Raiden Fighters 2 (Arcade) - All (Eraser, 92 millions)

Played on MAME 0.256 This is a very strange ship. When I first played it my impression was just "yeah this sucks lol". But it got my attention that, visually, it's a slight sprite edit of Devastator from Raiden Fighters 1 and has the same missile weapon, while the laser is borrowed from Beast Arrow it. Now if you've played the first Raiden Fighters here is a very simple question: what did these ships have that this one doesn't? Wide shot. This ship is all power, 0% everything else and feels like it's constantly fighting against itself, you have to move all over the screen and yet you're slow as molasses. Both weapons are really strong yet similar (narrow coverage), but for the most part I find it better to use laser, you can abuse the charged attack to get many quick shot bonuses that would normally need a bomb. Missiles have a longer cooldown (this is why I don't hold autofire when using them) and can hit stuff you don't want due to the spread explosion, but they are better for the desert stage and the only way (that I found) to get the 2 fairies from the large turrets. I messed up the Miclus at the end of the beach stage (destroy the right tank before the left one), I picked missiles by accident and wasn't used to doing that section with them, I tried bombing the right tank to salvage it but it didn't work. Then by a fucking MIRACLE I didn't lose my 100k medal chain in the sky stage. Really, I don't how you're supposed to just not fuck up your medals once the big white planes appear one after the other, the ship is too slow and medals fly in completely random directions it's just inevitable. I also fucked up the first Miclus in the desert stage. At first I simply had to move out of the way but then I accidentally destroyed the tanked where the Miclus is hiding anyway. I used an extra bomb in the final stage because at that point I wasn't going to miss any more Miclus lol