Armed Police Batrider

Welcome to Violent City!

Armed Police Batrider is a Vertical Scrolling Shooter developed by Raizing and released in arcades in 1998. It is the Spiritual Successor to Battle Garegga.

In 2004, crime in Manhattan was at an all-time high. It had earned a reputation as a VIOLENT CITY. Even law enforcement was unable to deal with it, until GiganTech Cybernetics Corporation stepped forth and assembled the artificial island Zenovia.

Unfortunately, fast forward to 15 years later, where crime in Zenovia has gotten to the point where it's pretty much just as bad as even worse than it was in Manhattan. An investigation into GiganTech reveals that it is run by Corrupt Corporate Executives who had, in actuality, set up Zenovia as a base for their latest black market weapons.

Nine fighters--three top-tier police officers, three Boxed Crooks, and three psychics--are drafted as "Zero-Cops" and dispatched via the BatRider airbikes to liberate Manhattan from its criminal shenigans and crush the CEO of GiganTech.

Batrider rides heavily on the Battle Garegga formula, with its highly destructible terrain, challenging enemy and bullet patterns, ever-changing difficulty, and dozens of secret scoring tricks. However, it also adds many new features, such as a more vibrant color scheme (vs. Garegga's Real Is Brown) and a The King of Fighters-style team system in which the player can select three of nine eighteen different ships (alternating to the next ship on a life loss). If you liked Battle Garegga, or simply like Bullet Hell games in general, this just might be the game for you.

Official Japanese site here.

Armed Police Batrider contains examples of:

 * Absurdly Spacious Sewer -- Spacious enough for spaceships and what not to fly in!
 * Adjective Noun Fred
 * Announcer Chatter -- "WELCOME TO VIOLENT CITY!" "COOL!" "MAHVELOUS!"
 * Arachnid Appearance and Attire -- After losing one of her arms three years before the events of the game, Sobut arranged to have it replaced with three more, then proceeded to get eight extra eyes grafted on. She's called the "Green Spider" for a reason.
 * Arms Dealer -- One of GiganTech's specialties. The Buzzcock and Deviate the players fight were charted to be smuggled out of the country to foreign customers.
 * Awesome but Impractical -- Gain can upgrade his Battle Valhallyzer to the Galaxy Valhallyzer in mid-game...by missing a 1-Up item and then getting the next Option powerup...all without having any Options beforehand.
 * Big No -- The announcer drops one if you get a Game Over (and refuse to continue) or if you break your medal chain when medals are at their maximum value of 10,000 points or worse, miss a 1-Up item.
 * Bonus Boss -- Nine of them (technically 12, although the conditions make fighting one of the extra three mandatory on a typical run). The majority are lifted straight out of past Raizing shooters. You need to have a ship originating from the game that the boss originally appeared in and (if you're not playing Special Course) fulfill some other obscure requirement, then defeat the main boss of that stage.
 * Boss Game -- The Special course.
 * Bullet Hell
 * Cigar Chomper -- Gigayama Tiger, the head of GiganTech himself.
 * Clear My Name -- The Police Team were imprisoned on trumped-up charges, then offered this mission in exchange for their freedom. Of course, the police chief is hoping they get killed instead...
 * The Cracker -- Blunt, to the degree that he was sentenced to 325 years in prison. Suffice to say that Gigayama decided he'd be more useful with GiganTech...
 * Cute Bruiser -- Shorty.
 * Cybernetics Eat Your Soul -- Apparently, Gigayama tried to broach Hollywood Cyborg levels of cybernetic implants before the Zenovia plot, but people feared that this would be the result (and with people like Envy and Sobut around, that's kind of understandable). The arms smuggling appears to be to finance and test just such a level of cyberneticization.
 * Difficulty by Region -- A minor example: In some versions, when you reach a score needed for an extend, you automatically get an extra life instead of needing to get the item for it.
 * The Dragon -- Envy. However, because of how the selection routine for st. 5's bosses works, you're not guaranteed to fight him. In-story, though, Jyuji and Sandman's commentaries confirm that Envy was fought and defeated along with Sobut and Blunt.
 * Dynamic Difficulty -- This game has the Rank mechanic.
 * Easy Mode Mockery -- Training Course offers easier bullet patterns and automatic bombing, but you only get 3 stages.
 * Engrish
 * A lot of the announcer's comments.
 * Many song titles, most notably "Let Ass Kick Together!" and "Chop U!", two of the game's boss battle themes.
 * Explosive Leash -- The Psychic Team have bombs implanted in their brains. A soldier in a helicopter tries to make them come with him back to the base but Golden had removed the bombs earlier. He uses them to blow up the helicopter, and they escape to freedom.
 * Fun with Acronyms -- Notice what the initials of the game's name are.
 * Gotta Catch Em All -- Medal chaining is in this game, just like in Battle Garegga
 * Gratuitous English -- Everything that isn't a menu choice, even the many many endings, is in English, albeit rather terrible English.
 * Guest Fighter -- Entering a code in one of the earlier versions, or adjusting machine settings on newer revisions and overseas versions, will enable the hidden Mahou Daisakusen and Battle Garegga ships, for a total of eighteen characters. Birthday the criminal and Golden the prince return the favor by appearing in Great Mahou Daisakusen.
 * Hemisphere-Wrecking Wave -- The northern hemisphere's still picking itself back up after an English nuclear power plant meltdown released nuclear ash that not only covered much of Europe, but rode the jet streams to North America and Mongolia. Death toll: around 20,000. Affected toll: around 160,000,000.
 * Hollywood Cyborg -- Romero in Birthday's solo ending. Note that he's also her vehicle.
 * Envy. At least 80% of his body is mechanical, and it's rumored that that long coat of his is meant to hide the fact that his torso no longer looks even remotely human.
 * Human Resources -- Those green vials in the final stage? They extract energy from the humans inside! And then they get used as power cells for Discharge and its sentinels. Apparently, no energy source existed that could properly power Discharge, except Zenovia's hapless prisoners...
 * Humongous Mecha -- The Rivals at the end of st. 5, and Grubby is a kind of centaur-ish mech (it has the head, arms, and upper torso, but a relatively normal vehicle/tank chassis rather than legs). Also Robo-Gob if you have a Mahou Daisakusen character in your retinue.
 * Kaiju -- Miyamoto's ending is to launch an acting career in this role.
 * Lethal Joke Character -- Car-Pet originally appeared in Shippu Mahou Daisakusen as an NPC who always died on the first stage. In this game, however, she has excellent straight-forward firepower.
 * Loads and Loads of Characters -- 9 or 18, depending on machine settings.
 * Marathon Level -- The first five stages take about ten minutes to complete. The last two stages take that same amount of time.
 * Medium Awareness -- In Car-Pet's ending, she comments that she thought Batrider is rather easy for a Raizing game and that players should check out her (fake) RPG once it's complete.
 * Multi-Armed and Dangerous -- Sobut and Grubby. Note, by the way, that the st. 5 mechs are just called Red, Yellow, and Green; Envy, Blunt, and Sobut are the pilots. So Green is the multi-armed mech, Sobut is its pilot, and she actually is multi-armed herself!
 * Multiple Endings -- 21 unique endings for Advanced mode (3 for the pre-arranged teams, 18 for solo characters). Moreover, if you're using a Gareggaplane, Brian's or Jason's ending monologue changes depending on which of their two ships you used.
 * Nintendo Hard
 * One Nation Under Copyright -- GiganTech slowly glommed up more and more of Zenovia until it was its own little fiefdom (and guinea pig supply). Also, it would appear that New York, New Jersey, and Michigan fell prey to this.
 * Psycho Prototype -- Boredom was supposed to be an automated patrol unit (or at least that's how GiganTech billed it) to relieve police of crime pressure. However, when the first day of operation results in 31 dead and 326 wounded, you can understand how it got retired immediately. From the ostensible purpose, that is.
 * Retraux -- Car-Pet's ending, complete with an 8-bit song.
 * Rewarding Vandalism -- Like Garegga, Smart Bombing the scenery can uncover special powerups and medals.
 * Right-Hand-Cat -- According to his character art, Blunt has one.
 * Setting Update -- Battle Garegga + more color + set in cities instead of war zones = this.
 * Shopping Montage -- Chitta's ending shows her celebrating her victory with some shopping back in New York. Does she become a fashion icon?
 * Spider Tank -- Deviate.
 * Spiritual Successor -- To Battle Garegga obviously. The gameplay would receive a Spiritual Successor in the form of Ibara, with the same programmer (S. Yagawa).
 * Stage Bypass -- Normal Course can be made to be even shorter than Training: go into Stage Edit, select "YES", then select the "QUIT" option. Your only stages will be Metropolis (the first stage) and Highway (the last stage), for a total of 2 stages. There's even an unofficial leaderboard for this challenge.
 * Suicide Mission -- In the Police Team's and Shorty's solo endings, it looks like the police chief was hoping this would prove to be the case, especially with Shorty.
 * Superpower Meltdown -- In Maria's ending, she loses control of her psychic powers after using them to boost her attack power for too long. Fortunately for her, it was All Just a Dream.
 * Tank Goodness -- Grubby.
 * Theme Naming -- The boss names are all connected in some way to the 1980s rock-and-roll scene.

♪ Let Ass Kick Together!