Raiden IV

I am new to series. Ik Ik. Mostly because of cost, but I am for sure gonna try to play every game of Raiden I can get digitally! Exellent game!

If you have a physical copy of RAIDEN IV or RAIDEN FIGHTERS ACES, you may notice they were published by either UFO or Valcon. Also, there was a Gamestop limited edition version of RAIDEN IV which included a soundtrack CD. Why do I mention this? I applaud MOSS for bothering to release physical copies in a time when shooters were mostly either Japan exclusive or only available as digital download via Xbox Live Arcade. Print runs of both RAIDEN games were probably very limited, so good luck finding them cheap, and here's hoping RAIDEN FIGHTER ACES becomes backwards compatible soon. About RAIDEN, as a series, it has the pedigree and longevity of the other great shoot em ups of the genre, like IREM's R-TYPE series, the many TREASURE developed bullet hell games, or KONAMI's GRADIUS series, among others. RAIDEN was known for it's vertical scrolling, intense action, and limited continues. A quarter-muncher in arcades that demanded perfect player skills. If you like smups, you'll love RAIDEN!

The Raiden series has always been great and Raiden IV is no exception. Pew! Pew! Pew! Pew! Pew! Pew!

All i'm going to say is thank you Microsoft and thank you America for (finally) allowing me to purchase and play this game. Flawless emulation, working global leaderboards and although it's not the best Raiden in the series (for me that accolade belongs to Raiden 2) it's still an outstanding game. My only teeny tiny negative is that i'd loved to have seen global leaderboards for the different difficulty settings in 360 mode similar to Raiden V. Practice mode in V on paper appeared rather pointless but it turned out to be strangely compelling. Finally - and to clarify.. In the UK a purchase of Raiden IV is impossible via the X360 digital store (trust me, i've tried everything) but an imported (NTSC-USA only) physical copy does work on a UK XBox via backwards compatibility. For fans of the genre I cannot recommend this game enough so just buy it - wherever you happen to be.

I have Raiden V and Raiden IV and I played X in an arcade. Raiden IV is better than Raiden V. I hope They will release a port of Raiden X. a release of TouHou would be nice too