Lightning Fighters, known as Trigon (トライゴン Toraigon?) in Japan, is a vertical-scrolling shoot 'em up developed and published by Konami in 1990 for arcade platforms.
Plot[]
The fate of the world is in your hands when you become one of the world's few Lightning Fighters. You have been issued an order to defend the free world from enemy infiltration, and to seek out and destroy the origin of these unknown adversaries.
As one of the top fighter pilots in the world, you consider yourself prepared for combat. However, in addition to battling enemy aircrafts, you will also be engaging in air-to-ground and air-to-sea combat. Your quest will take you through many mysterious places, including islands, snow-covered landscapes, oceans, and deserts, that the enemy forces have taken over. To help you terminate opposing planes, tanks, sensors, submarines, and other threats, power-ups in the form of vulcan bullets and spread bullets can be obtained. "Trigons", automatic-fire cyber weapons, can also be picked up in the course of the action to help blast away the opponents. The most powerful weapons, the "particle beam" and "dragon laser", are also available to help terminate every enemy on screen. You must use your best aerial maneuvers to avoid the barrages of enemy fire that you will face.
Once you have fought your way around the world to find the headquarters of the unknown foe, get ready for the ultimate battle. If you can annihilate the headquarters, the impending domination of the Earth will be eliminated, and peace will reign. This mission will take you through 9 stages; if you complete the mission, the game repeats once more with and higher difficulty.[1]If you complete the mission twice, the game will end.
Gameplay[]
Trigon gameplay is similar to Raiden, with nine levels in total, all leading up to the finding the alien mothership mentioned earlier and defeating a final boss at the bottom of his volcano lair.
One innovation was the introduction of smart bombs: the Dragon Laser and Lightning Sword. The player can stock up to six of these at a time, having both types in their collection as they pick them up.
Weapons[]
- Vulcan Missiles: These give the player a single auto-firing stream of Vulcan missiles. It's quite powerful, but has no spread capability at all. Picking up more of them gives the player a faster rate of shooting and bigger missiles. It features autofire, removing the need of constant button mashing.
- Spread Shot: This shot type is very similar to Flying Shark's bullets, and a bit similar to Raiden spread shot, and is actually pretty powerful. Picking up more provides a wider shot. However, it doesn't feature autofire, forcing the player to button mashing to get a decent rate of fire.
The Super Fighters also have two types of smart bombs, which can be collected from certain places on the ground and stored to explode on demand later.
- Dragon Laser: A fiery dragon is released which travels round the screen taking everything out with ease for a considerable amount of time. Some bosses can be damaged really heavily or even killed outright by a Dragon Laser let off at the right time. Unfortunately, it is slow to deploy and won't save the player if a bullet is going to hit. It can also be "killed" by hitting the shield or the laser of the fourth boss.
- Lightning Sword/Particle Beam: It provides almost instant protection from bullets when used, but doesn't last for very long and is less powerful than the Dragon Laser.
There is also a special power-up weapon called "Trigon", which is a drone that flies besides the player's Super Fighter. Only one type of Trigon can be obtained in a one-player game, while in two-player mode there are four different types of it. These are the seeking laser, bombing, aerial missile, and twin fire. The angle of one ship to the other determines the direction of fire of the Trigon, except the laser missile firing Trigon home in the opposing aircraft or land based vehicle by themselves.
Regional differences[]
In Lightning Fighters and Trigon, the original Japanese version, there are different rules depending on whether the game is started with one or two players.
In Trigon, in a one-player game, the player starts with no bombs, and when they die, the game restarts the player at a checkpoint. In a two-player game, each life starts with one bomb, and when a player dies, they respawn in place. Only one type of "Trigon" power-up appears in a one-player game, while there are four types in a two-player game. The game type cannot be changed once the game starts. A second player cannot join an originally one-player game; conversely, if one player dies in a two-player game, the game remains in two-player mode and the second player can rejoin at any time.
In Lightning Fighters, even if a one-player game is started, the game is always in two-player mode; the player respawns in place when they die and they start each life with one bomb in stock. This means that a second player can join midway into a one-player game. Unfortunately, it also means that the power-up that only appears in one-player games in the other versions doesn't appear at all in the US version.
Gallery[]
Screenshots[]
Packaging artwork[]
Promotional artwork[]
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Trivia[]
- The player's base, seen at the beginning of the game, is shaped as the classic Konami logo.
- Collected star icons give the player bonus points which increase on value the more are collected in a single life, going from 1,000 points and up to a maximum of 5,730 points. Konami is often represented by the goroawase (wordplay) number "573". In the Japanese language, "five" is translated to "go", changed from the voiceless form "ko". "Nana" is "seven" in Japanese and is referred to "na" for short. "Three" translates to "mi", the shortened word for "mittsu". Correspondingly, mixing "ko", "na" and "mi" together spells out the company's name.
- The smart bomb weapons of the Super Fighters, the "Dragon Laser" and "Lightning Sword", are used by the boss Deltatry in Gradius Gaiden.
- These weapons and the Trigon Option return again in Otomedius Excellent, where they are used by Kokoro Belmont.
- The Super Fighter was also featured in Airforce Delta Strike along with some other famous Konami fighters.
References[]
- ↑ Background description from the back of the North American arcade flyer.
External links[]
- GameFAQs
- MobyGames
- Trigon [Model GX939] at Gaming History (source of the "Regional differences" section)