Ray Force (Ver 2.3J 1994/01/20) - MAME machine

Taito F3 cart. published 30 years ago:

Rayforce © 1994 Taito Corp.

A great vertically scrolling shooter, featuring a lock-on secondary weapon.

The player is provided with a powerful ship called the RVA-818 X-LAY, which is outfitted with two weapons: a primary weapon that fires straight lasers and increases in power when the player accumulates power-ups, and a secondary lock-on missile launcher, which can also be increased in power, that can target up to eight enemies at once by moving the targeting reticle. This weapon is used to attack enemies that appear on a lower plane than that of your aircraft, which are inaccessible to the player's primary weapon.

The plot centers in the distant future, human governments, across the planet Earth, construct a massive supercomputer, named "Con-Human". The purpose of this computer is to govern the planet's environmental systems, verifying proper nutrients and care is provided to ensure the culture of humans and animal alike.

However, disaster strikes when, after a cloned human's mind is linked with the system, Con-Human becomes sentient and insane. It begins to induce calamities across the planet, constructing corrupt clones of existing organisms, destroying its human masters and exterminating the nature it was intended to protect, apparently intending to replace everything with what Con-Human considers improved versions of themselves.

After prolonged war, Con-Human has succeeded in exterminating 99.8% of humankind, with the remnants fleeing to space colonies. Meanwhile, Con-Human remakes the very interior of Earth. As a result, Earth, as humanity knew it, has utterly ceased to exist, transformed into a planet-sized mobile fortress that is in fact Con-Human's body. Con-Human intends to use the transformed Earth to seek out and destroy the colonies, erasing all remaining traces of old life from the universe and leaving only the new life that it personally created. Now, taking the full-scale offensive, mankind develops powerful ships, one of them the RVA-818 X-LAY starfighter, to fight the oppressive machine by destroying the now-infected Earth entirely.

TECHNICAL
Runs on the "Taito F3 System" Hardware.

Prom Stickers: D66

Players: 4
Control: 8-way joystick
Buttons: 4

TRIVIA
Even if the title screen says 1993, Rayforce was released in January 1994 in Japan.

Rayforce had great BGM and graphics, so it was very popular in the Japanese gamer community in its time. But not for long... When Street Fighter 2 was released, many a shoot'em up fan turned into an SF2 fan.

The game producer, Yukio Abe, took inspiration for this game from its first work; "Master of Weapon". A lot of ideas were reused.

The game forbids the initials 'SEX' on the high score table. If you try, it gets changed to 'BOO'.

This game is known in European arcades as "Gunlock".

Pony Canyon / Scitron released a limited-edition soundtrack album for this game (Rayforce - PCCB-00153) on April 21, 1994.

TIPS AND TRICKS

• INSTRUCTIONS:
• Press the Fire button to fire your cannon.
• Target enemies at low altitude or on the ground using the Fire button, then press the Laser button to fire your lock-On laser at them. Destroy multiple targeted enemies for extra points.
• Pick up items for extra fire-power.
• ITEMS LIST:

Green: Gives you an extra lock-on laser.
Yellow: Upgrades your cannon by one level.
Red: Collect three to upgrade your cannon by one level.

SERIES

• Rayforce (1994)
• Ray Storm (1996)
• Ray Crisis (1998)

STAFF
Producer: Yukiwo Ishikawa (Yukio Abe)
Directors: Yukiwo Ishikawa (Yukio Abe), Tatsuo Nakamura
Game designers: Tatsuo Nakamura, Yukio Abe, Tomohisa Yamashita
Software: Tatsuo Nakamura, Shinji Soyano, Hikaru Taniguchi, Masao Kashino, Isao Ooyama
Character Graphics designers: Hideyuki Kato, Tomohisa Isobe, Shinjirou Sugitani, Hiroyo Kujirai, Yasuhiro Noguchi
Screen Graphics designers: Hideyuki Kato, V.A.P, Peacock
Music & Sound effects: Tamayo Kawamoto (Zuntata)
Sound effects: Munehiro Nakanishi (Zuntata)
Sound direction: Hiroshige Tonomura (TONO) (Zuntata)
Design works: Kyoko Umezu
Hardware: Katsumi Kaneoka

PORTS

• CONSOLES:

[JP] Sega Saturn (sept.14, 1995) "Layer Section [Model T-1101G]"
[JP] Sony PS2 (jan.25, 2007) "Taito Memories II Joukan [Model SLPM-66649]"

• COMPUTERS:

[EU] PC [MS Windows, CD-ROM] (1998) "Layer Section"
[US] PC [Windows, Steam] (Sept. 25, 2023) "Ray'z Arcade Chronology"

CONTRIBUTE
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