters in the game. Two of them are the player ships that appear as guests from Seibu Kaihatsu's earlier games: Raiden II and Viper Phase 1. Depending on the settings of a particular arcade machine, the secret fighters are either available on the fighter select screen directly, or they are selected by a joystick sequence.
In Raiden Fighters, the guest ships are given new names. The Raiden II fighter from Raiden II is given the name Raiden Mk-II, while the unnamed Viper Phase 1 fighter is called Judge Spear. The Seibu guest fighters differ from the Gun Dogs fighters in the following ways:
- The Seibu guest fighters begin with three bombs in stock, as opposed to two for the Gun Dogs fighters.
- The Seibu guest fighters use their bomb attacks from their source games. Their bombs lack the controlled detonation mechanic of the Gun Dogs fighters' bombs.
- The Seibu guest fighters can use both Laser and Missile weapons simultaneously. However, each needs to be powered up individually.
- The Seibu guest fighters do not have any charged attacks.
- The Seibu guest fighters' Slaves assume special formations automatically and permanently after collecting a Slave item when the player already has two Slaves by their side. As opposed to the Gun Dogs fighters, their Slaves only assume special formations when they are performing their charged attacks. The Seibu guest fighters can change their Slave formation by picking up a Slave item as long as there are two Slaves already in a special formation.
The third secret fighter is the Slave of any of the seven fighters in the game. Slaves can only be selected on arcade machines that show all seven fighters on the selection screen. As a playable fighter, the Slave inherits the color scheme, the bomb, and the movement speed of the fighters they normally accompany. Their means of attack is a rapid-firing main gun that requires only four powerups to max out, gaining a wider spread as it grows in power. The Slave uses other Slaves like itself as Slave companions, and they assume special formations automatically like the Seibu guest fighters. While playable Slaves lack a charged attack, they have the highest attack rating, as well as the smallest hitbox, in the game.
Production[]
During development, the game went by the title Gun Dogs. The final game has some remnants of this development name: the Aegis fighter in the attract mode cinematic has the designation "GD-1", the briefing screen's background has the Gun Dogs logo tiled throughout, and the game's program ROM chips are stamped with the name "GUN DOGS".
Seibu Kaihatsu changed the name to the current Raiden Fighters just before release because the game generated more income in location tests when it had the "Raiden" name[2].
Ports and conversions[]
This game and its two sequels were released in 2008 in the compilation title Raiden Fighters Aces for the Microsoft Xbox 360 by Success Corporation. Developer DotEmu released a compilation title, Raiden Legacy, consisting of the three Raiden Fighters games, along with the original Raiden, for mobile platforms and Windows via Steam in 2015.
Before these compilation titles, previous attempts to port this game to home consoles failed. In 1997, the company Victor EA of Japan (also known as JVC, later merged with Kenwood in 2008 to form JVCKenwood[3]) was working on a conversion of this game to the Sega Saturn. In 2003, the three Raiden Fighters games were being developed as a compilation title, Raiden Fighters Evolution[4], by New World System for the Microsoft Xbox.
Fan theories, fanfiction, and their origins[]
A prevalent fan theory, particularly in Western communities, suggests that the Raiden Fighters series and its sequels share continuity with the original Raiden series. This theory is largely based on the shared "Raiden" name and the similarity in logo design, which incorporates elements of the Raiden logo.
The fan theory proposes that the Raiden Fighters series is set in the year 2090, the same year as the events of the first Raiden game. According to this interpretation, the narrative involves extraterrestrial beings fleeing their homeworld after five world wars devastated their civilization over two centuries. Seeking a new home, they discover Earth, referred to as the "green star." Western fans later combined this theory with the "Cranassians" fan theory—another widely circulated misconception in the West. This led to the Raiden Fighters antagonist, the Dictator, being labeled the "Cranassian Dictator" on platforms such as Villains Wiki. This speculative fanfiction further claimed that the origins of the "Cranassian Dictator's Military" dated back to before the 19th century and framed the three Raiden Fighters games as depictions of three of the five world wars, with two additional wars left "unchronicled."
The origin of this fan theory can be traced to the now-defunct Japanese game development studio New World System, which ceased operations around 2003. New World System was unrelated to Seibu Kaihatsu, the creator of the Raiden series, but was tasked with developing Raiden Fighters Evolution, a planned compilation of the three Raiden Fighters games for the original Xbox console and PC. In addition to gameplay changes, such as renaming "Slaves" to "Synchronizers," New World System fabricated a storyline for the series on the Raiden Fighters Evolution website. This storyline introduced elements such as the year 2090, an alien force defeated twice by fighter craft from the original Raiden series, and references to five world wars on the aliens’ home planet beginning two centuries earlier. It also described "Raiden" as a "nightmare."
This fabricated story eventually influenced the Japanese Wikipedia article for the first Raiden Fighters game, where it was included without proper sourcing. Many Western fans, unaware of its origins, regarded the Japanese Wikipedia article as an official source, as it was one of the few accessible non-Western references available at the time. The theory subsequently appeared on Western fan wikis, including Villains Wiki and this very wiki, until its removal in October 2020 when its legitimacy was challenged.
Gallery[]
External links[]
- Info on Raiden Fighters at The Raiden Fighters Emporium
- Article for the Dictator on the Villains Wiki.
References[]
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 https://vgmdb.net/album/4187
- ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20010408210026/http://www.ky.xaxon.ne.jp/~ishihara/seibu/rf.html (in Japanese): 元々ＧＵＮ ＤＯＧＳという名前で開発されていたのだが、発売直前になってタイトルが変わった。一説によれば、ロケ時、名前にライデンを使ったことでインカムが上がったためだそうであるが。(Originally developed under the name GUN DOGS, the title changed just before its release. According to one theory, it was because the income was raised by using "Raiden" as the name at the time of location.)
- ↑ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JVCKenwood
- ↑ https://mobile.twitter.com/shmups/status/1348738809056305153
| Raiden video games | ||
| Raiden series | Raiden ● Raiden II (DX) ● Raiden III ● Raiden IV (Overkill) ● Raiden V (Story) | |
| Raiden Fighters series | Raiden Fighters ● Raiden Fighters 2: Operation Hell Dive ● Raiden Fighters Jet (text transcript) | |
| Compilations | The Raiden Project ● Raiden Fighters Aces ● Raiden Legacy | |
| Other Seibu Kaihatsu/MOSS shmups | Stinger ● Scion ● Air Raid ● Viper Phase 1 ● Caladrius (Blaze) ● Raiden NOVA | |