RayForce レイフォース | Arcade | ObscureJapan
4RayForce レイフォース | Arcade
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"RayForce is a vertical space shooter style game by Taito released for the Taito F3 arcade hardware in 1994, and later ported to the Sega Saturn in 1995, Microsoft Windows in 1997, iOS in 2012 and Android in 2017.
Due to trademark problems, when the home version was released in Japan it was renamed Layer Section. When Acclaim published the Saturn version for the North American and European markets, it was renamed Galactic Attack. The game was also titled Gunlock in European arcades.
RayForce was directed by Tatsuo Nakamura, assisted by designer and planner Tomohisa Yamashita and graphic designer Hideyuki Katou. During the mid-1990s, Japanese developer Taito had split up their development teams into three groups, one of which was the Kumagaya Research Group in Saitama; the three were moved to this division of the company. Taito specifically stated that the Kumagaya team wouldn't be able to make any shoot'em up games, to the dismay of several employees within the division; they tried multiple times to get the green light for a new shooter, but Taito executives denied these requests for not being "feasible". Even with these requests being denied, Nakamura and the others were determined to make a shooter, and decided to make a set of design documents to present to Taito higher-ups for approval. Looking for inspiration, Nakamura turned to Taito's earlier game Master of Weapon for its aerial top-down perspective, which he thought would work well with 3D visuals. He was also inspired by Namco's Xevious, which had a targeting reticule for firing bombs at ground-stationed targets; not wanting to simply repeat this, Nakamura decided on a lock-on laser that destroyed multiple enemies at once. Before presenting them to Taito, he showed the documents to the character designers and planners for additional feedback and to iron things out. After having it polished further from the project head of the Kumagaya group, he showed the game to company management, who liked the idea and allowed development to continue.
In contrast to most other shooters from the time period, the team chose not to include screen-clearing bombs for the players, so as to return to the older format of shooters where such weapons weren't present. When designing the lock-on laser, the production staff intended to make it so that players weren't able to lock onto more than four different enemies. One of the programmers shared their opinion to Nakamura for it being too difficult to implement, leading to the laser instead being able to target more than four enemies. A single laser shot out of the player's ship when using the lock-on as a visual cue for when to fire. The team chose to make the game world themed around "inorganic" substances, an idea previously used in Konami's Gradius. Nakamura intended to participate in the construction of the setting later on, however his boss instructed him to focus on programming instead. Due to their experience with designing Darius II, the production staff had little issue with balancing the game's difficulty.
For the game's graphics, Katou chose to use a metallic-esque look similar to Darius, despite the disgruntlement of the management. Nakamura created the software tools for making the graphics, with Katou cycling through different palettes and showing Nakamura which ones looked good, who promptly entered the data into the game. Katou used mostly white for enemies from a far distance so as to prevent them from blending into the background. The limitations of the Taito F3 System arcade hardware proved to be difficult to work with when designing levels, due to the hardware's scaling techniques with backgrounds and objects. As a work around, background objects were made to be simple geometrical shapes and cylinders, using similar techniques in Sega's Space Harrier. The arcade game Metal Black was the inspiration for the dust cloud effect in the second level. Early versions of the game were titled Layer Section, a nod to the multi-layered level designs. The team thought of using pre-rendered computer graphics for the visuals, however Namco's NebulasRay already employed the idea to the anger of Katou, leading the game to instead feature all-2D visuals. The music for the game was composed by Zuntata, Taito's "house band"."
Via Wikipedia
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