Raiden

STORY / GAMEPLAY
Based on the original arcade game Raiden, the year in 2090 A.D. and mother Earth has fallen to deranged aliens. The World's Alliance of Nations developed a supersonic attack fighter called Raiden to defend the Earth from the enemy squadrons. You are the pilot who must take control of the experimental fighter and destroy the alien armadas that just happen to look like odd variations of typical military tanks and planes, with alien gadgets attached in them. Raiden is a pure 2D arcade shoot 'em up that offers various power-ups upon destroying certain enemy units. The Blue power-up grants you with a more powerful laser, a highly advanced weapon that fires forward. The Red one gives you multiple, spread shots. "M" gives you forward firing missiles, the "H" gives you homing missiles and the "B" power-up gives an extra nuclear bomb. Note that, the game was also developed for the PC MS-DOS, the Atari Jaguar, the Sega Genesis (aka Mega Drive), the Atari Lynx and the SNES. There is also a TurboGrafx CD version available. Note that the CD version has better sound effects than the HuCard and also some additional levels plus some brilliant arrangements of the main music.

GRAPHICS / SOUND
The game's visuals are great with a nice palette of colors, smooth scrolling and lots of enemy sprites simultaneously on screen without a single slowdown! It's a game that will immediately make the player realize the PCE's GPU capabilities since the game looks pretty close to the original arcade coin-op version. Regarding the game's sound, the PCE version offers some fun in-game music tunes and arcade quality sound effects. Overall, Raiden is a stunner and among the best shoot 'em up games ever created!