RAIDEN

[Aquas]

Looks like some ace scores here, makin' me wanna try my hand at something beyond stage 3. Of course, I've been trying futily to play the game without autofire. I've got it setup now, though.

[saucykobold]

Outstanding job, luy! Congrats on reaching the third loop.

saucykobold - 5,290,820 - 2-8 - MAME

[saucykobold]

saucykobold - 7,510,370 - 3-2 - MAME

[saucykobold]

saucykobold - 8,331,000 - 3-4 - MAME

[tinotormed]

saucykobold - 8,331,000 - 3-4 - MAME

Be warned, Raiden Mk. II ace, you are about to cross the world record express, which is about 10mil+ !

[saucykobold]

Thanks for the compliment. I can't say I share your optimism, though. I'm playing a version of Raiden that lacks checkpoints, so I'd have to clear three loops to hit ten million. Definitely not happening.

If I switch to a checkpoint version, I could sacrifice all of my lives at the end of 1-6 (kill rocks, get points). This would allow me to get ten mil by 3-5, give or take. Half an hour of rock leeching per run is more fun than I can handle, so I think I'll stick with the non-checkpoint version.

[tinotormed]

Right! Oh, and good luck!

[saucykobold]

saucykobold - 9,076,750 - 3-6 - MAME

Really, really happy with this score. I don't think I'll be able to top this by very much (if at all). Thanks to luy for the awesome competition and for giving me the incentive to push for 8.4 mil and beyond.

Loops 1 and 2
Loop 3

[Blackbird]

Awe-inspiring run. It's amazing how fast the bullets start moving in loop 3... you pretty much have to be positioned in advance to avoid them =P.

[saucykobold]

Thanks!

It's amazing how fast the bullets start moving in loop 3... you pretty much have to be positioned in advance to avoid them =P.

Yeah, I tried to memorize as much of the game as possible. I doubt you could last very long in loops two and up if you tried to free-style your way through (surprise sniper tanks don't care if you have great dodging skills). For 95% of the run, I followed a fairly rigid path. For example, during the first minute of level five (in each loop), most of my side-sweeps coincide with specific points in the music. Kind of an idiosyncratic approach, but it works.

[Ruldra]

Ruldra - 1,284,080 - 1-7 - MAME

I had given up on this game for being so frustrating, but thanks to saucy's videos I'm getting much farther now. There's still hope for me.

Any tips on how to handle the flying snipers in stage 7? Those guys always manage to kill me.

[saucykobold]

Any tips on how to handle the flying snipers in stage 7?

I despised those things for the longest time. It's like the designers thought the first six levels had a critical shortage of snipers, heh.

Each appears at a predetermined spot and has a fixed flight path, so memorization is a viable (if not exactly thrilling) option. The exact moment a glider fires its initial shot can vary (this is the only random aspect of their behavior, I think). Some will choose to fire as soon as they poke their heads on-screen. This makes the far corners extremely dangerous.

Save state training can help a lot. I recommend making states for these problem areas:

1. Glider swarm (1:09 - 1:23)
Start at the left and tap or hold right. Switch directions when you see a safe gap and before you reach the far corner; repeat. This is the first point in the level in which some gliders will spawn really close to the bottom of the screen, so stay low. Before I was fully comfortable with this part, I liked to dump one or two bombs when the medal cluster got about 70% of the way down.

2. Rail crawler ambush (1:51 - 2:04)
Very dangerous until you work out a safe and consistent method. Unlike tanks, the rail crawlers won't hold their fire if you're close. If you sit on them as they pop up, you should kill them without incident (unless your main weapon is really underpowered).

3. Gliders aplenty (2:08 - 2:40)
This stretch doesn't look very threatening or busy, but it's worth practicing due to the abundance of low-spawning gliders. The rest of the level (from 2:40 onward) isn't too dangerous.

One last tip--if you think your life might be in danger, feel free to bomb. For example, let's say you've been pushed to the corner. You don't know if a glider is about to appear right next to you and do something rude. In such cases, it's better to bomb preemptively than to risk dying so close to the end.

Hope this helps somewhat!

[Ruldra]

Thanks for the tips, will practice a bit. The gliders are only thing stopping me from beating the loop at this point.

[Mills]

Wouldn't playing this with autofire as it would have made life easier on 3rd,4th loop plus trigger the game difficulty to rank down on stages 1-2 making the remaining stages less stressful.

[Blackbird]

Blackbird - 1,162,400 - All - Raiden Trad (SNES)

Played on an SNES. This is my first serious attempt at scoring after learning to 1CC the game. Not a record breaking score, but I felt it was a good enough attempt to post up for some feedback.

TVR's score still looks very far away. Not sure where that extra 700k is coming from. This wasn't a flawless run, but I didn't bomb until the stage 6 boss, and I didn't die until the final boss. To my knowledge, I was able to collect all power ups, getting the maximum number of 5k bonuses that way. I also felt like I was destroying almost all of the enemies right up until the last two stages. I'm fairly sure I destroyed all the larger enemies. I missed a few asteroids and popcorns, though. I must have missed something substantial somewhere to account for that many points, though.

I think the points I can improve on are:

- Destroying all parts of the Stage 5 boss. I can take out 1 wing safely, but I almost always get destroyed trying to cross the middle of the screen to destroy the other wing. In this run, I opted to stay to the side and use a safer strategy.

- Not bombing at Flying Fox MkII (Stage 6 boss). The first one isn't so bad, because if I die, it's early in the run and I can just start over. The second is a total pain, though. It's randomness ends a lot of runs for me.

- Not bombing during Stage 7. I need to find a safer way to destroy more of the rail crawlers. Maybe this will come with improved reflexes and overall skill.

- Not dying during Stage 8. The final boss is the one I've had the least practice with, because I'm not save-stating. I could potentially get 12-20k from the last stage medals if I don't die there, depending on my bomb stock.

Any ideas?

[nZero]

Oh yeah, also the game doesn't loop and the Stage 7 boss is worth like a million points for no reason. Anyway, Raiden Densetsu Super Famicom default settings

TVR's score still looks very far away. Not sure where that extra 700k is coming from.

There might be a bug or a difference between the US and JPN versions. If you figure it out, I'd love to hear about it

[Blackbird]

Yes, I have observed such a bug in a replay of Raiden Densetsu. A player bombed on the stage 7 boss and generated around 3 million points(?) somehow. Observe:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCaUAvig ... re=related (boss fight begins around 1:30)

I attempted to replicate this bug on my copy of Raiden Trad (US), but either I need to meet more specific conditions than simply bombing after the side guns are destroyed, or my version does not include this bug.

The only bugs I know of in Raiden Trad (US) are power up bugs. Sometimes when you get a game over with powerups on screen, some of those items remain on screen when you start a new game.

This has significant scoring repercussions because you can, say, begin the game with an extra bomb on screen and rack up some extra medal multipliers later. I haven't made use of such a bug yet because:

A) The bug doesn't appear to work every time. I'm not sure how exactly it happens. It could be random chance, screen location of the items when the game ends, etc. It can be a crapshoot triggering it.

B) I'm not sure about the legitimacy of a run that uses a bug/exploit to increase score. Do you folks typically allow stuff like this? It seems kind of like a grey area to me, because it isn't really gamebreaking, but it doesn't seem like intended game design either.

Another bug seems to occur with missile upgrades that drop from containers in Stage 4. For some reason, the missiles don't always drop when you have full upgrades, denying you 10k or so you could have gained by picking them up. I've found that you can prevent this bug by destroying the containers when you are on top of or very near to them, for some reason.

More of a bug that you have to work around so that you don't -lose- score >_<.

[PlasmaBlooD]

ohh..it is my videorun lol

I saw this bug first time.Not as i record this run

[HydrogenHuman]

Well, it drove me to the brink of insanity, but I finally recorded a score I felt proud of:

PS1 - Colonel Difficulty (Default)

573,400 - Stage 1-4

I'm going to aim higher of course, but it may be a while since I usually wing it when I play.

[CptRansom]

Ransom - 717,340 - 1-4 (MAME)

NM1B through 1-3, then I completely fell apart in 1-4. Back to practice I go!

[Guardians Knight]

new score from last night.

ps1
1,558,200 1-7 (air commodore - not sure what this is in comparison to the U.S. names of difficulty you guys seem to be using but its the 3rd out of 4 levels of difficulty)

[spadgy]

PS1 Colonel (Normal):
spadgy - XXX,XXX - X-X

I'll PM kemical and see if he still wants to run this thread as it's been a while since an update.

EDIT: Spelling (thanks m3tall1ca ), and a new score:



PS1 Colonel (Normal):
spadgy - 1,119,330 - 1-6

It almost went a lot better too. For the first time in my life I saw the 1UP in the pods in level 1-4. I never even knew you could get a 1UP there. In the excitement at seeing it I died, died again, and my game nearly fell apart. Chuffed to have pulled it back to this though!

I had a bit of luck though. I destroyed the 1-4 boss but died, cashing some big points and getting another go at the boss. At least I think that's what happened.

[kemical]

updated scores again, whew.. think I got them all, great score Saucykobold! I'm glad this game is getting more activity lately.

[spadgy]

Nice one kemical. Glad you're still taking the wheel of the good ship Raiden! Thanks.

[Emuser]

PS1 Colonel
ResumeDPosition - 968,030 - 1-5 - PS1

I haven't been around the forums at all since I've been playing with my psp, so recently I decided to start taking the Raiden Project to go on it. As a guy who has only played Cave and homebrew bullet hells since 2005 I felt like playing a game for once that didn't have a funky scoring gimmick that makes the game tenfold harder to play.

Needless to say I think all that bullet hell has helped me hit the ground running on Raiden as this score is the result of 3 days of playing a few runs per day. Plus I owe it to myself since I can play it on my psp and I regard it as the game that truly made me discover my love for shmups when I was a little kid.

[PlasmaBlooD]

Do you accept Raiden FM-Towns/marty Scores ?

[Emuser]

PS1 Colonel
ResumeDPosition - 1,608,580 - 1-7 - PS1

I can't get any further since I always screw up on stage 5 and just plummet into an inevitable downward spiral of death. This run though I no missed stage 5 for once and made a really dumb death on the 2nd stage 6 big ship that comes from behind. Once you die on stage 6 onwards you really feel it when stage 7 comes and completely murders you. If I can just get past the 1st half of stage 7 I can feel a 1 loop clear coming.

[PlasmaBlooD]

Megadrive / Genesis (normal):

PlasmaBlooD - 1,637,300 - 1-9

[richter3456]

Played this on my PC Engine. I can never beat the last level, I did it once and was never able to do it again. The final boss gives you hell.



PCE
richter3456 - 1,598,450 - 1-9 - PC Engine

[PlasmaBlooD]

FM-Towns/Marty

Arcade
PlasmaBlooD - 1'407'730 - 1-7