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Raiden: Difference between revisions

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=== The series exhibits the following tropes: ===
* [[1-Up]]: Most games in the series avert [[Every Ten Thousand Points]]; instead, you gain 1-ups by fulfilling some [[Guide Dang It|obscure]] requirements in later stages.
* [[Airborne Aircraft Carrier]]: All of the games begin by launching from one of these, and end by landing on it.
* [[Awesome but Impractical]]: The purple Plasma laser, as cool as it looks, does less damage than the blue laser or the [[Spread Shot]] at point blank. Not to mention that it's distracting.
** It ''is'' quite useful for the [[Final Boss]] in ''II'' due to the fact that there are so many targets scattered about, handling all the [[Mook|Mooks]] whilst doing consistent damage to the actual boss at the same time.
*** It's also useful for the second boss in ''II'', since it lets you blast it while flying completely above the second form's flak storm (the guns don't cover the boss's sides or back). Just remember that the flame scatter ''can'' find you up there, but that's easy compared to the flak. Granted that the angles of all the flak storm's bullets are fixed, but given that the boss is moving around while shooting...
*** On a side note, if you get shot down in the later stages of ''II'' and ''D/XDX'', you probably want to climb up with purple, not red. This is because even at the weakest levels, the plasma laser can whip to the sides of the screen rather quickly, making it of vital importance for getting rid of minor aircraft (especially the [[Goddamned Bats]]-caliber ones in st. 6).
* [[Boring but Practical]]: The red vulcan shot, mostly because if (''if'') you can nose up close enough to an enemy to make all of the spray hit it, it will suffer more damage more quickly than even with the full-power blue laser. It is ''not'' uncommon to get a mid-sized enemy destroyed this way before it can even start shooting. To summarize, red is your standard-purpose, blue is for concentrated power when point-blank is ''not'' an option, and purple/green is for blue purposes that also need you to hit things ''behind'' that strong opponent.
* [[Bullet Hell]]: Later games have denser bullet patterns, although the focus remains on fast aimed shots.
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* [[Dolled-Up Installment]]: The whole [[Raiden Fighters]] series started out as an unrelated game called ''Gun Dogs''.
* [[Double Play]]: The home ports of both ''III'' and ''IV'' have a mode where you can control both ships on the same controller.
* [[Dual Boss]]: The first Boss fight of ''I'' and ''II'' are two tanks and two [[Spider Tank|Spider Tanks]], respectively.
** Two tanks again in ''III''. In ''IV'', the fourth boss is a pair of tanks that take to the air when they suffer enough damage.
* [[Dynamic Difficulty]]: In ''I'' and ''II'', if you mange to make it far without dying, the difficulty gets batshit insane. Tanks will fire very fast ''and'' [[Improbable Aiming Skills|accurate]] shots almost as soon as they enter the screen!
* [[Easy Mode Mockery]]: Clear ''Raiden IV'''s Light mode and you're treated to an ending cutscene where the [[Airborne Aircraft Carrier]] you took off from gets destroyed ([[Soundtrack Dissonance|to the tune of the happy ending theme]]). Then you're told to try Original mode and the game ends without going to the second loop.
* [[Everything's Better with Cows]]: Every game's first stage sends you flying over a farm with some cows. Cows that have ''animated sprites.''.
* [[Grievous Harm with a Body]]: In ''II'' and ''DX'', destroyed airborne enemies have a pretty good chance of crashing into the ground instead of just exploding in mid-air. If their landing point happens to be on top of a ground enemy, that poor enemy is going to be ''hurting'' (if not destroyed outright). Like with the things noted in [[Serial Numbers Filed Off]], this is another element from [[Toaplan]] games, in this case Flying Shark/Sky Shark. In that game, if an enemy biplane was shot from far enough away, it would indeed crash-land rather than just explode—and destroy any hapless tank, patrol boat, or anti-aircraft gun that happened to be underneath.
* [[Hitbox Dissonance]]: Later games in the series reduce the ship's hitbox to the size of most [[Bullet Hell]] hitboxes.
* [[Lightning Gun]]: Come on! Don't fool us with the laser-beam shape, Plasma! We know you to actually be lightning!
* [[Marathon Level]]: The “training”"training" campaign of ''Raiden DX'' is one long (about 15 minutes) continuous level.
* [[Nerf]]: The Lock-On Plasma Laser became the Proton Laser in ''III'' then came back in ''IV'' albeit with different coding.
** To be fair, the Lock-On Plasma Laser never was a good weapon to begin with.
* [[Nintendo Hard]]: The older games in the series show that just because it's not [[Bullet Hell]] doesn't mean it's any easier.
* [[Product Placement]]: The Genesis port of the first game adds a really hard level that appears after the credits. Beating it will show a message advertising one of Micronet's (the port developer) game, ''Heavy Nova''.
* [[1-Up]]: Most games in the series avert [[Every Ten Thousand Points]]; instead, you gain 1-ups by fulfilling some [[Guide Dang It|obscure]] requirements in later stages.
* [[Product Placement]]: The Genesis port of the first game adds a really hard level that appears after the credits. Beating it will show a message advertising one of Micronet's (the port developer) game, ''Heavy Nova''.
* [[Recurring Boss]]: The giant jet bomber that launches missiles that look kind of like smaller planes.
* [[Recurring Boss Template]]: The first boss battle of the first three games pits you against a [[Dual Boss|duo of ground enemies]] (gun platforms in the first, [[Spider Tank|spider tanks]] in ''II'' and giant tanks in ''III'') with the weaker one appearing slightly before the other. ''IV'' broke the trend by having a single spider tank instead.
** Also, there's the missile-carrying bomber in those games' second stages, and the giant aqueous vessel in the third stages (a battlecruiser in ''I'', a submarine in ''II'' and ''III'').
* [[Recycled in Space]]: Seibu's [[Self-Plagiarism|own]] ''Viper Phase 1'' is this series <small>IN SPACE</small>! Its soundtrack is even unlockable in the Playstation port of ''Raiden DX''.
* [[Sequential Boss]]: The fifth boss of ''Raiden II''. First you destroy a space shuttle, then fight the fighter it was carrying, and finally face off with the orange jet housed inside it. Also kind of a [[Climax Boss]], considering it's the last level on Earth.
** Also the Final Boss, which has you fire at the core of this giant purple obsidian-temple-thing, with more and more crap coming out of the temple ([[Mook|Mooks]] and bulletfire) as the battle goes on.
** Many of the bosses of the later games do this, as well as [[Turns Red|Turning Red]].
* [[Spider Tank]]: The first Boss(es) of ''II'', also unofficially known as the "Death Walkers". You have to fight [[Dual Boss|two of them]] (thankfully, not at the same time, unless you're slow in cutting down the first one). One is also the first boss of ''Raiden IV''.
* [[Spread Shot]]: The default (red) weapon.
* [[Video Game 3D Leap]]: ''Raiden III'' took the presentation aproach.
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