ESP Ra.De is a vertical shooter which may have a plot involving blowing
stuff up. A brief narrative is provided between each level.
ESP Ra.De (that's Raging Deicide) marks the first Cave shooter which is not
military or science fiction themed. Instead of controlling a super
vehicle, you control a person who has incredible psychic powers. Before
Ra.De., shooters with people as the player avatar were either cute-em-ups
like Cotton or run and guns like Ikari Warriors or Contra. The success of
ESP Ra.De. seems to have had an influence on other developers, as both
Psyvariar and Shikigami no Shiro use psychic people instead of machines.
Cave has since used numerous themes along with sci-fi military, such as
insects in Mushihimesama and fat chicks in Muchi Muchi Pork.
Cave came up with a fairly detailed plot, some of which does come through
in game. The evil overlord is a psychic woman named Garra Ono, who
effectively controls Japan and it's army. She has her own army of psychic
soldiers called ESPers as well. Her nefarious plan is to replace the
citizens of Japan with clones of herself. Garra's actions have pissed off
three teenagers who also have immense ESP powers, and each one vows to stop
her for their own reasons.
The control scheme is easy, but flexible. Tapping A will fire the standard
shot. Holding A is a full auto shot, and reduces your character's speed
for precise weaving. The B button fires the Piercing Cannon, which fires a
cluster that sticks to enemies and is the primary aspect for scoring. The
C button uses the barrier, which absorbs bullets while C is held and fires
four powerful beams when released. This is the bomb attack of Ra.De.,
though due to how the game handles the energy bar quick taps can allow more
than three uses per bar. P items dropped from most larger enemies will
power up the shot and give more rounds to the Piercing Cannon.
Each character has their own shot, cannon, first level and back story so
let's take a look.
YUSUKE SAGAMI
Yusuke is a high school student who witnesses Garra's men killing his best
friend. Rightfully miffed he takes off to kill them and take care of
Japan's population problems. His shot is a concentrated forward shot like
Type A of DoDonPachi, and his Cannon spreads out even when he is still. He
starts out at Houoh High School.
J-B 5th
A psychic assassin trained by a secret Russian agency, J-B 5th fights not
for personal vengeance, but because his mission is to kill Garra. His
mission starts by assassinating a general by literally smashing him. He
has the spread shot for the game, becoming a nice 5-way shot at full power.
Unfortunately, his bullets seem weaker than the other characters. His
Cannon fires straight ahead and is easiest to control. His first stage is
the Shopping Mall at Night.
IRORI MIMIKASA
Irori is the daughter of a family opposed to Garra. When missiles start
landing on her home, she raises a psychic shield just in time to protect
another woman and takes off to end the persecution. She has a wide shot,
like Type B in DoDonPachi but without the rotating options. Her Cannon's
direction can be rotated to fire anywhere on screen. She attacks from the
Bay Area.
I seem to have the best luck with Irori. Try all three and use your
favorite. Like DoDonPachi, each one is capable of high scores and clearing
the game.
Scoring and powering up are tied to each other. When an enemy is hit with
a shot from the piercing cannon, the bullet will stick. After a moment,
the center opens up and the bullet will evaporate. The trick is to hit an
enemy with as many bullets from the piercing cannon as possible, then when
the bullets open up finish the enemy with the shot. Each bullet that is
opened up acts as a score multiplier, from x2 to x16 at full power. At
full power, instead of dropping P icons enemies will drop gold boxes worth
100 points. Your multiplier will also count towards these boxes, making
them worth up to 1600 apiece. Once the box count in the top left reaches
200, enemies will release green energy pods that refill your barrier. I've
never noticed any bonus for not using barrier, so if it helps you live use
it and get it recharged. The box counter will count down, and next time
it'll go to 300, then 400 and so on. The timing for big bonuses isn't too
hard to get down, fire the cannon, wait a moment and fire your shot and
you'll be getting x11 and higher pretty easily. It may sound complicated
but in practice the timing isn't too hard to get down.
The graphics in general look like DoDonPachi but more metallic. The
landscape isn't as desolate, as the cities are still intact and people can
be seen milling about in the subway stage. Unlike DoDonPachi, ESP Ra.De.
has a large number of humans, all with very fluid animation. Your chosen
character does not just bank when moving, they reposition their limbs and
dive to the side. When using the Piercing Cannon they all put out their
arm. Enemy soldiers fall over and pilots will fall out of destroyed
aircraft. Cave also uses some very nice scaling effects, most noticeable
when J-B 5th starts the game by smashing a guy in a bloody mess and the Bay
Area boss which rises from it's platform to fight you.
The music is similar to DoDonPachi in composition, but replaces the
electric guitars with synthesizers. I'd argue that most of it is still
rock, but it has electronic music mixed in. It's pretty good, but a slight
step down from DoDonPachi. The sound effects are excellent. Your
character screams quite painfully when struck by a bullet, and the engines
and rotors of bosses create background ambience that mixes nicely with the
music and the deep sound effects.
The first stage depends on the character chosen. The next two are the
opening stages for the unchosen characters (sans intro), then the fourth
stage is the subway and the fifth stage is the assault on Garra's
headquarters. Once the headquarters have been breached you play a mini
stage before facing Garra herself.
Houoh High School has easy scoring right at the beginning. On the left are
a pair of glass panels. Hit them with the Cannon then Shot to get some
items. The level is full of buildings, many of which have enemies on them.
One enemy that throws out quite a few bullets will actually take the roof
with it when destroyed which reveals a cluster of tanks in the building to
kill for quick points. The most memorable part of the level is the
midboss, a spider-like giant robot. For the first phase, it fires bullets
in aimed arcs and predictable patterns. Don't get caught between arcs and
you'll be OK. When damaged enough, the top portion explodes and it starts
making a strange sound. The nice patterns are replaced by little pink dots
moving at various velocities and directions, though in truth I find this
easier to dodge than the first phase. When destroyed the spider drops a
ton of items, you should be fully powered up when he is dead.
The boss fight starts over a church. Several peons fly up and are quickly
beat down. Watch beneath and you can see the real boss possess the body of
Yusuke's murdered friend. Notice the boss health gauge at the top of the
screen is subdivided into three, four or five sections depending on when
you play the High School. Between each section, he throws out some robots
that I usually take care of with the barrier if they don't die fast enough.
His attacks get more powerful with each section. He has three primary
attacks. For the first, he will swing his arm in an arc and fire bullets
that cover a wide portion of the screen. The best way I've found to get
through is to aim for the gaps between streams and move diagonally. His
second primary attack is a bullet spread. He stands still, holds his arms
out and starts firing bullets in unaimed clusters. The clusters get denser
if the High School is done as stage 2 or 3, but the basic tactic is the
same. He can hit you if you sit on a vertical line straight in front of
him, but I was able to weave to the sides about a bullet's width and remain
safe. His last primary attack is a few straight streams of bullets that
should never hit you on Stage 1. If the High School is Stage 3, he takes a
cue from Gradius and gets an option for the fifth life segment. The option
doesn't directly mirror him, instead using one attack while he uses another
and firing bullets from a different angle. Besides this section, I
typically don't have too much trouble with this boss.
The Shopping Mall at Night features a large number of psychic soldiers as
well as military vehicles. The bullet sprite from the psychic soldiers is
a hand instead of a circle, a nice touch. This shopping mall must be the
size of Delaware, as there is enough room for flying air conditioners with
gun turrets in it. Those air conditioners (that's what they look like to
me) are a good place to get a x16 multiplier. Shoot them, and when they
catch on fire unload the Piercing Cannon and get as close as possible while
shooting. I routinely get x14 and higher on these guys and there are
several in a row with few other enemies interfering. Enemy foot soldiers
can be seen below you and if hit they do leave a bloody mess and the bodies
don't disappear. It doesn't get as messy as Guwange.
The boss fight is against a huge tank on a highway behind the mall, I
assume. Blast some civilians in their vehicles for points just before the
boss fight begins. The tank consists of five main sections. Only the
middle part needs to be taken out but taking out the pair of front and rear
legs makes the going a lot smoother. Get up next to one front leg and hit
it with the Cannon and Shot as hard as you can when the fight starts and
you can get it to catch on fire before the bullets really start flying.
Once they catch on fire they are nearly gone. The front legs fire bullet
spreads that overlap with the aimed bullets from the central turret,
getting rid of them is mandatory. The central turret itself fires aimed
spreads. It can fire both directly at you and fire a wider one with an
open center. You'll also need to contend with the bombs being flung around
which aren't particularly deadly but do stop bullets meant for the tank.
When the front legs are destroyed the rear legs activate and send blue arcs
all over while the turret uses the same attacks. These spreads are thicker
than those from the front legs, get rid of at least one leg quickly for
your own sake. Once those legs are destroyed you can concentrate on the
turret. It will actually explode before the boss dies, revealing a dome.
The dome can fire spread blue bullets that come in tighter spirals on each
volley. It follows this up with pink bullets in a circle pattern and
vaguely aimed blue bullet spreads. Move from one side of the boss to the
other and try to get away from the blue bullets, and the pink ones
shouldn't cause much trouble.
The Bay Area is similar to the Houoh High School, taking place outdoors and
being full of tanks. This level has a few large flying enemies that look
somewhat like the Flying Pancake fighter plane prototype developed during
World War II. The Bay Area has fewer buildings than the High School, but
tanks will roll out from under parking structures. The stage doesn't have
a real midboss, but when you reach the dock an actual battleship is mooring
and fires a ton of bullets your way. Like most large enemies in ESP Ra.De.
it needs to catch on fire before being finished off. Behind it is a
smaller vessel which also needs to be destroyed. Reaching the other side
of the dock, two big brown helicopters swoop in firing vertical bullets.
These guys take quite a bit of punishment so go ahead and use the barrier
to soften them up or maybe destroy one.
The boss has a cool scaling liftoff sequence. The boss is a giant
helicopter with tons of gun mounts all over. First off, go for the turrets
immediately left and right of the cockpit. They fire straight bullets that
can really cramp your space. The four turrets on the body fire aimed pink
bullet sprays, and from each side you'll get blue bullet sprays. If you
see a hatch open on top of the vehicle, get ready for pink bullet spam.
Destroy the cockpit, and for the second section the pink bullets fire in
large, layered patterns while a chin turret fires blue bullets in roughly
your direction. Eventually the boss will fire off some blue arcs that
cover about half the screen while the pink bullets cover the rest. Hold
the A button, keep hurting him, and try to kill him quickly. If you have
some barrier left, this is a good time to use it.
Once those stages are finished, Stage 4 is Wangan Station. This is a loose
variation on the Giant Battleship level. Beneath you is a very cool
looking subway train, with enemies crawling on top and flying along. Very
shortly in, you'll face a stealth bomber that fires hundreds of bullets all
over. The patterns are dense but not aimed. Once he dies, you'll actually
get to see the platform and the people on it. Strangely for a Cave game,
you can't kill these civilians for points. Right after the platform,
another train joins the chase. This one is the Giant Battleship, a train
loaded with turrets trying to kill you. It's pretty cool, but not as much
as Cyvern's first boss. After a while, both trains fall behind and you
need to deal with individual cars with splash turrets mounted on top. The
enemy count isn't too high but most of them are rather durable and have
thick attack patterns.
The boss is a giant robot. The first thing I noticed about this guy was
his green shurikens. These are actually destructible, and you would be
doing good to kill them as they fire bullets at you. The spread patterns
here generally involve at least two overlapping sets of bullets. Pink
bullets tend to fire in spreads, while blue ones are straight. He can mix
these up, like spread pink bullets along with aimed straight bullets. At
one point, I counted no less than three simultaneous sets of bullet spam
all emanating from this bastard. I had pink straight bullets from the left
side, spread ones from the right, and blue spam from his shoulders. At a
quarter health, he opens up and fires blue arcs that I had to use barrier
to get by. He also has more spammed bullets thick enough that they cover
the middle of his sprite.
The fifth stage is the assault on Garra's headquarters. Look at the
background early on and you can see walls and towers that look like
medieval castles. Only evil people see fit to sleep in this type of
architecture. Very early on, you'll see a large tank on the left side of
the screen. It'll be tempting to forget it and destroy the enemies on the
right, but this tank fires huge aimed spreads along with unaimed spam, and
you'll be doing yourself a favor by killing it. All of the enemies in this
stage have graduated from single bullets to streams of fire. In
particular, two yellow vehicles open up and fire pink bullets all over
while also firing aimed blue streams. I had to resort to judicious use of
the barrier to make each life last as long as possible to get through here.
Amusingly, this level has a pair of tanks that fire straight aimed
bullets. However, the bullets are fired from a different section than they
are aimed from, and by sitting still they can't hit you. Unfortunately the
blue spam can.
The boss of this level is Garra's royal guard. Snipers on the room,
psychic soldier, splash turrets and a rainbow barrier that prevents you
from damaging her. Flying across the very top of the screen will let you
take out those snipers. From there, concentrate on the turrets. The
psychic soldiers themselves don't pose much threat. The bullet count is
high, but if you move constantly around the screen the soldiers won't hit
you. The mass of trucks that pile around are more deadly, but overall the
bullet numbers aren't as high as the subway mech. Once the barrier is
destroyed, Garra runs back through the new hole you've just installed in
her fortress.
This last mini stage is actually pretty fun. You are assaulted by hundreds
of little girls, the 10 year old clones of Garra. They all fire aimed
bullets, so edging around the screen will help keep you safe. When killed,
they squeal in a sadistically delightful manner. The other main enemy is
the mechanical turtle tank. You'll find a few more of those tanks that
can't hit you with aimed bullets but after child genocide that just isn't
cool. Some of the girls even bounce around, perhaps from an influx of
sugary treats.
Garra herself is perfectly relaxed when you find her, kicking back on the
head of a giant statue which promptly comes to life and starts raining
bullets everywhere. The head's attacks are mostly spiral bullet patterns,
and tend to emanate from the left portion of the screen. You can move to
the right to get a little more breathing space if needed. Eventually the
boss will begin laying multiple spirals on top of each other, but by this
point it has little health and if you use the barrier you'll likely kill it
or carve a hole in the bullets big enough to finish it.
Of course, the statue isn't the last boss. Garra is. Like the boss from
Houoh High School she has a segmented life bar. Each segment has unique
attacks. In the first phase, she fires pink spreads with small gaps to fit
through. Once this attack is done, she fires more pink spreads with a gap
right in front of her. She fills the gap by conjuring blue bullets out of
thin air. Stay low, give yourself time to move.
For her next segment, she grows butterfly wings. She will keep these for
three segments. This first elaborate set consists of blue straight bullets
and aimed pink streams. The gaps are pretty big and I didn't find this
portion as challenging as the rest.
On the third segment, the wings shrink a little and start firing blue arcs
while she fires aimed pink bullets at regular intervals. The dodging room
has been greatly reduced here, but you can use the barrier to cut a hole if
needed.
The fourth segment has smaller wings yet again. This time, they take turns
firing huge globs at you. Each glob consists of a central aimed portion
that is very large and a few smaller bullets that spread out. The globs
are fast, you won't get far on twitch skill if you don't know what's
coming. She alternates between the left wing and the right wing (your
left, not hers). When she pauses, she'll fire two per wing. Stay away
from the sides or she will pin you.
The final phase loses the wings. She now dashes off screen if you use the
barrier attack, so you can't just fudge your way through. She now fires
huge streams of hand bullets at you. She will fire a salvo with one hand,
reposition and fire a salve from the other hand going in the opposite
direction. I did OK by flying behind her, reversing direction, and pelting
her for a while but to do damage you will need to lure the bullets away
from her and sit in front of her when you get the chance.
Once she dies, you get a little cutscene with your character. Using J-B
5th, he lands right in the middle of a police force. Instead of giving up,
he lets loose with a flash that stuns all the cops. I haven't gotten the
other endings yet.
While DoDonPachi made Cave shmup superstars, I personally find ESP Ra.De.
to be my favorite Cave game. Using psychic children instead of machines is
a fresh idea even today. The game is at least as hard as DoDonPachi, but
like that game it is also winnable on one credit with enough persistence.
This game has unfortunately never received a home port or a sequel and is
only playable via MAME. Some of the ideas did show up in Espgaluda, but it
is a spiritual successor more than a straight sequel.
Go ahead and give this one a play. And in case you were wondering, the
"Deicide" portion of Raging Deicide means god kill. Garra is a bit of a
goddess, I suppose.
Overall:
