Armed Police Batrider

About Armed Police Batrider

Armed Police Batrider (1998) is Raizing's futuristic manic shooter in which teams of three "Zero-Cops" on jet bikes take on a criminal corporation, with up to eighteen bosses and characters from Battle Garegga and Mahou Daisakusen.

Armed Police Batrider in Depth

Players choose up to three of nine pilots, each on a flying jet bike called a Batrider, plus nine unlockable characters from Raizing's Mahou Daisakusen and Battle Garegga. Pressing A fires the main shot and, once collected, the Options; B fires a bomb; and pressing nothing charges an Aura, a small damaging field in front of the ship. Shot powerups, Options and medals fall often from small enemies, and extra lives come every 1,500,000 points. Four courses are offered. Training lasts three stages and spends any remaining bombs automatically when the player is hit. Normal runs five stages with a secret boss, Bashinet mk2. Advanced has seven stages and up to all eighteen bosses depending on the team and hidden tasks. Special is a boss rush. Many more secrets can be unlocked with codes or DIP switch settings.

In 2014 crime-ridden Manhattan's people flocked to Zenovia, an artificial island two kilometres south built by the GiganTech Cybertronics Corporation and patrolled by its robots. By 2019 it is a slum, and an investigation reveals that GiganTech's executives are among the country's most dangerous criminals, using Zenovia as a trap and testing ground for weapons. With police and armies unwilling to act, three police officers, three convicts and three psychics are drafted as Zero-Cops to stop the CEO and his ultimate weapon, "Discharge".

Making Armed Police Batrider

Raizing developed Armed Police Batrider and Eighting published it in arcades in 1998, two years after Battle Garegga, many of whose characters and ideas it brought back as unlockable pilots alongside those of Mahou Daisakusen. Its many secrets and team-based character selection gave it unusual depth for the genre. It performed well in Japanese arcades, reaching sixth in Game Machine's chart for the first half of March 1998, but it was never ported to home consoles in its time. It finally reached a home system in 2022 as part of the Sega Astro City Mini V, a vertically oriented version of Sega's mini console, and in October 2026 the developer M2 announced a re-release, without confirming platforms or a date.