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Ah man, the PC Engine CD...so many shmups with absolutely godlike OSTs that are completely unplayable on real hardware because sound balance is complete garbage and obnonxious SFX are way too loud. Awful, awful console, but great emu-fodder.

Rayxanber 3 is one of those games that is best enjoyed with emulators and custom sound mixing settings. This one really really needs the super low SFX because shot SFX are horrendous. The yellow shot one especially is at best an affront to mankind, and at worst a truly heinous torture tool that I believe is forbidden by the Geneva convention.

Anyways...I knew about this game from a while back when I first messed with PC Engine CD emu and sound balance fixing. I imagine many emus have easy GUI options for it now, but for Mednafen I had to write some short config files (I documented my process here : https://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.php?t=65968 ) I really love the OST in this game and played the game a bit, but not a ton.

I haven't been seriously thinking about this game in a while but I recently saw it mentionned in the Shmup Junkie discord monthly list of shmups from a specific year. The "year of this month" (hahaha) being 1992. I felt like maybe it was a good opportunity to explore the game more, even though I knew the gameplay itself wasn't the strongest point.

It is mostly an old-school memorizer but it's not super hard or anything. From what I understand, 2 is way harder, but I thought the OST was a bit more uneven while this one is basically all bangers so that's why it caught my eye more.

Rayxanber 3 thankfully does not have any kind of clunkly R-Type modules or whatever but the weapon items can be picked up in specific rotations to set the direction they fire in. Kind of a waste of a second button to have it be a dash that's rarely useful outside of stage 2 water that slows you down. I feel like it could have been a rotation button.

But anyways, while those mechanics are alright, the pacing of the levels is definitely a weak point of the game. It's pretty damn slow! But since the music was that incredible and the challenge not suuuuper demanding, I did not mind. There is something to the soundtrack and the charged missiles that keeps me content enough when playing, but it's undeniable stage 1 is bloated, stage 3 walker stays on screen for too long, stage 4 corridors are slow, etc.

Speaking of said corridor, there was this one stage 4 checkpoint that I kept doing over and over for like 10 minutes oooops. The checkpoints are spread apart quite far, with each stage basically having a checkpoint at the beginning, one in the middle, and one for the boss. That's it! Gun Frontier canyon is nothing compared to this length-wise. I kept dying at the very end of stage 4 right before the boss, so I had to redo a tedious slow scrolling segment every time oof. In my initial credit feed scouting run, I did not struggle nearly as much there so I didn't expect this setback hehe. The puzzle boss right after with balls to throw on its face was a much more memorable roadblock. It's kinda funny though how the boost was what ended up getting me out of this rut. Not so useless heh!

Despite that choke point and some other deaths here and there, the run was overall pretty decent I guess. Maybe I could have gone for another cleaner run to get a nice ~30 minute run rather than this overly long one, but oh well. You get an extend every 50k so I had some reserve lives to spend. The scoring itself is broken though as there's infinite checkpoint milking opportunities on the final boss, and probably some infinite milks on other bosses with no timers. Not that I was interested in scoring this game. This ain't no Dr.Toppel scoring!

Final boss is a cool idea but execution is kinda weak. The damage feedback on boss parts is unclear and the weak spots can have super tiny hitboxes. You will also not understand what the fuck you're supposed to do at all the first time around haha. Definitely not a bad finale though. Having the battleship raid as the final climax is better than randomly putting it in stage 3 if you ask me! And the lack of sound effects in that segment combined with the sorta melancholic music is perfectly fitting.

I initially wanted to get this clear on Mania mode, the higher difficulty level. However, this mode also boosts enemy HP and in my first few runs, I realized the dangerous stage 2 snakes/eels were not dying nearly as quickly to my fire attack which was a real bummer. That weapon is probably my favorite for its pretty high strength and melee feeling, so I went back to Standard where I can enjoy it better. And enjoying it I did! It was cool!

Played on Mednafen