This is Raiden for the Atari Jaguar, and is one of the best titles for the system. Special thanks to MrPants432 who played the second ship (blue). Twitter: #!/implant Facebook: / 174375145940112
I've been playing a bunch of Jaguar games including this one. I love the graphics, gameplay....but the d-pad on the jag makes this game more difficult than it should be. Great review as usual!
@MetalJesusRocks Thanks for all the comments! Raiden is a top 5 Jaguar game for me, and it blows away the Genesis and SNES versions. I agree about the D-Pad, there is something just not quite right. I can't tell if it's lag, or just the fact the d-pad has a mushy feeling to it. One of these days I'll get around to finishing my Neo Geo to Jaguar controller adapter and try Raiden with a proper controller.
@squirm13 This wasn't done to increase the speed of the game, but to perserve the original aspect (vertical shmup) ratio of the arcade title. It is present in the Genesis (black on the right side of screen) and the Playstation ports (black on left and right). It's important from a gameplay perspective as things that are off screen can't shoot at you. I agree it looks out of place, something more subdued, are perhaps balanced on both edges of the screen would have been more desirable!
I have the Jaguar 1st stage theme in my MP3 player and just got the PSone port and first thing I thought was the Jaguar has better music. PSone is a great port though. I had the Super Nintendo port and it was ok. Wish I never sold my Jaguar.
Raiden 2 is hands down my favourite SMUP of all time; It's so very simple in its mechanics that you can jump right in with a mate and have a decent wing-man in minutes, but flexible enough to allow you to experiment to find your preferred weapon set. You can play a nice lazy dodging game with the purple power-ups combined with homing missiles, or go for the devastatingly powerful load-out of laser with the heavy missiles :D
@123doomdoom I would love to try the other versions of the game to compare, looks like it's time to get into the TG-16/PCE. I would also like to track down the PlayStation version.
I'm a big fan of Raiden Trad for the Genesis (1991), and this Jaguar version is better in some regards. The visuals are cleaner and enemy ships tend to catch fire before exploding (nice). The audio quality is cleaner, but the soundtrack lacks bass. This Jaguar edition also offers a two-player simultaneous mode not seen in other versions.
Why is so much space taken up with the information, i know the jaguar was powerful for the time, i love the console, but things like this used to be done to increase the s peed of games.
