Raiden Trad

by Electro Brain Corp.

Product Features

• Scrolling Action adventure

Product Details

• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B00005LJEP
• Item Weight: 8 ounces
• Media: Video Game
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #24,276 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes

Product Description

Raiden (?? Raiden?) is a 1990 scrolling shooter arcade game that was developed by Seibu Kaihatsu. It was the first game in the popular Raiden series of scrolling shooter arcade games.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars An average port of Seibu's classic shooter, September 18, 2004

A Kid's Review

= Fun:4.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Raiden Trad (Video Game)

In 1990, Seibu Kaihatsu and Fabtek released the shooter game Raiden, which literally means thunder & lightning, in arcades. It quickly became a smash hit, with many sequels and spin-offs to eventually follow.

In Raiden, you fly over a rural landcape destroying invading aliens collecting powerups, and dodging the fast-moving bullets (your ship is quite slow!). For weapons, you have the bog standard red spread shot and a focused blue laser, both of which you must change and upgrade constantly. Missles either home in or zoom forward, and can also be upgraded.
You also have three bombs, which take a while to land but shield bullets. Enemies, graphics, and music are basic but original, and there are three kinds of bonus items. Lastly, there are little details everywhere, cows grazing, boats sailing, people running around, chimneys smoking.

A couple of years later,Raiden was ported to the Genesis and SNES, under the name of Raiden Trad. This, however, was nowhere near as good.

Because of technical limitations, Trad has a horizontal monitor, unlike its vertically monitored arcade version. Music has been redone for the worse, making it sound like some poor MIDI. Graphics are obviously worse, and look very washed-out. Worst of all, sprites will flicker occasionally and the bomb sprite will inexpainably appear behind a boss after its defeat due to some sort of glitch. Plus, Raiden's originally rock hard difficulty was dumbed down for the SNES release, making it somewhat easy even on Pro difficulty.

The one thing that Trad improves over the arcade version, however, is that there is absolutely no slowdown, even in 2 player mode. Enemies and bullets will appear everywhere, but there will be no slowdown.

All in all, Raiden Trad is a somewhat average port of a reliable old classic. Pick it up if it's cheap, but if you really want to play Raiden, buy the Turbografx version, Raiden Project on Playstation, or even the PCB, if you're willing to shell out that much money.