Trigon (トライゴン), also called Lightning Fighters (ライトニング・ファイターズ), is a vertical-scrolling shoot 'em up developed and released by Konami in 1990 for Arcade platforms. It's known as the "Konami's Raiden". One innovation was the introduction of their Smart Bombs, the Dragon Laser and Lightning Sword, beating the standard bombs of Raiden.
Storyline
The time and location are unspecified. A mysterious black alien spacecraft has crash-landed on a planet very much resembling Earth. An invasion fleet has spewed forth from the innards of the giant craft, threatening to enslave the whole planet. It's time to take off and defend your homeworld, Super Fighters!
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.
Weaponry
Vulcan Missiles: These give you a single autofiring stream of Vulcan missiles. It's quite powerful, but has no spread capability at all. Picking up more of them gives you a faster rate of shooting and bigger missiles. Sometimes it's better if you like the autofire and can have a little rest from button mashing.
Spread Shot: Not autofiring, instead you need to bash madly to get a decent rate of fire. Pick up more to get a wider 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.
The Super Fighters also have two types of bombs, which can be collected from certain places on the ground and stored to explode on demand later.
Lightning Sword / Particle Beam: It provides almost instant protection from bullets when used, but doesnt last for very long and is less powerful than the Dragon Laser. This weapon is used
Dragon Laser: It lasts for ages and ages, and travels round the screen taking everything out with ease. 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 you if a bullet is going to hit. It can also be "killed" by hitting the shield or the laser of the fourth boss and become useless, so be careful when using it.
In 2-player mode, the Fighters have an extra weapon called "Trigon", with four different types of it. These are the seeking laser, bombing, aerial missile, and twin fire which make the game play a lot more similarly to Raiden II. 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.
Trivia
- The radical 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're used by used by Kokoro Belmont.
- The Super Fighter was also featured in Airforce Delta Strike along with some other famous Konami fighters.