Battle Garegga

About Battle Garegga

Battle Garegga (1996) is Raizing's vertical arcade shooter whose hidden rank system makes it harder the more the player shoots, powers up and survives, so experts play it by holding back and dying on purpose.

Battle Garegga in Depth

Green Option pick-ups add up to four support pods to the player's craft, arranged in one of five formations, with secret formations reached by dropping a set number of power-ups before collecting the next. Shooting ground enemies drops red Small Bomber tokens that combine into Large Bombers, up to five in stock, and a partial bomb can be used for a weaker or shorter blast. Power-ups and medals drop from small enemies in a fixed order; each medal collected makes the next worth more, from 100 up to 10,000 points, but letting one fall off the screen resets the value.

The game's difficulty, or rank, rises as the player fires, powers up the main weapon and collects items, and falls when a life is lost, and more so when the player has few lives left. Uncontrolled, rank turns the final stages into a frantic bullet storm, so players keep themselves powered down, conserve shots and lose lives deliberately; finishing on one life requires detailed knowledge of the system. Bullets are realistically coloured rather than bright, and debris from explosions hides them further. The story follows Brian and Jason Wayne, engineers whose weapons are turned on their home by the Federation, flying planes they never handed over.

Making Battle Garegga

Eighting released Raizing's game in arcades on 3 February 1996, and Game Machine listed it as Japan's eighth most successful arcade game in its 15 March 1996 issue. The Saturn port followed on 26 February 1998 and was rated 8/10 by each of Sega Saturn Magazine's three reviewers in Japan. Raizing's spiritual successor, Battle Bakraid, came out in 1999. In December 2016 M2 released Battle Garegga Rev.2016 for the PlayStation 4 under its M2 Shot Triggers label, with Xbox One and English versions the following year. Eurogamer wrote that "for all its routine, slightly drab looks, this is a game of exquisite artistic intention", and Push Square called it "a defining release in the shmup canon".