Vertically-Scrolling Shooter RXN: Raijin Announced For Nintendo Switch eShop

I love the smell of new Switch shmup in the morning!
Smells like.. instabuy!

Meh. For me, scrolling shooters are a worn out genre. Unless something is able to compete with Tyrian for vertical scrolling or Jets 'n' Guns for horizontal scrolling, it's an easy pass. There are more interesting games to play. I say this as a formerly huge fan of scrolling shooters.

One the one hand, a Japanese shm'up with mechs and an anime inspired story.

On the other hand, environments and enemies look a bit samey and dull plus too many collectible bits.

Will likely depend on price for me.

Meh is right. RIVE is the only shooty I am interested in.

Looks like a cross between Silpheed (backgrounds) and Mars Matrix (the lightning shot and boss). Digging that throwback intro song and announcer, too. I'll give it a go when it comes out.

@FX102A The collectible gems looks like they vacuum to the ship, regardless of their distance, so it's not much to worry about. On the other hand, I'd have preferred that they fall, a la Mars Matrix, GigaWing, and various CAVE shmups.

Watching that opening makes me wish for a Vandread shmup game on the Switch now... anyone remember that shizzle?

What Shiryu said! Even at $35....

Ungh! awful intro song and dialogue pestering mid level. why have widescreen vert scrolling?
back to strikers 1945 for me

It looks alright, there's certainly a lot more effort put into how it looks than the 2 shoot-em-ups that are landing this week. That bloody annoying chatter though, not sure could stand listening to that all game.

@masterLEON Silpheed was my first thought too. Always makes me smile when I see that mentioned on here. Loved that game, blew mind at the time but I'd guess only a few thousand have ever actually played it.

Yeah, it looks like it throws more attention towards style over substance and challenge. I wont say I know the mindset of the devs, but it seems like the gameplay is kinda kept slow/simple so you can take in the dialogue and music.

Not a terrible choice, but might not be something all shmup fans will be into.

I’m down. I’d like the Japanese version, despite not being able to understand or read it, just sounds cool

Is it a game or a new anime show?

Looks nice

Priced Right and I'm in.

Looks promising, i'll give it a chance.

Cool!

Awesome, I love a good shmup so I'm picking this up when it's available.

I did some research and it turns out that Gulti are the developers of Arcade/360/PS3 shooter Mamorukun Curse (together with GRev) and the company was supposedly founded by former Saibu Kaihatsu staff (Saibu Kaihatsu made the early Raiden games).

So, while this isn't a arcade port, it still looks like this game is the real deal.

@SayGuh "Shoot 1-UP" is a decent vertical shmup, in wide screen. People were also initially pessimistic.

I like the mecha design

@TomKnows

interesting. i am reserving judgement, but only just:)

This seriously reminds me of some shmups I played on the PS1. Not terribly impressive on a visual level, but I'd be lying if I said this didn't look like it was right up my alley. For the right price, of course...

@OorWullie

About the chatter, i strongly doubt it will be constantly there in the main game.
Note how during the gameplay footage, you don't hear any of the shots and explosions you see.
That's a pretty clear indication that what we see during the gameplay section is NOT a representation of the games actual sound design.

@Ralizah @kepsux @FX102A

So, basically to all people wondering about the price:

At the end of the video it says that the game will cost 3900 Yen in Japan, using the current conversion rate that would roughly translate to a price of 35$.
However, games are usually cheaper in the USA then anywhere else, so i'd expect it to cost 30$ in America (so 5$ cheaper then on the JP eShop) and 30€ in Europe (which would actually be a correct conversion of the japanese price).

I'm personally very happy about this price, not because i think it's cheap (it's obviously not), but because it gives me a lot of confidence in the quality of the game.

@EmirParkreiner And yet Ride to Hell Retribution 1% launched at full retail price.

Yeah, price can never be relied upon as a sign of quality or value.

@FX102A

You have to see this this in the context of the shmup genre.

When it comes to NEW shmups releases (and also sometimes with retro rereleases), there is a very clear connection between price and the quality or amount of content of a game of a game, it's a pattern i could observe time and time again.

Shmups with seemingly outrageously high prices usually end up being worth it (Dariusburst CS, Raiden IV & V, anything from Cave...), shmups that are cheap are usually either so bad that they aren't even worth my time (Teslapunk, Gaiabreaker, Aces of the Luftwaffe Squadron, Xenoraid...) or are not really full fledged games (like Star Soldier R, which was good but only had 2 stages that were supposed to be played in 2 or 5 minute caravan modes).

Of course, there may be some exceptions to the rule, but at large it can be said that (new) shmups that cost over $30 provide better value then shmups that cost less then $20.

This unique pricing culture has a lot to do with how shmups managed to survive in arcades for a long time. Home releases of relatively recent arcade games can't be too cheap, otherwise they would undermine the business model of the arcades.
This lead to shmups that were essentially 20-30 minute long 2d games still regularly getting more or less full priced retail releases after 2000, when everything else had to be 3d and very "long" to be considered worthy of a full fledeged release.
This also lead to almost all shmups that got home console retail releases being very good, because they had to be successful in the competitive arena of japanese arcades before being ported to home consoles, so a cult following that quickly accepted to pay high prices formed.

Anyway, you're criticism on my argument made me realize something really strange:
When it comes to the N64, the opposite was true back in the day: Many of the best N64 games were made by Nintendo and Rare, and Nintendo published N64 games were cheaper then third party N64 games because Nintendo charged high cardridge prices from third party developers.
So, if a had to give a 90's kid a tip about buying newly released N64 games without mentioning developers or franchises, a good rule of thumb would be "Get those that are cheaper!"

@EmirParkreiner Whilst this may count back when shm'ups were going through their niche phase, they've had a bit of a renaissance in the last few years thus making high prices (especially for digital releases) questionable in my book. Honestly, from the video it looks a little sub-par from first impressions and not enough for me to throw down large quantities. I even found Darius Burst Chronicles not worthy of full price digital release for me and waited for a price drop. Yet if Sega decided to re-release Hyper Duel or the Thunderforce collection at a premium price I would dive straight in as I knew I'd be getting quality games.

If it had been a physical release maybe but for the time being may wait for a digital sale. Will wait for reviews.

@FX102A

Well, i'm also not a big fan of paying retail prices for digital games. I've bought most of my Steam/PSN libraries on sale. With anything above 20$ i try to get it physical or wait for a sale if there is no physical option.

However, i'll be generous with RXN and buy ot at full price digitally (if there really is no physical option) because i think it might be important, for the future of shmups on the Switch.

I don't see a connection between prices and being niche, good shmups are expensive because most of them are ports of full-fledged arcade game.

I also don't really see a resurgence of the genre - Treasure is practically dead, Milestone is dead, Cave's next game seems to be a phone game that isn't a shmup, GRev focused on their Senko No Ronde fighting franchise...