US release of Raiden IV now official

I'll just be happy when I can get past 1-3 on one life. 1-1 to 1-2 is usually no problem, beyond that it gets a lot harder. I'll have to send you an XBL friend request sometime.

Fucking A I want to play this...stupid RRoD

I had to cancel my Gold renewal so I used up my remaining points on the extra ships.

How's the soundtrack?

KanYozakura said:

How's the soundtrack?

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It's pretty good. There are some sweet remixes on the OST too.


I just put up a 29 million score on 360 mode which puts me at #74 on the leaderboard. Not super great, but improving

BBH said:

It's pretty good. There are some sweet remixes on the OST too.


I just put up a 29 million score on 360 mode which puts me at #74 on the leaderboard. Not super great, but improving

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lol yeah I meant the OST but good thing that IV has a good score too.

Has anyone managed to get this locally? All the Gamestops in my area don't have it...

Just cracked 10M. 1-3 gets crazy but hot damn it's fun. This game makes me feel like a quivering puddle of non-skill...but man...if there's anything I LIVE FOR, it's the brief moment where you eclipse what you could do before...getting that much further in a level, breaking your old high...it's really what gaming has always been about for me.

whats the deal? my high score is only 8.5 mil. im tanking

Loopz said:

Just cracked 10M. 1-3 gets crazy but hot damn it's fun. This game makes me feel like a quivering puddle of non-skill...but man...if there's anything I LIVE FOR, it's the brief moment where you eclipse what you could do before...getting that much further in a level, breaking your old high...it's really what gaming has always been about for me.

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Amen to that brother!

nm. i cracked the case, well over 10mil now.

Are there any good resources for learning how to properly play this type of game. Right now i kinda sweep back and forth trying to kill everything anf use the bombs to save my tail when i get in trouble. But once i am out of bombs it is usually a pretty quick kill. Specifically do people look up screen or focus more on dodging by looking more at your ship? How do you "catch up" when you have let too many eemies gang up on you? Stuff like that. I want to take my game to the next level so to speak.

Yeah this game's scoring system is mostly based on killing the regular enemies so surviving longer will get you a higher score. That makes it feel even more rewarding when you get farther in the game, especially since you can rest easy knowing there isn't some arcane scoring system that has to be figured out first, like the whole medal system in the Raiden Fighters games. The only thing that really screws over your score is dying near the end of a level, because then you lose all your collected medals... but even then it's not a completely unrecoverable loss (although dying early always sucks!)

j_heiger said:

Are there any good resources for learning how to properly play this type of game. Right now i kinda sweep back and forth trying to kill everything anf use the bombs to save my tail when i get in trouble. But once i am out of bombs it is usually a pretty quick kill. Specifically do people look up screen or focus more on dodging by looking more at your ship? How do you "catch up" when you have let too many eemies gang up on you? Stuff like that. I want to take my game to the next level so to speak.

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This is obvious advice, but if you need some ideas check out the leaderboard replays to get some ideas on how to tackle levels/bosses. Do be warned though that some of the top scorers use the classic Raiden ship (the DLC one), which is slower but also more powerful... so they can get away with point-blanking certain enemies faster or whatever.

In general you don't want to be sweeping back and forth across the screen too quickly. Most enemies, especially the smaller ones, do not fire a spread of shots but rather fire bullets that are aimed directly at where you are on the screen. You don't need to make a grand sweeping movement to dodge a lot of bullets in that instance, all you have to do is give the ship one little tap to the side and you're safe. In some intense situations you can get through simply by tapping your ship across the screen, little by little. Of course you can't do that ALL the time since there will be some bigger enemies that use shot patterns that aren't aimed towards your ship, but you'd be surprised how useful small taps can be. More importantly this also keeps you from getting cornered on the side of the screen too quickly, which can be huge trouble if you double back and move directly into a bullet that was just now getting to a previous location you were in.

I just put up a 29 million score on 360 mode which puts me at #74 on the leaderboard. Not super great, but improving

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you're BBH, you should be #1. that's not good enough.

Thanks for the advice BBH. I will try being a bit more disciplined with my dodging as it was in fact the corner and doubling back that killed me the most. By the way, i love that little sound effect that it makes when you are danger close to getting killed but didn't. Its as nice effect that lets you know whats what and adds to the intensity.

joe8 said:

you're BBH, you should be #1. that's not good enough.

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You're a weirdo.

j_heiger said:

Thanks for the advice BBH. I will try being a bit more disciplined with my dodging as it was in fact the corner and doubling back that killed me the most. By the way, i love that little sound effect that it makes when you are danger close to getting killed but didn't. Its as nice effect that lets you know whats what and adds to the intensity.

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Yeah getting close to a bullet is called grazing, you can actually get bonus points from it in the Raiden Fighters series but it doesn't really serve any purpose in this game other than to make you feel like a badass.

You're a weirdo.

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why do u say that? i'm not always totally serious with my posts.

I guess BBH is proof u can have a talent at something, without being all that friendly a person. But he sounds like an OK guy on his high score videos.

He's just being honest joe8, you are a weirdo, that doesn't make him unfriendly at all.

This game is infuriating! the default ship and the MK II move way too slow, the fairy's weapons (save for the vulcan) suck, and the bullets move way too fast...

I need more practice....

Earlier this week I was picking up Muramasa at the local gamestop and I noticed Raiden IV behind the registers as I was checking out. I told the clerk to add it to my order. After he reads the Gamestop LE Bonuses to me he says

"So this is the sequel to Ikaruga! We have one(ikaruga) in stock for the gamecube, $40 no case or booklet"

I explained I already owned Ikaruga and that Raiden IV was not a sequel to it, and that it had a different developer. I paid and got the hell out of there.

I haven't had a chance to pop it open yet...

agustusx said:

Earlier this week I was picking up Muramasa at the local gamestop and I noticed Raiden IV behind the registers as I was checking out. I told the clerk to add it to my order. After he reads the Gamestop LE Bonuses to me he says

"So this is the sequel to Ikaruga! We have one(ikaruga) in stock for the gamecube, $40 no case or booklet"

I explained I already owned Ikaruga and that Raiden IV was not a sequel to it, and that it had a different developer. I paid and got the hell out of there.

I haven't had a chance to pop it open yet...

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LOL. Gotta love Gamestop, mecca of gaming knowledge

Anyways, I'll have to check this out. I had no idea it was coming out and just suddenly saw it. I bought Raiden III on a whim when I saw it for $20 at Wal-Mart and loved it, and loved the Raiden arcade games as well.

BBH said:

Yeah this game's scoring system is mostly based on killing the regular enemies so surviving longer will get you a higher score.

*snip*

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I'd like to say I read this post last night, fired up Raiden IV for one go before bed and immediately broke my high score. Haven't broken the 10mil ceiling (I'm terrible at shmups) but thanks for the tips BBH.

Whats everyone's preferred weapon? I find the Vulcan to be the easiest for me since it allows me to stay within a smaller area in the screen.

Buro Destruct said:

I'd like to say I read this post last night, fired up Raiden IV for one go before bed and immediately broke my high score. Haven't broken the 10mil ceiling (I'm terrible at shmups) but thanks for the tips BBH.

Whats everyone's preferred weapon? I find the Vulcan to be the easiest for me since it allows me to stay within a smaller area in the screen.

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Good to hear it helped, keep it up!

Weapon choice depends entirely on the level. I run with laser + homing missiles for most of the game, usually changing to forward missiles on bosses. Switch to vulcan for some parts, like midway through 1-3 and midway through 1-4, going back to laser right before the boss of course. Been using vulcan on 1-5 but starting to wonder if laser might be better. 1-6 I use proton laser for the first half, vulcan for second. Vulcan for 1-7 too... if I could get there reliably... as I keep making fuckups on earlier levels...


Since I'd been having shitty luck on 360 mode I decided to work on getting an Arcade mode score up on the leaderboards, and despite a dumb death on the 1-4 boss I managed to get to the second loop and met my end at the 2-3 boss. 37,458,880 points and rank #35 on the leaderboards. I know some people will say that's just not good enough but I'm fairly satisfied with that. Gotta try to hit the loop on 360 mode next.

Since I'd been having shitty luck on 360 mode I decided to work on getting an Arcade mode score up on the leaderboards, and despite a dumb death on the 1-4 boss I managed to get to the second loop and met my end at the 2-3 boss. 37,458,880 points and rank #35 on the leaderboards. I know some people will say that's just not good enough but I'm fairly satisfied with that. Gotta try to hit the loop on 360 mode next.[/QUOTE]


Good work man ....

BBH said:

Good to hear it helped, keep it up!

Weapon choice depends entirely on the level. I run with laser + homing missiles for most of the game, usually changing to forward missiles on bosses. Switch to vulcan for some parts, like midway through 1-3 and midway through 1-4, going back to laser right before the boss of course. Been using vulcan on 1-5 but starting to wonder if laser might be better. 1-6 I use proton laser for the first half, vulcan for second. Vulcan for 1-7 too... if I could get there reliably... as I keep making fuckups on earlier levels...


Since I'd been having shitty luck on 360 mode I decided to work on getting an Arcade mode score up on the leaderboards, and despite a dumb death on the 1-4 boss I managed to get to the second loop and met my end at the 2-3 boss. 37,458,880 points and rank #35 on the leaderboards. I know some people will say that's just not good enough but I'm fairly satisfied with that. Gotta try to hit the loop on 360 mode next.

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Yeah it sort of dawned on me just before I broke 10 mil last night that the reason you get a weapon power-up ship at the beginning of each level is that some weps work better than others on certain levels. Watching the number 1 score replay on 360 mode also confirmed this but I only watched his playthrough until the end of 1-2, I don't want to "spoil" how to play this game, but watching him provided some additional insight on what to do.

Just wanted to share with everyone, UFO Games kind of quietly released a "Secret File of Raiden IV" pdf file from their website. It contains some cool high-res artwork, technical drawings of enemies, damage tables, and reveals the locations of some of the Sol towers.

http://www.podcast198x.com/downloads/the-secrets-of-raiden-iv/ for a DL link.

Uhg, I have to go to the CoinStar so I can afford this...

oh crap I did'nt realize this was out. I bet Gamestop wont even have it though. They dont have shit anymore and they've gotten even worse, which I didn't think was possible.