Saturn Cover

Battle Garegga

Battle Garegga is a game with a legendarily divisive reputation. Many people regard it as one of the best shooters of all time. Others think that it sucks and that the art style and rank system ruins what would have been some cool ideas. The general style, in addition to the bomb collection system, was also heavily influenced by Taito's 1990 shooter Gun Frontier, to the point where Battle Garegga could be considered a spiritual successor. The storyline takes place in a sort of diesel punk versions of the 1940s. Motors are all over everything, and factories continuously churn out machines, with tall smokestacks littering the scenery. The two main characters, Brian and Jason Wayne, own a very productive automobile factory. A mysterious group called The Federation offers them wealth beyond their wildest dreams if the Wayne brothers start producing weapons. While the Wayne brothers are counting their riches, The Federation begins a world conquest by destroying everything that opposes them. The Wayne brothers quickly figure out that they had made a very poor decision and use four experimental aircraft to go stop The Federation and destroy the machines they made for them. Characters Unfortunately, the Wayne brothers may have made the Federation�fs machines a bit too powerful. Battle Garegga is a very hard game with a brutal twist. Anyone that remembers or has played Compile�fs Zanac will be instantly familiar with what's referring to as a "rank" system. The computer will count how many times you fire your weapon, how many times you grab powerups, how long you go without dying, how many bombs you hoard, even your score count - and then adjusts the difficulty accordingly on the fly. Once the rank goes up, the difficulty increases dramatically. There is one way to make the rank go down - by dying. It creates some ridiculous scenarios where players will intentionally suicide at points to make the difficulty manageable, and can only properly clear it by scoring high enough to rack up extra lives. Then again, the non-Japanese arcade board removes the extend feature, screwing this all up rather royally. Managing rank is especially a pain because, technically, it's invisible - you might not even know there was such a system in place without being informed of it beforehand, unless you really played a lot. Visually, Battle Garegga is incredibly outstanding, with a depth in pixel artwork comparable to Irem games like Metal Slug or In the Hunt. It's got some spectacular looking explosions, as each enemy goes down in different blazes of glory - some are simple, small balls of fire, others are huge, twisting fireworks. Bits of shaprel fly off of every hit. It's might be dark and depressing, but the attention to detail is quite impressive, especially on the gigantic fighter plane bosses. Even though it's a visual treat, the art style proved somewhat controversial, since it ended up intruding on the gameplay. The pacing and amount of bullets have shot up, and while it's not quite a bullet hell shooter, it's considerably more hectic than Raizing's other shooters. In most manic shmups, the bullets are brightly colored and easy to see, so they stand out from the scenery. Not so in Battle Garegga, where the bullets look like actual bullets. These projectiles long, dark silver or gray colored, and tend to blend in with the dark machinery present in both the foreground and background. Many fans quite were quite vocal in their criticism, and so Raizing eventually hey made a second version that replaced many of the realistic looking bullets with bright yellow fireballs. Either way, Battle Garegga looks amazing. Besides the art style and rank system, Battle Garegga has some other interesting features. Once you get options you can program them in a variety of formations, positioning them to fire behind you or command them to spin, again borrowing some aspects from Compile games like MUSHA. Each ship also has its own unique bomb attack (called "bombers" in Raizing parlance.) None of them are your standard �gone big explosion�h either. You get bombers by collecting small, red bombs. It takes forty small bombs to make one large bomb. You can prematurely fire off bombs for a lesser effect if you really need to use them, but saving up for a large bomb may prove more advantageous. The Silver Sword spreads napalm in the opposite direction you move in. It is very powerful, but can be hard to aim. The Grasshopper turns invincible and fires a torrent of bullets at an incredible rate. The Flying Baron launches homing rockets in all directions. The Wild Snail turns invincible and uses a pair of flame-throwers on its wings. One of the more interesting features of the arcade cabinet is the ability to turn on �garrange mode�h through dip switches. Arrange mode lets you choose the order you play most of the levels. You still have to do the valley level first and the airport level last, but it can be fun to mix up the order every once in a while. Taking on some of the later bosses while your rank is still low can make them seem like completely different fights. The scoring system in Battle Garegga is fairly simple. Sometimes enemies will drop medals when defeated. The medals start off small, but as you collect them, they get bigger and are worth more points. If you miss a medal by letting it fall off screen, they revert back to being small again and thus resetting their point value. Picking up medals can increase your rank, so scoring can be pretty dangerous if you do not know what you are doing. The Saturn version of Battle Garegga is another excellent port, and includes the ability to tate the screen or emulate slowdown for an experience closer to the arcade. It also includes some unlockable replay videos. It also features an arranged soundtrack, which remixes some of the music from the arcade version and lets you switch between the two. One of the best pieces is the song �gStomp and Stab�h, one of the pulse pumping boss themes. The music was composed by a young Manabu Namiki, who would later go on to give himself a reputation for excellent shooter and retro-style music, working on several Cave games like Dodonpachi Daioujou, Ketsui, and Mushihime-sama, as well as rearranging old songs for remakes like Fantasy Zone II for the PS2 and the Konami ReBirth titles for the Wii. The style is Detroit techno, not often heard in video games, and it goes great with the non-stop action. The ending credits theme is even a homage to the band Underground Resistance. There is one notable hidden feature in Battle Garegga. By entering a code very similar to the Contra code, you can unlock the characters for Mahou Daisakusen. Unlike in their debut game, all four of them are extremely powerful this time. This appearance foreshadows one of the biggest crossovers in shooter history. While some design decisions may rub players the wrong way, Battle Garegga is still an absolutely classic of the shooter genre. It was designed by Shinobu Yagawa, who previously worked on Recca for the Famicom, and would later helm Raizing's next two games. The Saturn release is quite pricey, and often reaches the triple digits, though not quite as expensive as Radiant Silvergun or Hyper Duel.

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Additional Screenshots

Armed Police Batrider (アームドポリス バトライダー) - Arcade (1998)

Arcade Flyer

Armed Police Batrider

Armed Police Batrider is probably the closest shooter equivalent to SNK's The King of Fighters. There is heavy emphasis on using teams and it is simultaneously a crossover with both Mahou Daisakusen and Battle Garegga. There is even a team edit mode that lets you mix and match characters however you see fit. The only series Raizing missed at this point is Soukyuugurentai/Terra Diver. The original characters from Armed Police Batrider are the most interesting ones. They all ride hover bikes and are separated into three teams: Police Team, Psychic Team, and Criminal Team. Police Team is composed of violent D.D., who is reminiscent of Dirty Harry; Shorty, a girl that has really cool homing missiles; and firebird loving Jyuji. Psychic Team has Maria, a girl with a bomb in her head; Golden, a man with some kind of supernatural power about his eyes; and Strawman, a very tall, quiet man that can talk to trees. Criminal Team is composed of Birthday, a bank robber that apparently loves buzzsaws; Tag-T, the leader of a hoverbike gang; and Adam, a depressed serial killer. There are nine hidden characters - Silver Sword, Grasshopper, Flying Baron and Wild Snail from Battle Garegga, and Gain, Chitta, Miyamoto, and Bornnam from Mahou Daisakusen. All of these were previously playable in their respective games, but includes one new character that is exclusive to Batrider. Her name is Car-Pet, an NPC from Kingdom Grand Prix that you could blow up for fun. In Batrider, she is fully playable. It is interesting, to say the least, playing as a flying carpet that can blow up giant robots and helicopters. Characters Armed Police Batrider also borrows bosses from the games it crosses over with. The Battle Garegga bosses, Black Heart and Glow Squid, surprisingly do not seem too out of place next to the rest of the bosses. The Mahou Daisakusen bosses however, look goofy next to the rest of the game, as the art style totally clashes. A great example of this is the highway level. Imagine chasing a gigantic, futuristic tank down a highway, while powerful robot squid enemies are jumping out from every direction. Then, out of nowhere, a ninja attacks and starts using his ninjitsu to make walls of fire and throw giant burning shuriken. The clash of realities can be either jarring or amazing, depending on how seriously you want to take Armed Police Batrider�fs story. Most shouldn't, obviously. The plotline involves Manhattan being plagued with unprecedented levels of crime and overpopulation in 2004 (which must've seemed like the distant future back when this game was made), so the government turns to the Gigantech corporation. Gigantech makes an artificial island called Zenovia, designed to fight crime and overpopulation. Gigantech also promised to help keep Zenovia under control with its giant robots. By 2019, Zenovia has become a slum and Gigantech is producing very powerful weapons in an attempt to remove itself from the government. Nine �gzero cops�h are sent in to stop this. Three are some of the best cops on any force, three are psychic government experiments, and the last three are criminals that have the opportunity to be released if they help save the world. One of the best parts about Armed Police Batrider is that it keeps with Battle Garegga�fs rank system, but gives it a bit of a tune-up. In Battle Garegga, you start the game at the lowest possible rank and have to be careful not to let it get too high. In Batrider, you start the game at the highest rank. While it's nowhere near as insane as Battle Garegga at the highest rank, it still fills the screen with bullets and will try its very best to see you die. There is one catch, though. Raizing was nice enough to include another way to lower your rank without dying, called grazing. In most manic shooters, you have a hitbox smaller than your sprite. When an attack goes through your sprite, but not your hitbox, it�fs called grazing. It can be very good for scoring, as it gives you extra points, but it's also very risky. By lowering the rank, grazing can be key to your victory. There are other methods taken to try to make Armed Police Batrider easier and more accessible to new players. There is a training mode that includes slower bullets, less levels, weaker bosses, and an auto bomber. Normal mode is quite a step up in difficulty, and Advance mode adds in the final level and is the only mode that offers endings. There is one last mode called Special. Special is a boss rush mode where your ship is always at full power, but that does not stop it from being very difficult. Arrange mode can be enabled through a dip switch, letting you mix and match levels, just like in Battle Garegga. Sadly, your customization is far more limited. You only get to choose what order you do the airport, sewer, and sky levels while the rest of the game is untouched. If arrange mode is off, then the order of those three levels are randomized. The scoring system from Battle Garegga is back too, meaning that you do not have to rely on grazing to boost your score. Chaining medals to make them larger is a bit easier here, partially due to how there are more enemies than in Battle Garegga. One humorous aspect was added - if you miss collecting the largest medal, the announcer will shout �gNo!�h It makes screwing up a bit less of a downer because it sounds so funny. Another thing that returned from Battle Garegga is the bombing. Of note, the auto bomber in training mode only fires full bombs, meaning that picking up small, red bullets is even more important to clearing the game than the other modes. Additionally, you get a new move - a charge shot. You activate the charge shot by not firing your main weapon, which will cause a force field will form in front of your character. Once released, your options will freeze in place and start firing faster until time is up and reverted back to hovering around your character. Armed Police Batrider is a fantastic game. It offers something for the inexperienced and the hardcore alike, and it offers more depth and customization than most shooters. Neither the visuals nor the music is quite up to the levels of Battle Garegga - it has a post-apocalyptic look that is a bit less unique, and the spritework isn't quite as impressive, plus the music is only average, despite the boss theme having an awesome name like "Let's Ass Kick Together". Alas, this one never saw release on a home console.

Armed Police Batrider Armed Police Batrider Armed Police Batrider Armed Police Batrider Armed Police Batrider

Additional Screenshots

Comparison Screenshots

Armed Police Batrider	Mahou Daisakusen
Armed Police Batrider	Battle Garegga
Armed Police Batrider	Mahou Daisakusen
Armed Police Batrider	Shippu Mahou Daisakusen

Battle Bakraid (バトルバクレイド) - Arcade (1999)

Arcade Flyer

Battle Bakraid

Battle Bakraid is the true sequel to Battle Garegga. It takes elements from Armed Police Batrider and experiments with them as well as including some new ideas. The biggest difference between Battle Garegga and Battle Bakraid is the art style. Battle Garegga was a smoke-stained vision the 1940s, but Battle Bakraid drops this for a far more traditional futuristic war style. With Raizing having learned their lesson with Battle Garegga, the bullets are brightly colored, easy-to-see energy balls. In general, the graphics are pleasant, though not quite as detailed. Battle Bakraid also includes a total of nine ships, although as usual most of them need to be unlocked with a cheat code. Instead of being limited to planes, you can also fly jets, flying wings, and strange looking aircraft that don't even appear to be particularly aerodynamic. There is also an option for a Team Edit, similar to Armed Police Batrider. This leads to one of the best original ideas in Battle Bakraid. In Battle Garegga, you had two types of shots, your main shot and your option shot. Battle Bakraid adds a sub shot that can be leveled up. Each ship has a different sub shot, ranging from flame-throwers, to homing lasers, to missiles. You can really get a lot of firepower in Battle Bakraid, along with up to six options that can be programmed. Additionally, the hitboxes are much smaller than that of Battle Garegga, making grazing much easier, especially if you like the flying wings. Battle Bakraid also has difficulty levels directly inspired from Armed Police Batrider, complete with that awesome boss rush mode from before. The rank system is back, but this time it starts in the middle, giving you elbow room to work with raising or lowering it depending on your play style. Since it is much easier to graze in Battle Bakraid, it is also far easier to decrease the rank, making it somewhat easier than Armed Police Batrider in general. That certainly doesn't mean it's an easy game It will cover the screen in more bullets than any other game Raizing has ever made before, to the point where it almost feels like a Cave game. Additionally, you get a charge shot used by not firing the shot button. As it charges you get a force field that can damage enemies if you get close. You can break the force field by pressing the fire button and unleashing a powerful charged attack. This feature was present in Armed Police Batrider, but it was not nearly as powerful as it is in Battle Bakraid due to it powering up too slowly and not doing enough damage to be worth the effort. The scoring system is quite similar to Battle Garegga, with the grazing aspect added in. With all the firepower at your disposal in Battle Bakraid, you can really earn a lot of points. Medals seem to drop more often, so it can be a bit harder to keep the medal chain going. Furthermore, if a medal drops off the bottom, you can restore your chain by not shooting anything else and grabbing the largest medal currently on the screen. Battle Bakraid has its cool moments too, even if it is not nearly as good as Battle Garegga. Most of the bosses are named after mythological beasts. Axebeak is a large bomber plane, while Bahamut is a tank the size of a building. These bosses have a habit of taking multiple forms and coming back even stronger just when you think you destroyed them. One of the coolest is Gigamanta, the boss that comes at the end of the cloud level, a stage already infested with powerful mini bosses. Battle Bakraid may not be as original as Battle Garegga or as stylish as Armed Police Batrider, but it is still a very fun, very well designed, and very challenging game. Living up to being a sequel to Battle Garegga would be nearly impossible, but Battle Bakraid tries its very best and is still an amazing game.

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Additional Screenshots

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