I recalled playing this game at an arcade when I was as secondary school student (1996) in Malaysia; it was called Gunlock instead of Rayforce. I was able to get only to Stage 4 only though in all my sessions with this game. It was a unique experience playing this game as it has no bombs, unlike any other shmups that I played in arcade at that time (excluding Irem's R-Type 2 and In The Hunt). For a 2D shmup, this was an amazing game to play back then; the parallax and scaling effect was unprecedented by any 2D shmups that I've ever played. And then, it was back in 2004 I finally realized that Raycrisis on PS1 is actually the prequel to this gem. BTW, you're top notch gamer, Shadowserg.
It was so amazing I picked up the box set of the Rayz Soundtrack for probably 50% more than it retailed in Japan because I loved Zuntata's Tamayo's work on the series
For such a beautiful looking/sounding/series of shooters they had some bleak endings, From having to blow up the Earth in this, Destroying 30% of an inhabited planets mass and dooming the survivors to fall into a gas giant by the explosion changing the planet's orbit in RayStorm and then realizing Earth was also destroyed during your campaign and you have nothing to return to/ Realising all your efforts in RayCrisis were for naught and led to Operation: Rayforce
@misterhadeshazbinincorporated You're right, Raystorm does start on Earth then transitions to space then to Secilia And you're correct again with RayCrisis
Depending on the regions and versions this game has got three other titles: Layer Section, Galactic Attack (lame!) and Gunlock. One of the best games made by Taito and one of the greats of the genre. Superb use of parallax and scaling effects, a necessity given the different planes affected by the weapons.
I was confused by this at first. When I beat it I was like, “Wait, why did I just blow up the Earth?” Of course, it wasn’t until after playing its prequel RayCrisis that I found out why.
@@jamesiewalters2360 If you played RayCrisis, Con-Human pretty much took over the entire planet, going as far as to alter the environment or something. Life was made uninhabitable because of Con-Human’s altering.
I've only played Raystorm which was already a graphics marvel for its time, so I'm more amazed at how the dev team managed to pull off the animation and projectile art with raving pixel graphics alone
Wow! This game has some great visual effects! It's kind of crazy that it's from 1994. I would've guessed early 2000s. Is it just me, or is the final boss kind of lame, compared to nearly all the rest?
