Raiden (PS1) - Full Run on General (Hard) Difficulty

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PEG

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Published on November 18, 2020 7:38:18 PM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5QJY0x_XaI

Game:

The Raiden Project (1995)

Category:

Let's Play

Duration: 40:45

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67

Full Run of Raiden (雷電) for Playstation on General Difficulty (hardest). This was played on a real PS1 using the Raiden Project (雷電プロジェクト) release of the game. Made it to Stage 2 of loop 2 before I was obliterated in a string of chain deaths.

Stage Listing:
00:00 - Stage 1
03:20 - Stage 2
07:22 - Stage 3
11:06 - Stage 4
16:01 - Stage 5
20:36 - Stage 6
25:32 - Stage 7
29:57 - Stage 8
33:28 - Final Boss + "Ending"
34:46 - Loop 2 Stage 1
37:42 - Loop 2 Stage 2

Since recently completing the Turbografx-16/PC Engine version of Raiden, I felt like tackling another version since it was still fresh on my mind. That brings us to The Raiden Project, which is the supposedly arcade perfect version of Raiden (1 & 2) that was released for Playstation.

Now I say "supposedly" arcade perfect because while very close to the arcade version, it is not exactly the same, there always seems to be subtle differences and strange changes in these ports. Right off the bat I noticed the sounds effects are different, specifically the sound of your gun firing sounds weird in this version. In the options it allows you to chose between the "original" music (which doesn't actually sound like the arcade version) or the Playstation specific remixed version, which is what I used.

Thankfully the graphics are spot on, and the levels appear to be the same, I didn't find any missing enemies of cuts made to the stages. This version is probably as close as you are going to get to playing the actual PCB (or MAME emulation).

That said, all of this only holds true if you are playing the game in the proper tate mode (3:4 aspect ratio, like a vertical monitor in an arcade cabinet). The Japanese version of Raiden Project has this as a selection option, however the US version (the one I'm playing) does not.

So to get true tate mode using the US Raiden project, you actually need a Gameshark code: 80050BAC 0003. You will then need to rotate your TV or monitor to play it properly. Yes, I went through all of this trouble to try and get the perfect home version of Raiden working on original hardware, call me crazy.

I decided to play the game on general difficulty, which is the highest setting, called General. I believe this roughly correlates to the arcade difficulty, if not a bit higher. On this difficulty you only really get an extend at 1 million points (and also 5 million, but good luck ever getting that score...). The default difficulty, Colonel, appears to be easier than the arcade version when I was playing it so I abandoned that. Go big or go home!

Thankfully and mercifully the US Raiden project has NO CHECKPOINTS by default (you can turn them back on in the options if you are sadistic enough), so you actually stand a fighting chance to get back on track after death. It's still a minuscule chance, but you can certainly limp along and bomb spam everything with your remaining lives.

So far I've played and cleared 4 different versions on home console Raiden (SNES, Genesis, TG-16, and now PS1) and I can definitely say this is by far the closest to the original game. Even with all those done there are still more versions (PC Engine CD version, Atari Jaguar, FM Towns Marty, Lynx...and even MS DOS!) that I plan on playing at some point.

I highly recommend the Raiden Project release, since you also get Raiden II as well, which until only a few years ago wasn't even emulated.

Note: the video I captured actually had to be rotated in post processing in order to display like it does here.

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