Poor Raiden III. This game has had a long history of being bashed for the dumbest reasons, and now it's getting bashed because the developers weren't interested in working on a years-old PC port that works perfectly fine on newer PCs.

The slower ship speed was always the absolute biggest complaint... but it ALWAYS comes from people who worship the older Raidens. The game was always called too easy... which is quite mystifying as it's actually quite hard, and many of the people claiming it's too easy were playing on an easier than standard difficulty. Many of these people also cannot make a dent in the older Raidens which they are directly comparing to, games filled with absolute ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. It's really bizarre how people will fetishize those older games like that.

The game does have problems. The music is, in fact, kinda bad once you leave Earth, though this is not the fault of the composer. There's a bug with the R missiles that makes them stronger than the M missiles, making other missile types useless; sounds bad, until you realize that in every single other Raiden game besides V, using anything but H missiles is either suicide or pointless, so nothing's really changed. You can't save full game replays, you have to save per-stage replays. That's all pretty minor in the grand scheme of things, though.

You want a dumb game, go look at Raiden IV with its charge shot ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, with the ridiculous amount of totally unnecessary modes, with bizarre nature of OverKill and its totally useless online leaderboards, and with the PC port doing weird things relating to vsync and the enabling/disabling of. Nothing minor about any of that. And yes, I'm saying most of that applies to the original PS3 version.

This is just like the arcade game... but... it translates poorly to the pc platform. I would recommend changing the keysettings immediately. And to do this you must go to the actual games folder and choose the config tool. I got no idea why they didn't include it in the game. Also, changing the screen to fullscreen in the same tool is highly recommended. This is an incredibly hard and unforgiving game, just like the arcades used to be. I love that sort of challenges, but it's not for everyone. Enjoy :)

I have to admit, I love arcade games. Especially shooters. For the price you're paying you're getting disc free Japanese Shoot Em Up fun! The developers took lots of care to fix numerous bugs that plagued the original Japanese version. The most notable one was the improvement of how the textures are displayed. There are much much less flickering textures in this version over what I played on the PS2. And also it has some nice options that allow you to rotate your screen and play it as if you are playing on an actual arcade monitor. I know I've only played 30 minutes of this game, but I've already played the PS2 version and know much about this game to let you know it's worth the purchase price. One Gameplay Hint - You need to constantly play this game if you want to be successful and beat the game. I guess if you play often enough, your credit limit increases. Play the game enough and you won't have to worry about running out of continues again. If 2 credits ticks you off, consider giving yourself extra lives and bombs at the beginning to make up for the 2 credits per game. Worth the purchase. (This review is on a system running the latest build of Windows 8.1)

Not the best in the Raiden series but a good solid game. The mechanics are simple, 3 shot types- Red spread, Blue beam and Green swishy beam, the quicker you kill an enemy the more bonus score. So if you hit a wave as it enters the screen you get X2, a second or two later X1.6 etc.

The 3D background is old skool but ok although it doesnt add anything gameplay wise. The bosses, so far, are OK but not Raidens best and the gimmick green beam is good but not as cool as R2s purple snakey beam.

Although it isnt as pure as Raiden original or as deep, varied and totally the best vertical smup ever made as Raiden Fighters Jet its entertaining enough. If you enjoy a non bullet hell old skool shooter think about buying this, and grab it next sale for sure. In the mean time get MAME and play RFJ till your eyes scream and your hair bleeds. Oh and dont bother if you dont have a controller, but since you like arcade shooters you do.... unless your weird, superhuman or like not getting past the first level of games.

Big thanks to Hermski for gifting me this game!

I've grown up playing the Raiden games back in the arcades, and that brings back many memories!

After the arcade release in 2005, Raiden III is finally on PC! I remember I would spend some cash to play this, and boy, is it hard!

With the digital release, you can choose to play the regular arcade mode, all 7 levels! There's also Score Attack mode, in which you try to set the highest score in a level, Boss Attack, in which you fight all the bosses of each level.

If you find the game too hard, don't be afraid to turn down the difficulty. You can also set the maximum amount of lives as well as the amount of bombs you start with!

Another good thing about this is that the soundtrack is also included with the game!

The only downsides of the game are that there aren't any achievements and you can only play in one resolution. There are trading cards though.

Overall, what a wonderful game, and now I don't have to go to an arcade to play this! I'll be getting Raiden IV: Overkill soon.

Game runs natively at 640x480 on a tiny screen (full screen option is a blurry mess and Steam overlay looks huge).

Non existent graphical options beside screen turn/stretch, no online leaderboards/ achievements.

Overall, a very poor effort, Steam has much better SHMUP options at similar price like Astebreed and Ikaruga.

This is just a re-release of the Japanese PC version of the game. All that's changed is the configuration utility has been translated to English.

Very disappointed! Game is stuck in 640x480 so unless you're running this on an Arcade monitor it's going to look like pixelated mess.

Not recommended at all and definitely not worth the asking price.

I can confirm that all of the issues listed so far are still present. Which is a shame, because I like the game itself. It's too bad these companies bringing back all of these classic arcade games aren't giving them the same love and attention that other companies are, like Capcom or CAVE.

A decent old- school scrolling shooter with "bullet hell" elements. Kudos for the aesthetically pleasing vehicle models and still appealing destruction effects.

Fun shooter for the arcade folk.