Raiden Fighters

Raiden Fighters
Title screen from the Taiwanese version of the arcade game
Release Date	1996
Developer	Seibu Kaihatsu
Publisher	Seibu Kaihatsu (Japan) Fabtek (North America) The Metrotainment Network (Asia) Tuning Electronic (Germany) Explorer System Corp. (Taiwan)
Platforms	Arcade

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)
1C	Ocean	Carrier Ship	Ocean Stage Giant Boss Area (Mui-Mui-Moo)
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)

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.

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) 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, by New World System for the Microsoft Xbox.

Fan theories, fanfiction, and their origins

A prevalent fan theory, especially in the West, about Raiden Fighters and its sequels is that the series shares the same continuity as the original Raiden series. This assumption is understandable, given that the game has the "Raiden" name, and it even uses the Raiden logo as a basis for its logo design.

The fan theory states that the Raiden Fighters series takes place in AD 2090, the same year that the first Raiden game takes place. The basis of the fanfiction involves exterrestrial beings who fled their homeworld, which was devastated by five world wars over two centuries. They were looking for a new home and discovered a "green star": the planet Earth. Western fans later combined this theory with the "Cranassians" fan theory (another instance of misinformation in the West) and even called the Raiden Fighters series antagonist, the Dictator, the "Cranassian Dictator" (on the Villains Wiki). The fanfiction went so far as place the time period of origin of the "Cranassian Dictator's Military" to before the 19th century. It also referred to each of the three Raiden Fighters games as one of the five world wars, and there are two more world wars not "chronicled".

The origin of this fan theory is the website of New World System, a Japanese game development studio that went out of business sometime in 2003. This company has no relation to the series creator Seibu Kaihatsu. New World System was developing Raiden Fighters Evolution, a port of all three Raiden Fighters games for the original Xbox and the PC, to be released in 2003. Among other changes, including renaming the Slaves as "Synchronizers", New World System completely made up a story for the Raiden Fighters games on their Raiden Fighters Evolution webpage. The story on that page mentions the year 2090AD, an alien invading force being defeated twice by the fighter craft from the original Raiden series, the five world wars on the alien homeworld, calling "Raiden" a "nightmare", and the events on the alien homeworld beginning two centuries prior.

This New World System-created story even made it unsourced to the Japanese Wikipedia article for the first Raiden Fighters game. The Japanese Raiden Fighters Wikipedia article was considered official by the Western fanbase (understandable since it was the only readily available non-Western source at the time) and used as a source for both this very Wiki and the Villains Wiki until early October 2020.

Gallery

Fabtek flyer (US)

JP flyer

Gun Dogs flyer

Gun Dogs flyer (English)

External links

• Info on Raiden Fighters at The Raiden Fighters Emporium
• Article for the Dictator on the Villains Wiki.

References

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)