Raiders arcade game review [Matter of Import 098]
6Raiders is a fixed screen shooter that fails to understand why Xevious was so successful. Subscribe to Blown Cartridges for more retro game review videos: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCoDQj54Gd-w8RTdukMrQScQ?sub_confirmation=1
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Namco’s Xevious was the biggest game since Space Invaders and a bigger hit for Namco in Japan than Pac Man had been, and the home port was one of the Famicom’s first massive successes. One of its big innovations was the two types of attacks - regular shooter fire against airborn enemies, and bombs with a much shorter range that could target ground targets.
In Raiders, Century Electric takes all the wrong lessons from this mechanic and combines it with sluggish gameplay. You still have bombs and regular fire, but in this game the targets you can use each on aren’t as immediately obvious. In a dated-for-the-era structure you’ve got your formation of enemies drifting along at the top of the screen, while one or two descends occasionally to harry you. At the bottom you have four bases to protect, but these only serve as a reminder of how many lives you have remaining and are not otherwise present in the gameplay.
Your regular shots can hit the ships that have come to dogfight with you but will pass harmlessly through those above, which can only be targeted by your bombs - though they do earn you many more points when destroyed while in formation. Likewise, there’s a bonus ship that crosses the screen between your bases and the enemy formation, and shooting this brings you to a bonus stage where you have an decreasing screen real estate to collect falling figures before docking with what’s apparently one of your own bombs at the top of the screen.
Sprites on the screen are large but not terribly detailed, and as I mentioned earlier the gameplay is sluggish - your ship moves only reluctantly, while the enemy vessels are far more nimble, providing the game’s challenge by way of frustrating gameplay.
This is not a game I would recommend, and it’s not surprising to see why it was never exported to the US. I give the game a D ranking.
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"A Matter of Import" is a #retrogame review series where I play console games that were never released in the US in a rough chronological order.
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