Raiden Fighters Aces on Xbox 360 is what you’re looking for.
Used to own it, sold it when my 360 rrod’d. Portable switch copy would be ace though.
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Yeah, Raiden is taking way too long to release. They’re going to milk the Seibu releases and other high profile titles for as long as they can to get extra sales from duller games in between like Circus Charlie (just like Nintendo did for years with the Virtual Console). There was an interview with one of Hamster’s execs a few years ago saying they wanted to get as many as ‘800 titles for ACA released on Switch’ Uh yeah, that can’t be a serious goal when you’re slowly releasing only one title a week.
I’m definitely looking forward to Trigon though, I played it briefly on a friend’s MAME cab years ago and liked it. It has a cool visual style (especially the fire dragon bomb) and there aren’t many vertical Konami shmups. It was supposedly released to compete with Raiden at the time which is also surely another reason why Hamster is getting it out first.
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It is a shame that they got the Raiden release and not like M2. Though I have no idea if M2 even had any interest in it, but man an M2 release of the Raiden games would have been :chef kiss: I just wish Hamster would get to releasing them already.
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Yeah, I like Hamster but ACA isn’t right for the Seibu games overall. Definitely agree we really need full collections handled by M2. At least they got the Toaplan catalog, I just hope they don’t all get drip fed too slowly through the ShotTriggers line, Ketsui took forever to release. M2 is currently doing location tests of Kyukyouku Tiger at Hey arcades in Japan so guessing this indicates they’re going for individual releases instead of collections:
Tonight’s Sunday Night Shmup is Metal Black by Taito, ported from the arcade by Ving for Sega Saturn:
Metal Black features a unique power up system where your ship is constantly collecting “Newalone” molecules generated by the “Nemesis” alien forces (hmmm) which are often biomechanical sea creatures in the same vein as the Darius games.
Collecting the Newalone particles causes your ship to grow stronger and also allows you to unleash a powerful shot which is helpful with wiping out larger waves of smaller enemies and with correct timing can also be used to land critical hits on bosses with a “beam duel” system similar to Darius Burst. In between stages feature Mode 7’esque 3D bonus stages where you target enemies with lock on missiles. I just got the game last week and overall I’m really enjoying it, for a horizontal arcade shooter it feels very unique. It’s also on one of the Taito collections on PS2 and Xbox for those looking to try it.
Oh yeah, and this opening? Now that’s what I call a gripping story. Eat your hearts out, Naughty Dog:
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Playing Detana!! TwinBee and Salamander 2. Not exactly Konami’s finest shooters, but nice diversions from the Gradius series.
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I really like Salamander 2. I played it for the first time at either AVGC, or Too Many Games, last year or the year before that. I had to buy the Saturn collection because I enjoyed it so much.
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Metal Black is great, and at one point early in development it was to be Darius 3 before it changed to its own thing. You can see remnants of this in the first stage, especially in the shell enemy mini boss. Supposedly the story would have been super dark, taking place after the destruction of the Darius homeworld.
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Very interesting, thanks!
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This dropped today. More pushing Salamander 2 love.
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Salamander 2 needs to be on current systems like Salamander 1 is.
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I don’t know, I think ACA releases for the earlier Seibu games will be fine. The Raiden Project really only added some control customization and a remixed OST, so I’m not sure what else you could do with it. They typically include the various regional versions, and their emulation is solid. I don’t know if they’ve slated Raiden for release yet, or if it’s simply in their queue. Raiden II (and possibly Viper Phase 1) will be another story, however, since those games apparently have some protection that make them notoriously difficult to emulate. Given that Hamster has the license for Raiden, though, it’s possible they’ll actually get the information they need to accomplish it.
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Yeah, Ser’s review just makes me want to break out my Salamander Deluxe Pack for Saturn and fire up Salamander 2 
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I think for me, the big thing is the customization, and accessibility that M2 brings to their Shottriggers line. Plus they really seem to strive to have any input delays match as close as possible to the PCB. The ACA releases have typically been not too bad when it comes to lag but there is no denying that M2 does a generally better job there. I think what M2 is doing with their stuff can help bring in so many new people to the shmup genre by making that stuff more accessible. I’d love for more people to appreciate the Seibu.
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I get what you’re saying, but obviously M2 only has so much time & bandwidth to make those ports happen, and with their recent agreement to handle most of the Toaplan catalog, it could be years before we ever saw a release of Raiden, or anything else Seibu, unless they squeezed it into their schedule. I’d rather have an ACA release than nothing at all.
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I wish M2 could have had both lol. Maybe that is too greedy. I am not as into the Toaplan stuff as I am the Seibu shooters.
My copy of the Darius Console collection finally showed up today! Hopefully get some time with it this weekend.
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Finally got mine as well, glad to be done with this whole Strictly Limited/Asendia trouble. Don’t think I’ll be giving them any more business anytime soon.
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