Since Con-Human has corrupted Earth, you actually start out in space and move deeper towards and into the evil computer’s new Earth until you reach the core. RayForce is structured in the exact opposite way of the Raiden series, which usually starts on Earth then moves out to space.
#Raystorm arcade series#
The music for the whole series was provided by former Capcom composer Tamayo Kawamoto. Ranging from mellow to intense, positive to dramatic and many other styles and tempos, the music really adds to the atmosphere and course of progression. From the upbeat first level track (somewhat dubiously named “Penetration”) to the more solemn second stage (“G”), the adventurous third (“Vision”), the suspenseful fourth (“Cracking”) and so on, each tune fits their corresponding stage to veritable perfection. In short, RayForce looks gorgeous, and it also gets points for one of Zuntata’s (Taito’s in-house band) best ever OSTs. Unbelievably, nearly everything is pure spritework, with the overall graphical style only being matched by Taito’s later Darius Gaiden. Rotating and scaling effects are used liberally but not gratuitously, lending an almost three-dimensional appearance to the game sometimes. Colorful nebulas and planetary horizons are expected for any space shooter, but RayForce really makes the atmosphere feel lively with all sorts of touches asteroids that break off of large rocks, giant ships being torn apart (sometimes by you), collapsing towers and the like.
Of course, this is the sort of stuff you wouldn’t guess by just looking at the game, but discounting the depressing backdrop, what we have here is a beautiful game running on Taito’s relatively new-at-the-time F3 graphical processor (the same graphical system as Darius Gaiden). It’s tantamount to suicide, but it’s the only hope humankind has left to rage against the machine and return to peace. The goal is to break through Con-Human’s space armada and infiltrate earth’s stratosphere and surface, making your way to the newly-mechanized core where Con-Human itself awaits. Humanity takes the counter-offensive and sends the RVA-818 X-LAY starfighter on a mission to terminate Con-Human by any means necessary.
This is bad, and it gets even worse when Con-Human sends out its nigh-infinite weapons to obliterate the trace remnants of humanity, ensuring that only its new lifeforms are all which exist. 99.8% of all humanity is wiped out with the incredibly sparse remainder running off to space colonies as Con-Human remakes the ENTIRE Earth into its whole body. Con-Human causes natural disasters and replaces humans with evil clones modeled in the computer’s ideal image of perfection. While intended to regulate Earth’s environment, a cloned human somehow links with Con-Human’s infrastructure and causes it to lose its marbles. In the classic 2001-inspired “murderous artificial intelligence” plot, humanity screws up by entrusting its fate to a supercomputer dubbed Con-Human. It is somewhat ironic that a dazzling game has a horribly grim backstory beneath it.
The first game, RayForce, was released under various names in different localities, and it went on to create two respectable (albeit arguably not quite as awesome) sequels in RayStorm and Ra圜risis.Īs the first of the trilogy and arguably still the best, RayForce is one of the most impressive vertical shooters of the arcade scene and is still a marvel to behold today. The Ray- trilogy is one of Taito’s lesser-recognized series, but it certainly deserves attention for its overall impressive design and frantic action both ahead and below.
While Space Invaders is very much known even amongst non-gamers and Darius is a favorite for fans of the genre, their third-most prominent shooter series only reached three games which unfortunately remained somewhat obscure. Along with further Space Invaders titles and other shooters such as Insector-X and Metal Black, their primary series would become the Darius saga, beloved for its massive widescreen arcade cabinets (at least for the first two games) and massive robotic boss designs derived from marine wildlife. However, shoot-em-ups have often been one of their favored genres, as it was the ur-shoot-em-up, Space Invaders, which put them on the map. Celebrated for a diverse range of games in the arcade and home consoles, they have tried out many different genres. Taito was one of the most diverse and innovative developers of ’80s and ’90s publishers.
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