Kingdom Grand Prix

About Kingdom Grand Prix

Kingdom Grand Prix (1994) is Raizing's sequel to Sorcer Striker, an unusual hybrid of vertical shoot 'em up and race in which pilots blast enemies while trying to finish first in a kingdom-wide contest that ended a war.

Kingdom Grand Prix in Depth

On a vertically scrolling course, the player races seven rivals while shooting enemies and dodging bullets. Tapping the fire button shoots, while holding it gives a speed boost, and the ship's position on screen also sets its speed, the higher up the faster. Losing a life or reaching the next stage cuts overall speed. A limited stock of bombs destroys most enemies on screen and slows the rival racers. There are four power-ups, all adding to overall power apart from the bomb, which simply adds uses.

Twelve stages are arranged in branching paths, usually with a choice of two per level, one for the first and three for the sixth. Beating the first loop on one credit while finishing first overall unlocks a second loop made up of all the stages not chosen the first time. The story explains the race: after decades of war that cost countless innocent lives and legions of good men, the king decides to hold a great race across every part of the kingdom, open to all, and the wars stop as people look forward to the competition each year.

Making Kingdom Grand Prix

Raizing developed Kingdom Grand Prix, and Eighting released it in arcades across Japan and Europe in September 1994. GAGA Communications released a Sega Saturn version on 14 June 1996, which divided critics: three reviewers from the Japanese Sega Saturn Magazine rated it 5.33 out of 10 and Famitsu's four reviewers gave it 60 out of 100, while Consoles+ gave it 90% and Joypad three out of five. GameSetWatch's Todd Ciolek called it "a true curiosity, even if its one unique idea doesn't quite work", still worth trying "as both a solid twitch-game and a glimpse of one shooter developer's attempt at something different, if not necessarily better", and Hardcore Gaming 101's Kurt Kalata gave it a mostly positive retrospective. The series continued with Dimahoo, released by Capcom in 2000.