Raptor: Call of The Shadows

Back in the mid 90’s I was playing many games on the pc. Most of which were DOS games. There was Commander Keen, Duke Nukem, Doom,  Megarace and many many more. But one of my favorites was Raptor: Call of The Shadows.

In Raptor, you fly a advanced fighter jet called a Raptor a futuristic time. You are a mercenary and you are given the task to take out the enemies. This is  top down 2D side scrolling adventure. When released, it had some of the best graphics to date for it’s genre of games. Even today, those graphics still look great.

The game features 3 stages, each with 9 levels.Each level features one or two bosses. They get tougher as you go of course, but you don’t have to start and the beginning- although I recommend it. As  you progress you earn credits for each enemy destroyed and other  goodies they drop. You also can pick up some weapons as you go. However, after each level when you return to the hangar you can buy and sell weapons and shields to upgrade as you go. Some weapons are extremely powerful and expensive.  Here you can also save your game. Oh and you have no extra lives, when those shields run out-it’s game over!

This is fun and challenging and very easy to pick up and play. The DOS version was probably the best, but there was later released a Windows version and even a Linux version. But in December of 2010, it was put up on the app store for the iOS and in January 2011 it was made available on the Apple App Store for the Mac.

The iOS version is the one I have been playing on my iPod Touch and I must say they did an excellent port. The graphics are great, the music better and the controls are well different. You use your finger to navigate the fighter, as you move it fires, and you touch the screen in the upper left to release a mega bomb or upper right to switch weapons or pause the game. After two levels with this control scheme I found myself running through levels with little difficulties. If you so choose and can change the control to use the Accelerometer. But I prefer the finger method. See some additional screen shots below.