Raiden Fighters Aces: Raiden Fighters Jet, 1 & 2

Raiden Fighters Aces: Xbox Budget Title - Raiden Fighters Jet

Raiden Fighters Aces, which contains the arcade classics Raiden Fighters 1, Raiden Fighters 2, and Raiden Fighters Jet, allows you to maneuver through a wild romp over a battle torn war zone in a some form of super jet that never runs out of ammunition or fuel, calls miniature planes to its side for assistance, and is equipped with any number of cool tracking lasers and homing missiles.

With an overall metacritic score of 73, and a slightly higher metacritic user rating of 80, Raiden Fighters Aces is your best bet for a Raiden game on your Xbox. Your only other option is Raiden IV, which is not nearly as fun, has fewer features, and garnered a metacritic score of only 63. And rightfully so, too, because its not as good of a game. Perhaps the most obviously glaring mistake in Raiden IV was the choice to limit ship selection to a single fighter. That is, unless you are willing to shell out a few more bucks in the Xbox live store to download another ship. Not cool, UFO Interactive; not cool. But enough about the bad options for Raiden on your Xbox, lets talk about the good option.

Raiden Fighters Aces: Features

Besides being chalk full of shmupy goodness and (at times) nearly solid bullet curtains, Raiden Fighters aces offers extra features in addition to the three arcade games. You can play Raiden Fighters 1, 2, or Raiden Fighters Jet in the normal arcade mode, adjust the difficulty to fit your skill level, and change the number of credits that you have available for continues.

There is also a Boss Run mode, which allows you to skip directly to the bosses for each level. Why spend five minutes trying to get to a boss when you can just jump right to him and blow his oversized weaponry to bits? Well, if you don’t want to, you don’t have to.

If you are a high-score addict like I am, you will appreciate the Score Attack mode, which pits you in a timed run to maximize your points and then compare them to others on Xbox live. If you have a particularly spectacular run and want to show your friends, Raiden Fighters Aces allows you to save whole game runs into clips that can be accessed at a later date.

Raiden Fighters Aces: Overall Opinion

If you like the classic shoot ’em up genre, then you are likely already familiar with the Raiden series. This title, with a retail price of $19.99, adds three additional easy-to-play, difficult-to-master shooters to your collection. It is the type of game that you can play with inexperienced friends, as well as other shmup die hards. For the price, you are going to have a hard time finding a better place to invest your shooter dollars on the Xbox 360, especially if you can pick up a used copy below retail.

Resources

Scan of box and screenshot of Raiden Fighters Jet gameplay taken by Michael Elkins.

Raiden Fighters Aces Metascore and link to reviews: https://www.metacritic.com/game/xbox-360/raiden-fighters-aces/critic-reviews

Raiden IV Metascore and link to reviews: https://www.metacritic.com/game/xbox-360/raiden-iv/critic-reviews