ESP Ra.De.

About ESP Ra.De.

ESP Ra.De. (1998) is Cave's bullet hell shooter in which three psychics fight a syndicate trying to seize Tokyo in 2018, with a shield that turns bullets into gold, and the first game Junya Inoue art-directed at Cave.

ESP Ra.De. in Depth

In 2018, the ESPer Lady Garra and her Yaksa syndicate attack to remove all opposition and take over Tokyo, and players take one of three ESPers, Yūsuke Sagami, Jb-5th or Irori Mimasaka, through five increasingly difficult stages. Similar to DoDonPachi, it is a vertically scrolling bullet hell game, but unlike most Cave shooters the characters have only a shot, with the fire button held to slow movement. Its unique mechanic is the power gauge: holding the shield button raises a force field that makes the character invincible and turns enemy bullets into power-ups and gold blocks, draining the gauge, and releasing it unleashes a psychic blast that destroys enemies and bullets on screen.

Each character also has a piercing attack for extra damage, limited by its own gauge and central to scoring, since hitting enemies with regular and piercing shots raises a multiplier, hidden during normal play, that governs power-up drops. Once fully powered, defeated enemies drop gold blocks; collecting 200 starts a timer during which the multiplier produces energy tanks to refill the power gauge. Lives are hearts, and losing one resets firepower and gold, while continuing resets the score and locks the character choice.

Making ESP Ra.De.

Inoue directed the art, with designers Akira Wakabayashi, Atsushi Aburano, Riichiro Nitta and Yūko Nakamura, programmers Ryuichi Yabuki, Satoshi Kōyama and Tsuneki Ikeda, and composer Masahiro Kusunoki. Atlus and Nihon System released it in arcades in April 1998, and Game Machine listed it as the fifth most popular arcade game in its 15 June 1998 issue. It proved popular with Japanese arcade players, and critics praised its power gauge, stylish presentation, Inoue's art and audio, though they found the scoring complex and confusing; Hardcore Gaming 101 called it "one of Cave's underrated classics" while finding Irori's voice annoying. Mobile versions followed in 2004 and 2005, but rights and publishing issues with Atlus kept it off home consoles until M2's ESP Ra.De. Psi for Switch and PlayStation 4 in December 2019, which Famitsu and Nintendo Life praised for its extra modes and fixes to the scoring. It spawned the spin-offs Espgaluda and Espgaluda II.