The motive for Raiden II's dissimilar ship speeds?

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Skyknight
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The motive for Raiden II's dissimilar ship speeds?

Post by Skyknight »

More specifically, the fact that one side has slightly faster lateral speed, the other slightly faster vertical speed. It did seem odd to me, since it's probably not enough to affect how to dodge that much.

Then I realized a possible cheat in Raiden I--one player controlling both ships so one is just slightly behind the other as a matter of course, resulting in refractive sparks 24/7/52. The speed dissimilarity in II, though, would make it incredibly difficult to keep the ships properly aligned that way--they'd keep drifting away from each other with normal maneuvering--meaning the sparks are no longer a constant thing.

EddyMRA confirmed on the XFR Discord that the cheat I guessed at really had been a problem for the first Raiden, so I seem to have support for the hypothesis.
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trap15
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Re: The motive for Raiden II's dissimilar ship speeds?

Post by trap15 »

Except in Raiden II playing a 2P simultaneous game normalizes the speeds between the two, so there's no longer any difference.

The Raiden games are full of secrets and odd features, I think it was just something they thought was an interesting way to differentiate playing on the 2P side. Don't forget that 2P also starts with Yellow bombs instead of Red bombs and has checkpoints instead of instant respawn.

Additionally, P2 side in the original Raiden also has differences, such as which weapons cause higher rank. On P1 side Red has higher rank, and on P2 side Blue does. Just more reason to believe the answer is "because they could".
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davyK
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Re: The motive for Raiden II's dissimilar ship speeds?

Post by davyK »

What @trap15 says.

It's what makes those older Raiden games so good. At first they appear to be very meat and potatoes straight forward shooters but the more you play the more you find out. Raiden 2 and Dx in particular just ooze quality.
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dark
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Re: The motive for Raiden II's dissimilar ship speeds?

Post by dark »

Is there a list of little unusual details in the Raiden games? For instance, I had no idea about any of these differences between P1 and P2 when in one player mode.
John4300
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Re: The motive for Raiden II's dissimilar ship speeds?

Post by John4300 »

I talked about it on other topic, but I found it a bit interesting how credits and free play work on this game.

(These work in Raiden 1, 2 and DX)

If you insert credits, if you have only one credit in machine, you can press either side to start a game on that side. If you have more than one credit, pressing player 2 start button starts a two player game with a dual start on the carrier.

If the game is on Free Play, pressing either of start buttons starts a one player game on corresponding side. You can still do a dual start if you press both of the start buttons at the same time (The timing is pretty tight).

On Raiden DX, it's a bit odd, but you can still do the dual start on Free Play by pressing both buttons to go to mission selection, and then to start the game.

If the game is on a mode where you get more than one credit per coin, you can't start on blue side alone at all because start button 2 with more than one credit always starts two player game! So unless you sacrifice the red ship (And one of your credits!) you'll have to play on the red side in machines like this.

Raiden DX is also a bit unfair that when you insert a coin, the game immediately goes to the mission select and you are timed to select a mission to play. The time is pretty lenient, but doesn't even reset if you insert another coin. This can become bit of a hassle if you don't know about it, have your wallet out and put in a coin, and then the game right away starts to ask you questions!

Overall, it's all a bit confusing game design at first. Some players don't probably even know about dual start in the game because when you start the game, you usually press Player 1 Start (Which starts the game) and then player 2 start (Which adds the ship on play while other player is still in the launch animation).
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Mortificator
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Re: The motive for Raiden II's dissimilar ship speeds?

Post by Mortificator »

trap15 wrote:Except in Raiden II playing a 2P simultaneous game normalizes the speeds between the two, so there's no longer any difference.
Way back when, I remember hearing about the red & blue fighter speed difference, starting a 2-player game to test it myself, and thinking it was bullshit because both moved exactly the same. :lol:
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Despatche
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Re: The motive for Raiden II's dissimilar ship speeds?

Post by Despatche »

The motive is that Seibu was high as a kite.
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