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Welcome to Violent City!

Armed Police Batrider is a Vertical Scrolling Shooter developed by Raizing and released in arcades in 1998. It is the Spiritual Successor to Battle Garegga.

In 2004, crime in Manhattan was at an all-time high. It had earned a reputation as a VIOLENT CITY. Even law enforcement was unable to deal with it, until GiganTech Cybernetics Corporation stepped forth and assembled the artificial island Zenovia.

Unfortunately, fast forward to 15 years later, where crime in Zenovia has gotten to the point where it's pretty much worse than it was in Manhattan. An investigation into GiganTech reveals that it is run by Corrupt Corporate Executives who had, in actuality, set up Zenovia as a base for their latest black market weapons.

Nine fighters—three top-tier police officers, three Boxed Crooks, and three psychics—are drafted as "Zero-Cops" and dispatched via the BatRider airbikes to liberate Manhattan from its criminal shenanigans and crush the CEO of GiganTech, Taiga Gigayama.

Batrider rides heavily on the Battle Garegga formula, with its highly destructible terrain, challenging enemy and bullet patterns, ever-changing difficulty, and dozens of secret scoring tricks. However, it also adds many new features, such as a more vibrant color scheme (vs. Garegga's Real Is Brown) and a The King of Fighters-style team system in which the player can select three of eighteen different ships (alternating to the next ship on a life loss). If you liked Battle Garegga, or simply like Bullet Hell games in general, this just might be the game for you.

Official Japanese site here.


Armed Police Batrider contains examples of:

  • Absurdly Spacious Sewer: Spacious enough for spaceships and what not to fly in!
  • Adjective Noun Fred
  • Announcer Chatter: "WELCOME TO VIOLENT CITY!" "COOL!" "MAHVELOUS!"
  • Arachnid Appearance and Attire: After losing one of her arms three years before the events of the game, Sobut arranged to have it replaced with three more, then proceeded to get eight extra eyes grafted on. She's called the "Green Spider" for a reason.
  • Arms Dealer: One of GiganTech's specialties. The Buzzcock and Deviate the players fight were charted to be smuggled out of the country to foreign customers.
  • Awesome, but Impractical: Gain can upgrade his Battle Valhallyzer to the Galaxy Valhallyzer in mid-game...by missing a 1-Up item and then getting the next Option powerup...all without having any Options beforehand.
  • Ax-Crazy: Envy and Sobut.
  • Big Bad: Taiga Giganyama, CEO of GiganTech, created the island of Zenobia to sell black market weapons and is the one responsible for the rampant crime plaguing the island.
  • Big "NO!": The announcer drops one if you get a Game Over (and refuse to continue) or if you break your medal chain when medals are at their maximum value of 10,000 points or worse, miss a 1-Up item.
  • Boss Game: The Special course.
  • Bullet Hell
  • Cigar Chomper: Taiga Gigayama, the head of GiganTech himself.
  • Clear My Name: D.D. and Shorty were imprisoned on fake charges of drug trafficking (with the police chief the real culprit), then offered this mission in exchange for their freedom. Of course, the chief is hoping they get killed instead.
  • Corrupt Corporate Executive: Gigayama and Envy.
  • The Cracker: Blunt, to the degree that he was sentenced to 325 years in prison. Suffice to say that Gigayama decided he'd be more useful with GiganTech.
  • Cute Bruiser: Shorty.
  • Cybernetics Eat Your Soul: Apparently, Gigayama tried to broach Cyborg levels of cybernetic implants before the Zenovia plot, but people feared that this would be the result (and with people like Envy and Sobut around, that's kind of understandable). The arms smuggling appears to be to finance and test just such a level of cyberneticization.
  • Cyborg: Envy. At least 80% of his body is mechanical, and it's rumored that that long coat of his is meant to hide the fact that his torso no longer looks even remotely human.
    • Romero, Birthday's husband, is also 80% machine. And he's also her motorcycle. Tag-T isn't nearly as severe; just 30% machine, and apparently all internal.
  • Difficulty by Region: A minor example: In some versions, when you reach a score needed for an extend, you automatically get an extra life instead of needing to get the item for it.
  • The Dragon: Envy. However, because of how the selection routine for st. 5's bosses works, you're not guaranteed to fight him. In-story, though, Jyuji and Sandman's commentaries confirm that Envy was fought and defeated along with Sobut and Blunt.
  • Dynamic Difficulty: This game has the Rank mechanic, Shinobu Yagawa's Rank system to be exact.
  • Easy-Mode Mockery: Training Course offers easier bullet patterns and automatic bombing, but you only get 3 stages.
  • Engrish
    • A lot of the announcer's comments.
    • Many song titles, most notably "Let Ass Kick Together!" and "Chop U!", two of the game's boss battle themes.
  • Every 10,000 Points: By default, every 1.5 million points you get an extra life. Depending on the game version, it's either an instant 1-Up, or the next item that you generate once you cross the point boundary becomes a 1-up item. Fail to grab the 1-up and the announcer lets out a Big "NO!".
  • Explosive Leash: The Psychic Team have bombs implanted in their brains. A soldier in a helicopter tries to make them come with him back to the base but Golden had removed the bombs earlier. He uses them to blow up the helicopter, and they escape to freedom.
  • A Father to His Men: Tag-T with his original gang. In the Criminal Team ending, it seems to be extending to Adam.
  • Fully Absorbed Finale: In a sense, the game serves as this for the Mahou Daisakusen cast, as they have settled into living in the distant future.
  • Fun with Acronyms: Notice what the initials of the game's name are.
  • Gaia's Vengeance: How Sandman started out, getting to be called Little Earth's "Left Hand of God". Interesting thing is, he merely assumed that this was what humanity-wracked nature wanted after sensing nature's pain. He turned himself in after an ancient tree convinced him that a war on civilization was not how nature wanted the quandary fixed.
  • Genius Bruiser: Shorty, for all that she's particularly hot-blooded and a master martial artist, is also an extremely good chess player. The reason almost all of her recent matches have been against computer opponents is because no human player thinks there's any sane chance of beating her.
  • Gotta Catch 'Em All: Medal chaining is in this game, just like in Battle Garegga
  • Gratuitous English: Everything that isn't a menu choice, even the many many endings, is in English, albeit rather terrible English.
  • Guest Fighter: Entering a code in one of the earlier versions, or adjusting machine settings on newer revisions and overseas versions, will enable the hidden Mahou Daisakusen and Battle Garegga ships, for a total of eighteen characters. Birthday the criminal and Golden the prince return the favor by appearing in Great Mahou Daisakusen.
  • Hemisphere-Wrecking Wave: The northern hemisphere's still picking itself back up after an English nuclear power plant meltdown released nuclear ash that not only covered much of Europe, but rode the jet streams to North America and Mongolia. Death toll: around 20,000. Affected toll: around 160,000,000.
  • Human Resources: Those green vials in the final stage? They extract energy from the humans inside! And then they get used as power cells for Discharge and its sentinels. Apparently, no energy source existed that could properly power Discharge, except Zenovia's hapless prisoners.
  • Humongous Mecha: The Rivals at the end of st. 5, and Grubby is a kind of centaur-ish mech (it has the head, arms, and upper torso, but a relatively normal vehicle/tank chassis rather than legs). Also Robo-Gob if you have a Mahou Daisakusen character in your retinue.
  • Kaiju: Miyamoto's ending is to launch an acting career in this role.
  • Lethal Joke Character: Car-Pet originally appeared in Shippu Mahou Daisakusen as an NPC who always died on the first stage. In this game, however, she has excellent straight-forward firepower.
  • Marathon Level: The first five stages take about ten minutes to complete. The last two stages take that same amount of time.
  • Medium Awareness: In Car-Pet's ending, she comments that she thought Batrider is rather easy for a Raizing game and that players should check out her (fake) RPG once it's complete.
  • Multi-Armed and Dangerous: Sobut and Grubby. Note, by the way, that the st. 5 mechs are just called Red, Yellow, and Green; Envy, Blunt, and Sobut are the pilots. So Green is the multi-armed mech, Sobut is its pilot, and she actually is multi-armed herself!
  • Multiple Endings: 21 unique endings for Advanced mode (3 for the pre-arranged teams, 18 for solo characters). Moreover, if you're using a Gareggaplane, Brian's or Jason's ending monologue changes depending on which of their two ships you used.
  • Nintendo Hard: It's a Raizing game programmed by Yagawa, so of course it's this. Understanding how the Dynamic Difficulty works on top of dodging skills and bombing judgement are a must if you want to complete the game on Normal or Advanced modes.
  • Nothing Is Scarier: We never do see why that woman is so horrified of Golden's exposed eyes in his solo ending. Or Golden's glasses-less face, for that matter.
  • One Nation Under Copyright: GiganTech slowly glommed up more and more of Zenovia until it was its own little fiefdom (and guinea pig supply). Also, it would appear that New York, New Jersey, and Michigan fell prey to this.
  • Power Perversion Potential: Golden's selective telepathy would fall under this, if not for the fact that female thoughts of lust are all he can sense with it. Not much in "potential" if it's already there from the onset.
  • Psycho Prototype: Boredom was supposed to be an automated patrol unit (or at least that's how GiganTech billed it) to relieve police of crime pressure. However, when the first day of operation results in 31 dead and 326 wounded, you can understand how it got retired immediately. From the ostensible purpose, that is.
  • Psychopathic Manchild: The "psychopathic" part is up for debate, but Blunt doesn't seem to be a particularly malevolent cracker; it's really all just fun and games for him.
  • Retraux: Car-Pet's ending, complete with an 8-bit song.
  • Rewarding Vandalism: Like Garegga, Smart Bombing the scenery can uncover special powerups and medals.
  • Right-Hand Cat: Blunt's cyborg cat/co-pilot, Klingon.
  • Setting Update: Battle Garegga + more color + set in cities instead of war zones = this.
  • Shopping Montage: Chitta's ending shows her celebrating her victory with some shopping back in New York. Does she become a fashion icon?
  • Spider Tank: Deviate.
  • Spiritual Successor: To Battle Garegga obviously. The gameplay would receive a Spiritual Successor in the form of Ibara, with the same programmer (S. Yagawa).
  • Stage Bypass: Normal Course can be made to be even shorter than Training: go into Stage Edit, select "YES", then select the "QUIT" option. Your only stages will be Metropolis (the first stage) and Highway (the last stage), for a total of 2 stages. There's even an unofficial leaderboard for this challenge.
  • Suicide Mission: What the police chief really wanted the mission's outcome to be for the Police Team.
  • Super-Power Meltdown: In Maria's ending, she loses control of her psychic powers after using them to boost her attack power for too long. Fortunately for her, it was All Just a Dream.
  • Tank Goodness: Grubby.
  • Terrible Trio: Birthday, Tag-T and Adam seem to fit the template, but are clearly protagonists.
  • Theme Naming: The boss names are all connected in some way to the 1980s rock-and-roll scene.
  • Throw the Dog a Bone: Gain's ending has him finally pilot a ship that doesn't backfire on him. What does he do now? Travel into space, the next frontier.
  • Units Not to Scale: Due to this game being more "zoomed in" due to the use of air bikes rather than realistically-sized aircraft, the Battle Garegga ships look comically small compared to the objects around them, and are even smaller than the cars in Stage 1. And that's before considering how the Wayne brothers would be able to fit into their cabins, since there's nothing hinting in Garegga or Batrider lore that the Waynes are anything besides ordinary humans or they have any sort of technlogy or magic that can shrink humans or make the cabins Bigger on the Inside.

Let Ass Kick Together!

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