Raiden
Raiden — frequently asked questions
- Is Raiden on Steam?
- No. Raiden is not distributed on Steam, so there is no Steam Charts or SteamDB player count for it. Its live popularity is tracked here via Twitch viewership instead.
- What platforms is Raiden on?
- Raiden is available on Arcade, PlayStation 3, Atari Lynx, Super Nintendo Entertainment System, Sega Mega Drive/Genesis, TurboGrafx-16/PC Engine, DOS, FM Towns, Atari Jaguar, PlayStation, PlayStation Portable, Turbografx-16/PC Engine CD, Legacy Mobile Device, Super Famicom, Jaguar, Mega Drive/Genesis, MS-DOS, Windows, Mobile phone, PC Engine Super CD-ROM², TurboGrafx-16.
- When did Raiden release?
- Raiden was first released on April 1, 1990.
About Raiden
Raiden consists of eight vertical scrolling missions where the player maneuvers the Raiden craft dodging and destroying enemy robots, buildings, ground targets, and aircraft. There are bombs and missile powerups as well as collectable medals which add to the score. When player dies, the fighter's fragments become projectiles that damage enemies. After defeating the Stage 8 boss, the mission is completed, and player receives 1 million points for each completed loop. Afterwards, it will start back to Stage 1. This time around, enemies shoot faster and at a more rapid rate.
Summary via IGDB.
Game details
- Platforms
- Arcade, PlayStation 3, Atari Lynx, Super Nintendo Entertainment System, Sega Mega Drive/Genesis, TurboGrafx-16/PC Engine, DOS, FM Towns, Atari Jaguar, PlayStation, PlayStation Portable, Turbografx-16/PC Engine CD, Legacy Mobile Device, Super Famicom, Jaguar, Mega Drive/Genesis, MS-DOS, Windows, Mobile phone, PC Engine Super CD-ROM², TurboGrafx-16
- Developer
- Seibu Kaihatsu
- Publisher
- Hudson Soft
- Game modes
- Single player, Co-operative
- Themes
- Action, Science fiction
Details via IGDB.
Reception
Every version compared
Prices, contemporary reception and the studio credited for each release
| Platform | Year | Loose | Complete | Sealed |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Atari JaguarDetails ↓ | 1993 | $52 | $104 | $116 |
| Atari LynxDetails ↓ | 1997 | $113 | $262 | $525 |
Also released on: Arcade · PlayStation 3 · Super Nintendo Entertainment System · Sega Mega Drive/Genesis · TurboGrafx-16/PC Engine · DOS · FM Towns · PlayStation · PlayStation Portable · Turbografx-16/PC Engine CD · Legacy Mobile Device · Super Famicom · Jaguar · Mega Drive/Genesis · MS-DOS · Windows · Mobile phone · PC Engine Super CD-ROM² · TurboGrafx-16. We haven’t priced or authenticated those versions yet.
Prices are per version and are not interchangeable, and neither are the reviews: conversions in this era were often built by a different studio than the original, so a score earned on one machine says nothing about how another plays.
Collector value & authenticity
Atari Jaguar · PriceCharting sold data · Verified 2026-07-24
- Region
- NA+EU
- Released
- 1993
- Authenticity
- Low
The Atari Jaguar version
Of the launch-window games, this is the good one — and the one that demonstrates nothing about the hardware.
Seibu Kaihatsu's 1990 arcade Raiden is a genre pillar — tight vertical shooting, the toothpaste laser and spread shot, dense but fair patterns, two-player co-op — and Imagitec's conversion is faithful and plays properly, arguably the best console port of it available at the time. The irony is unavoidable: Atari launched a console marketed as four times more powerful than anything on the market, and the best thing in the launch window was a faithful port of a three-year-old arcade game that would have run on a Genesis.
It sold 22,061 copies by April 1995 — seventh on the platform.
Note that this write-up is about the JAGUAR cartridge. Telegames also put Raiden on the Atari Lynx in 1997, two years after that platform was discontinued — a much scarcer object that trades for several times the Jaguar version. Both price strips are above; check which one you are buying.
How it was made
Credited: designed by Tetsuya Kawaguchi; programmed by K. Kondo, S. Mori; art by H. Matsuo, Toshinobu Komazawa, T. Matsuzawa; music by Akira Sato.
The Jaguar conversion was done by Imagitec Design, who also handled the MS-DOS version — a different studio from the arcade original by Seibu Kaihatsu, and from the studios behind the Mega Drive, Super NES, PC Engine, FM Towns and Lynx versions, each of which was converted by a different team.
Cartridge & preservation record
Cartridge ROM capacity 16 megabit (2 MB), measured from the preserved cartridge image.
Known retail revisions
| Rev A | 16 Mbit |
Catalogue part number J9005
Cartridge data from the No-Intro preservation database (metadata only — names, sizes and checksums, no game data).
How the Atari Jaguar version differs
Imagitec Design's conversion shipped in North America in November 1993, making it a Jaguar launch-window title.
Electronic Gaming Monthly's four reviewers agreed it was virtually identical to the arcade original, and divided only on whether the arcade game itself still held up.
More than 22,000 copies sold as of 1 April 1995.
The later Atari Falcon version shares the Jaguar conversion's visual design but adds a full-screen display and supports only FM sound.
Also on other platforms
Atari Lynx · FM Towns · Mega Drive/Genesis · MS-DOS · Windows · Mobile phone · PC Engine Super CD-ROM² · PlayStation · Super Nintendo Entertainment System · TurboGrafx-16
| Genesis | Micronet |
| Super NES | Micronics |
| FM Towns | KID |
| Lynx | BlueSky Software |
| Mobile | Com2uS |
Worth knowing
- Imagitec Design touched more of this library than anyone. The Dewsbury studio converted this, Zool 2 and Bubsy for the Jaguar, developed I-War outright, and — trading as Dream Weavers — wrote the music for both Tempest 2000 and Defender 2000, including the Tempest 2000 soundtrack Atari sold separately and bundled with the Jaguar CD. Six of the platform's titles carry their work in one role or another, which makes them the most-present studio on the machine after Atari itself.
- Every version of Raiden was made by different people. Seibu Kaihatsu's 1990 arcade original was converted for home machines by an unusually scattered set of studios: Micronet did the Mega Drive, Micronics the Super NES, KID the FM Towns, A.I Company the PC Engine CD, BlueSky Software the Lynx, and Imagitec Design both the Jaguar and MS-DOS versions. Comparing Raiden across formats is comparing seven different teams' work, not one game scaled up and down.
Before you buy
On the Jaguar: common, cheap, and consistently undervalued relative to quality — the best dollar-per-hour cart on the platform. The Japanese release (credited to importer Mumin Corporation, 1994) is scarce and a genuinely different collectible. On the Lynx: a 1997 post-discontinuation Telegames release, the most valuable normally-distributed game on that platform, and expensive enough to be worth verifying the label and box print.
Sales figures from an internal Atari document (through April 1, 1995), surfaced by The Land of Obscusion — The Land of Obscusion
Authenticity & condition — Atari Jaguar
Specific to the format this title shipped in
Buying a Jaguar cartridge
Cartridges are the durable half of this library — the risk is provenance, not decay. The platform has an active post-commercial scene, so the question is usually which era a cartridge is from rather than whether it still works.
- Ask for a photo of the label edge and the cartridge back. Reproductions are usually printed on adhesive photo stock and sit proud of the label recess.
- Donor shells are the common trick: sanding marks on the back, or adhesive ghosting where an older label was lifted, are the strongest signals.
- Cartridges are region-free on this platform, so a cheaper PAL copy plays on a North American console — a price difference is not evidence of a fake.
Collector value & authenticity
Atari Lynx · PriceCharting sold data · Verified 2026-08-07
- Region
- NA+EU
- Released
- 1997
- Authenticity
- Med
Raiden screenshots
Watch on YouTube
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