Soukyugurentai / Terra Diver

Soukyugurentai / Terra Diver

Console: Arcade
TV Standard: Region Not Set
Developer(s): Raising
Release Date: 1996-09-01
Players: 2
Co-op: No
ESRB: Not Rated
Type: Action

Sōkyūgurentai (蒼穹紅蓮隊), also known as Terra Diver, is a vertical-scrolling shooting game by Raizing originally released as an arcade game for the ST-V platform in 1996. The game was ported to the Sega Saturn and PlayStation in 1997, under varying names. Sōkyūgurentai is a vertical-scrolling shooter. The player picks one of three different ships - red, green or blue - each with their own pilot, fire pattern and laser web. Each ship has a standard gun and a bomb, but the most distinctive of these aspects is the laser-web: holding down the button for the standard gun will release a lock-on laser-web traditionally shaped as a cone or semicircle, which will destroy the enemies it locks onto after releasing the buttons. Each ship has two different lock-on weapons that function as web-designed laser targets. Once an enemy enters the web's range, the player can destroy the enemy or multiple enemies can be destroyed via homing lasers or multiple fire-balls. The game is unusual in that, rather than using a 3:4 aspect ratio to better suit the vertically-oriented gameplay, it uses a horizontal monitor (4:3) in the style of Neo Geo vertical shooters as well as the later Radiant Silvergun and Giga Wing.