Raiden Fighters (series)

The Raiden Fighters (ライデンファイターズ, Raiden Faitāzu) series is a popular series of top-down vertically scrolling shoot 'em ups for the arcades by Seibu Kaihatsu. It is a spinoff of the original Raiden series. The games were initially distributed in Japan, and were later picked up by international distributors such as the now-defunct Fabtek in the United States, Tuning Electronic in Germany, and The Metrotainment Network and Dream Island in Asia.

The series began with the first game, titled Raiden Fighters, released in 1996. It was followed by two sequels: Raiden Fighters 2: Operation Hell Dive (1997) and Raiden Fighters Jet (1998). It took until the year 2008, a full decade after the release of Raiden Fighters Jet, for any of the games to be ported to a home video game console.

A common belief is that the Raiden Fighters series is part of the original Raiden series. During the first Raiden Fighters' development, it went by the tentative working title of Gun Dogs. Seibu Kaihatsu changed the name to Raiden Fighters before its release. In pre-release market tests, Seibu Kaihatsu discovered that people paid more attention to the game when it had the word Raiden in its name. Two cameo ships from Seibu Kaihatsu's popular vertical-scrolling shooter games, including the mascot ship from main Raiden series, were added to coincide with the name change. There were originally only the five standard aircraft in the first game.

The remnants of this tentative game name can still be seen in several forms in the final Raiden Fighters game.

The general gameplay of the Raiden Fighters series is similar to the original Raiden series. It introduces several new elements of gameplay not present in the original series. Like most games in the scrolling shooter genre, games in the Raiden Fighters series have simplistic controls. An 8-way joystick moves the player's craft around the playfield. A Fire button shoots the player craft's weaponry. A Bomb button unleashes an attack that inflicts serious damage against enemy targets and cancels out enemy fire caught in its blast.

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