Written by: Stoo
Date posted: February 24, 2025

Some games we write about are old favourites, that we played for many hours in our dorky youths. Others are ones we’ve discovered more recently (much as we’d love to pretend we’re already familiar with every single PC Game from the 90s). Then you get some that, for whatever reason, we’ve dabbled with over the years without making any real commitment or progress.

One of those for me is the scrolling shooter-em-up Raptor: Call of the Shadows. It has a short but great intro from those days of hand-drawn VGA art, which have aged a whole lot better than the plastic pre-rendered CG that came after. Also the first level has the sort of upbeat midi music that perfectly captures that “it’s Saturday morning in 1994, time to play videogames” feeling. Yet I’d never really experienced any more than that, for no reason other than I don’t play these shmups (as I believe fans call them?) a whole lot in general.

Now seemed like a good time to sit down and try it properly. For one thing, my time for Big Serious games is limited and rationed (and lately a lot has gone towards the really excellent Dishonored 2), so this is a good type to slot around them. Also, it’s my mission to one day have a review of every single game from Apogee Studios (aka 3D Realms). Even those really obscure early ones, although this example is very much from the peak of their 2D output.

From my limited frame of reference I generally associate these shmups with far flung scifi in deep space – R-Type, Xenon etc. However this one goes for more of a slightly grungy near-future setting. The first two episodes seem to take place here on earth, the last one looks like mars and the moon. Meanwhile your own fighter is a bit like a cross between an F-15 and an X-29. A lot of the stuff you shoot at looks like VTOLS and helicopters from some sideways branch of the real world, although the bosses do get into the realm of “implausibly huge flying thing with a million guns”.

Now, if you’re a cack-handed gamer like me, you may be discouraged from scrolling shooters by the prospect of exploding the second a single enemy bullet grazes your ship. In fact that may be the reason you will never, ever finish R-Type. So I’m pleased to report than in Raptor you have the luxury of an entire health bar. In fact this can be enhanced with several layered shields, each of which adds another health bar on top. In other words, you can soak up a bit of punishment before you go boom.

I should point out that the game is fairly stingy with shield replenishment pickups within levels, and besides they barely do anything unless you’re on your last shield. Also some enemy weapons – I’m thinking the big lasers – will strip a shield in about 2 hits. Oh, and it can still get a bit more hectic than some of these screenshots suggest – I’m not good at playing and hitting the screengrab key at the same time (Rik takes videos and selects pics later, far better approach). Nonetheless, I think it’s fair to say this is fairly forgiving as far as shmups go. I mean, I completed the whole thing on medium without too much struggle, although I did make use of another feature that I’ll mention in a bit.

Anyway that’s the defensive side of things, so now let’s talk weapons. That’s one of the little incentives that keeps you going in these games, right? Upgrades to your firepower, from rattatatt to BLAM BLAM or maybe ZAP. Here you start with unglamorous but trusty twin machineguns. New weapons occasionally drop from containers within levels. You can also buy them from the arms dealer between levels, with money gained mostly by destroying stuff.

The starter guns are always active, as are a couple of mildly useful other guns. You then choose, form your current arsenal, which additional weapon to equip. The lineup starts with missiles and moves to more advanced tech, culminating in absurdly powerful lasers. My actual favourite though are a couple of turrets that automatically aim at nearby targets. So even when you’re ducking and weaving around in the screen, you’re still shooting at something.

Only some of the weapons can hit both air and ground targets, others are restricted to one o the other. Also while those turrets can be a godsend, they’re not always the best option if you just want to maximize firepower directly forward. To make most effective use of your weapons can involve rapidly changing back and forth and I did often either stab the wrong number key entirely. Alternatively, you can just pick a favourite, stick with it and hope it gets you through.

While you shoot stuff the level scrolls past underneath, and they’re packed with an impressive amount of details on the ground. There’s not just enemies but also buildings like factories, warehouses. All of this can be destroyed – even hilariously enough the occasional parked car. You’ll want to wreck everything you see not just to revel in glorious destruction, but because every single object earns you cash.

End of level means a boss fight, usually the aforementioned massive flying battleship but occasionally a ground installation. Mostly these work the same way – lots of bullets going every direction but also a concentrated frontal barrage, that regularly pauses just long enough for you to leap in and get in a few good shots. Then you dodge away and wait for the pattern to repeat. Not necessarily easy but a simple concept, you just need to dance around a lot. I suppose you might wish for a bit more variety, or some sort of “attack the single glowing weak spot” challenge.

One final note, it’s actually possible to grind your way through the game. When you abandon a level, whole losing any cash picked up directly, you do keep any powerups that dropped. So you can just play as far as the powerup, quit, sell it, restart and repeat. Do this on the first level enough times and you can go buy yourself the auto-turret, leaving you more or less unstoppable for the rest of the first chapter. I’ve no idea if this this was the developers’ intention.

So then, summing up. If you’re a seasoned veteran of scrolling shooters – probably with a big stash of Japanese MAME roms – I don’t know if this will impress you. My hunch is you’ll find it a bit too slow and forgiving; it doesn’t call for perfect reflexes and won’t punish tiny mistakes with instant destruction. (at least, not on middle settings) Really though I’m writing for gamers like me – shareware fans who grew up happy to try any sort of action game that came up under the Apogee or Epic Megagames banners.

In that context, I can say it more or less delivers what I’d be looking for. Pixelly VGA, midi music, lots of stuff blowing up and the constant lure of a bigger laser to make things blow up faster. There’s not a lot more to say, and it’s difficult to rate this on the same sort of scale as a Big Serious Game (Dishonored gets a 10). At this point you may be wondering even if there is a point to a numerical score, and that’s something I’ve never quite figured out myself. So lets just say it’s a highly worthwhile part of the Apogee stable, and comes with a solid recommendation from this humble site.