The Raiden series carries a legacy of remarkably solid, well-designed shooters that never fail to impress, yet the individual entries never seem to make it into shooter fans’ Top 10 lists. DonPachi is pure bullet hell; Ikaruga, with its polarity-shifting gameplay, draws much praise; Mars Matrix‘ mosquito system turns the enemies’ guns on back on [...]

Nowadays, when folks think of Konami, their minds invariably drift to the wild and wacky adventures of one Solid Snake, as he stealthily makes mincemeat of all manner of sci-fi/supernatural/G.I. Joe-level paramilitary freaks. But if you were to hop into the Way Back Machine and touchdown in the late ’80s/early ’90s the Konami name was [...]