RagingBlasters

If you like classic PC Engine shooters from Hudson and their sense of speed, or just want to get into classic style shooters without having to worry about recover after getting hit once, you SHOULD play this game. And, if you played Blazing Lazers/Star Soldier games, you'll find decent chunk of references to said games there: One of stages there reminds me of second stage from Blazing Lazers, and first stage track feels inspired a lot by star soldier games. While you die on single hit compared to star soldier games where you can actually take multiple hits at full power, your shot is always at max power, and subweapons you can pick up have only single power level alongside spawning way too often for my liking and pickup hitbox for these powerups has a massive hitbox too, so you can somewhat call it "powerup hell". All subweapons feel pretty balanced, even though for scoring i'd suggest using ring for most time due to how easy it is to milk bosses with this thing. Oh, and now time for me to speak about this game's scoring! Obviously, there's stuff like milking bullets and item carriers, as well as picking up excessive powerups for 1k points per each, but i want to go in…

Excellent introductory "Child's first shooter" on the easiest difficulty (normal). It's still plenty fast for them and gets them acclimated to the old school shooter genre. But no, this is not a bullet hell at all, which is totally fine. I got to the last boss on the easiest difficulty after maybe five runs but wasn't quite able to 1 cc it. Reached the final boss a little later in the night and also lost to it, but I just decided to continue so I could figure out the boss and I did. Should be my first one cc next time I get there now that I know exactly what to do with the final boss. I plan to ramp up the difficulty to the next level after I hopefully 1 cc the easy mode. Unless you are going for an easier one cc, I would not suggest starting on normal mode if you are a seasoned shooter or shmup player. It's one of those difficulty levels where you die from boredom due to any inattention. I'm interested in going to the next difficulty level though because I think the game could start to really come alive then when there's a proper amount of difficulty.

If you are new to games by TERARIN GAMES, then Raging Blasters is a good place to start. As others have already stated, this is also a good shmup to start out with if you are new to the genre in general. The lower difficulties do good job accommodating newcomers while expert difficulty can catch even the more experienced players off guard- in other words, this game does a good job accommodating players of all skill levels. Buy this on sale.

Fun little shooter, short playtime. Finished on my first attempt so normal mode is pretty chill. Reminds me of some of the shooters on the TG16 like Blazing Lazers with it's fast moving backgrounds. Has a caravan mode too for the score hunters. Possibly a bit too simplistic with the weapons that don't upgrade, and the short playtime. Definitely worth a sale price, but I wouldn't spend $15+ on it.

Cool! Good! Great!

Not the prettiest of games, and most bosses are somewhat boring, but otherwise still enjoyable and worth a playthrough. Playing on expert mode really opens up the gameplay, as even the simplest of waves all fire bullets at you, leading to much tenser moments of weaving through those bullets to grab the crystals. There is also a fun 3min caravan mode to increase replayability. Its also pretty neat what this game does with the screen. As its a vertical game that pretends to use the entire horizontal screen space. As in the backgrounds continue horizontally beyond where your ship is allowed to move. Some enemies also move through this space when entering or leaving the screen, but will not fire from this 'off limits' area.