DotEmu announces Raiden Legacy for Android and iOS

The Raiden series of games is a series of popular and genre-defining vertical shoot ‘em ups. The series introduced many gameplay mechanics and ideas used by other shoot ‘em ups that were launched after it. Now, DotEmu aims to bring the games to mobile devices. The company is porting over Raiden to Android and iOS and renaming it Raiden Legacy.

According to an official press release, the release will contain the original game, Raiden, along with three instalments: Raiden Fighters, Raiden Fighters II and Raiden Fighters Jet. Raiden devotees will well remember the storyline: an invasion of Earth by an alien race known as the Cranassians threatens humanity’s very existence. To repel the onslaught, the World Alliance Military launches a daring counter-attack with a powerful new weapon: Raiden, a supersonic attack fighter. The Cranassians are closing in as you take the controls. It’s up to you to utilise Raiden’s powerful weaponry against waves of enemy ships, and save the human race.

Raiden Legacy, coming this fall

The Raiden Fighters series was originally made for arcades by developers Seibu Kaihatsu. It is a spinoff of the original Raiden series. 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 in 1997 and Raiden Fighters Jet in 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, in the form of Raiden Fighters Aces for the Xbox 360, complete with online leaderboards and player achievements.

Raiden, Raiden Fighters, Raiden Fighters II and Raiden Fighters Jet will see release later this year in fall.

The developers, DotEmu, are responsible for porting other classic games to phones, such as the old classic in the adventure games genre, Another World. Also known as Out Of This World and released across more than a dozen platforms since its 1991 debut, Another World has attained cult status among critics and sophisticated gamers alike for its cinematic effects in the graphics, sound and cut scenes.

The player plays the part of Lester Knight Chaykin, a young physics researcher. While he is right in the middle of doing science experiments, his laboratory is struck by lighting and completely destroyed, hurling him into another world, a world populated by humanoid creatures, where danger can spring at any moment.

Another game DotEmu is responsible for bringing over to mobiles is R-Type. From a gameplay standpoint, the R-Type series is notable for requiring significantly more memorisation of its maps than many of its competitors. The original game also pioneered the idea of a system of powerups, each of which did something different (three laser crystals with a corresponding weapon, bits, speed boosts and missiles); prior to this implementation, pickups were either point bonuses or all did the same thing.