when a species of alien lifeforms known as the Crystals invaded Earth. The Crystals took control over most of Earth's military hardware to use in the invasion. In response, the world organization known as Vanquish Crystal Defense (VCD) develops the Fighting Thunder attack craft, a cutting-edge weapon based on Crystal technology. To survive against the invaders and fight back, VCD deploys Fighting Thunder as the only hope for humanity. Production Development According to graphic designer and current MOSS CEO Toshinobu Komazawa, the creation of Dynamite Duke gave Seibu Kaihatsu the opportunity to begin developing Raiden, as the former did not sell as well as Seibu had hoped. In order to recoup the costs of developing Dynamite Duke, the decision was made to develop a shoot 'em up instead of a sequel to it. Komazawa noted that the development of Raiden had a negative outlook, but an earnest beginning, since the shoot 'em up genre was "relatively inexpensive to produce" games for, as well as increasing in popularity at the time. Due to financial constraints, the company opted to use arcade hardware less powerful than those used in their previous titles. Seibu could only afford to develop a shoot 'em up with their development budget, with the project becoming a financial decision, as they had no other choice of game to make. Seibu took production notes from the overseas market, borrowing ideas from popular titles such as Capcom's 1942, Xevious from Namco, and Twin Cobra by Toaplan. The production of Raiden was led by Seibu Kaihatsu president Hitoshi Hamada, while Tetsuya Kawaguchi served as its designer and programmer K. Kondo and S. Mori were the other programmers. Komazawa, H. Matsuo, T. Matsuzawa and T. Wada were responsible for creating the in-game artwork. Y. Segawa was responsible for creating the arcade hardware. Near the end of development, Komazawa praised the programmers at Seibu for being able to produce a high-quality game on less powerful hardware. Audio The music for Raiden was composed by Akira Sato. A Raiden/Raiden II soundtrack was published by INH Co., Ltd. It includes soundtracks from Raiden (Arcade, PlayStation), Raiden Densetsu (FM Towns), Raiden II (Arcade, PlayStation) and Raiden DX (Arcade) as well as other extras. Release and ports Raiden was first released in the arcades in April 1990 by Tecmo in Japan. It was distributed in North America by Fabtek, Taiwan by Liang HWA Electronics, South Korea by