DigitalBattle.com

All right you young whippersnappers, with your fancy first person shooters and high-definition whosits and your surround sound whatchamajiggies–listen up.  I’m about to give you a lesson in the old-school gaming style, back when we could count the number of bits involved in a game on both hands–ONCE.  Back when music was tinny, and the gameplay was measured by how many enemies you could throw onto a single screen without getting crawl effect going.

Geriatric rambling aside, for a lesson in the kinds of games we had to play back in the eighties–and kudos to you if you remember the eighties–all you have to do is cruise on over to XGen Games and cut you off a sweet slice of Raiden X.

Designed as a tribute to Raiden and its sequel, Raiden 2, you play as a small jet fighter with one of three different kinds of upgradeable weaponry.  You’ll fly in the classic top-down shooter mode, in an action-packed old-school environment.

This is what gaming used to be–if there was a story to games like Raiden X, you scarcely noticed because you were entirely too busy shooting whatever wandered into view.  This is one of those great games where five minutes time invested into it allows you to get a full gaming experience, despite the fact that you really didn’t do much but move left to right and shoot things.  It’s lots of fun, and though it might wear out its welcome quickly, you’ll always be ready for another go-round later on.