Razion

Razion is a 2014 horizontally scrolling shooter video game developed and published by German indie team NG:Dev.Team for the Neo Geo. It is the fourth shoot 'em up title from NG:Dev.Team and their sixth game overall. Controlling a space fighter craft, the player must fight endless waves of enemies while avoiding collision with their projectiles and other obstacles.

First announced in mid-2014 for the Neo Geo, Razion bears resemblance to Fast Striker (2010), another shoot 'em up designed by NG:Dev.Team, due to its bullet hell-style approach. The music was composed by Andre Neumann, who previously scored music for DUX . Neumann was interested to score music for the game once he finished his work on Redux: Dark Matters , after René Hellwig told him that his brother Timm was looking for a musician who could make a psytrance soundtrack. A port for the Nintendo Switch under the title Razion EX was released in 2021, featuring several design changes compared to the original Neo Geo version.

Razion is a science fiction-themed horizontally scrolling shoot 'em up game in which the player take control of a space fighter craft through six increasingly difficult stages in order to defeat an assortment of enemy forces and bosses.^{[1] [2] [3]} At the start, there are three difficulty modes to choose from: Novice, Original and Maniac.^{[1] [2] [3] [4]} The player has only two weapons at their disposal: the main gun that travels a max distance of the screen's height and a powerful beam capable of dealing high-damage to any enemy caught within its blast radius.^[3]

The player can slowdown the ship's movement to avoid incoming bullets more precisely by pressing the A button in the Neo Geo version, which also produces a focused horizontal autofire shot.^[3] Tapping the A button enables the ship to fire bursts shots as well.^[3] The scoring system revolves around collecting gold cubes from destroyed enemies to charge up the beam.^[1] By shooting a charged up beam, gold cubes are turned green and grants higher score bonuses when picked up in this state.^[3] Getting hit by enemy fire will result in losing a life and once all lives are lost, the game is over unless the player inserts more credits into the arcade machine to continue playing.

Razion was first announced by NG:Dev.Team in mid-2014 for the Neo Geo and slated for an Autumn 2014 launch.^{[2] [4] [5]} NG:Dev.Team was responsible for the game's design, which bears resemblance to Fast Striker (2010) due to its bullet hell-style approach in contrast to Last Hope (2006) and DUX (2009), though the graphics were outsourced.^{[6] [7]} Timm Hellwig served as both programmer and designer, while René Hellwig acted as art director and graphist.^[8] The soundtrack was composed by Andre Neumann, who previously scored music for DUX.^{[9] [10]} According to Neumann, René told him that his brother Timm was looking for a composer who could make a psytrance soundtrack when working on the project, and he was interested to score the music after finishing his work on Redux: Dark Matters .^[10] Neumann stated that he used FL Studio, a Korg M50 and the Virus TI2 analog synthesizer when producing music for the game by observing its visuals.^[10]

Razion was released for the Neo Geo MVS on December 1, 2014, as two editions; a collector's edition limited to 100 units and a limited edition of 50 copies.^{[1] [5] [11] [12] [13]} At 1560 megabits of data, it is one of the largest games developed for the Neo Geo platform.^{[4] [5]} The MVS release supports software updates via a USB port.^{[4] [5] [11]} In July 2015, a Neo Geo AES version was also released by NG:Dev.Team.^[13] Around the same time period, a music album was released by NG:Dev.Team and a digital album was distributed by Neumann through Bandcamp on September 12 the same year.^{[10] [14]} A version for the Nintendo Switch titled Razion EX was released on June 17, 2021, while a digital release via Nintendo eShop launched on September 16 in North America and Europe.^{[13] [15] [16] [17]} The Switch version features several changes compared to the original Neo Geo releases such as reworked gameplay, redesigned stages and improved visuals, among other features.^[16] Like the Neo Geo versions, the Switch version is available in both standard and limited editions, with the latter having 1500 copies manufactured and a second batch of 700 physical copies for the Switch version was produced by NGDEV.^{[18] [19]}

Prior to launch, Razion was compared by gaming outlets such as RetroManiac and Retro Gamer with both Pulstar , Blazing Star and DUX due to its pre-rendered graphical style and bright color palette.^{[4] [6] [7] [21]} Reviewing Razion EX, TouchArcade 's Shaun Musgrave regarded it as a "high-quality shoot-em-up" on Nintendo Switch in vein of Blazing Star, commending the balanced difficulty modes, scoring system, vintage-style visuals and soundtrack.^[20]

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• Horizontally scrolling shooters
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