ESP Ra.de. - A.D. 2018 Tokyo - ESPRADE

ESP Ra.De. (エスプレイド ,Esupureido?) is a vertically scrolling manic shooter arcade game developed by Cave and published by Atlus in 1998. Unlike most other shmups, ESP Ra.De. has a somewhat involved story and setting. Though there was no "true" sequel to ESP Ra.De, the game received "spiritual sequels" in the form of Espgaluda and Espgaluda II.

By 2018, Tokyo has reached its maximum extension, therefore falling prey of common problems such as overpopulation and criminality. For this reason, an artificial island, aptly named Tokyo-2, is created just offshore, thanks to the support of the shady "Yaksa" corporation, led by elusive billionaire Garra Ono, whose ties with the modern incarnation of Yakuza have not been proved. Another source of unstability is given by the rising number of humans exhibiting extrasensory perception, the so called ESPers, who are constantly hunted down by the Japanese Police force.

Unknown to everyone, Garra herself is an extremely powerful ESPer, bent on using her influence over the government and military to replace every living being in the city with clones (disturbingly enough, these ESPers take the form of a 10 years old girl, named "Alice" and implied to originate from Garra's own DNA). Just as her plans begin to unfold, three children are forced to take action, each one for his or her own personal motives.

Main CPU : MC68000 (@ 16 Mhz)
Sound CPU : Z80 [Optional]
Sound Chips : YMZ280B (@ 16.9344 Mhz) or OKIM6295 x (1 or 2) + YM2203 / YM2151 [Optional]
Other : 93C46 EEPROM

Screen orientation : Vertical
Video resolution : 240 x 320 pixels
Screen refresh : 57.55 Hz
Palette colors : 32768

Players : 2
Control : 8-way joystick
Buttons : 3

Producer : Kenichi Takano
Super visor : Hiroyuki Tanaka (Atlus)
Chief programmer : Tsuneki Ikeda
Programmers : Satoshi Kohyama, Ryuichi Yabuki
Chief designer : Junya Inoue
Designers : Akira Wakabayashi, Yuko Nakamura
CG designers : Riichirou Nitta, Atushi Aburano
Sound producer : Junya Inoue
Sound director : Hiroshi Horiguchi (Two Five)
Music composer : Masahiro Kusunoki (Two Five)
Sound effects : Ryuichi Yabuki
Character voices : Mikio Yamaguchi, Yasuyuki Hirota, Yuko Nakamura, Junya Inoue, Noriko Nishimura, Kazushi Takamura
Special assist : Toshiaki Tomizawa

Category:

Gaming

Tags:

• Esprade
• arcade
• action
• shooter
• mame

[TronPachioftheDynamo]

Nevermind. Was excited to find a Cave title I haven't played. I'll stick to DDP...

[fabyooos]

Best Cave game ever!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[alxxz]

Esp. Ra.De has an excellent soundtrack, but the level 1 track is the best audio track of the game, especially the Boss track which kicks ass!!

[MaskedNaco]

the music is awesome an underrated pearl of cave...I really love this game so much

[ShmuckyPuppy]

awesome game. loved playing as the chick and spamming the shit out of her splash attack

[ncshuriken]

Man I love this game, the graphics, the lasers, the inability of most people to even get past stage 1!

Reminds me of Akira and similar stories. I wish more people knew about this game, and its brothers like GUWANGE.

Non-stop hectic fun, great taking in turns with a mate!

[scmhwo]

esper ra de