Raiden Fighters (series)

Raiden Fighters (series)

The Raiden Fighters (ライデンファイターズ, raiden faitāzu?) series is a popular series of top-down vertically scrolling shoot 'em ups for the arcades by Seibu Kaihatsu. It is a spinoff of the original Raiden series. The games were initially distributed in Japan, and were later picked up by international distributors such as the now-defunct Fabtek in the United States, Tuning Electronic in Germany, and The Metrotainment Network and Dream Island in Asia.

The series began with the first game, titled Raiden Fighters, released in 1996. It was followed by two sequels: Raiden Fighters 2: Operation Hell Dive (1997) and Raiden Fighters Jet (1998). It took until the year 2008, a full decade after the release of Raiden Fighters Jet, for any of the games to be ported to a home video game console.