Raid on Tri City: Second Wave

Raid on Tri City: Second Wave is an action puzzle title that mixes falling block gameplay with shooting. It is a physical release and an expanded version of the original "Raid on TriCity" that was download only.

The player controls a space ship on a playfield similar to the one of Tetris. The ship can freely be moved around the area as long as its part of a stacked block. New Tetrominoes drop down from the top of the screen. They cannot be moved or rotated, but they can be shot brick by brick. Scoring is done by creating lines, so careful shooting is required to either destroy the block completely or to make parts fit the gaps in the playfield to stack them properly and create lines. The shooting itself does not affect the score. Some of the falling blocks contain power-ups or enemies that can be destroyed or drop to add to the stack. Power-ups such as bombs can become dangerous when lines are formed and enemies restrict movement when part of the stack and can then only be taken out through lines. When the blocks reach a threshold near the top of the screen, the game is over.

EEPROM on the cartridge is used to save the game and store highscores. Also new to this release is the Story mode. It splits the gameplay into separate levels with a fixed goal to complete them, a narrative about aliens where the player has to save Congis Space Station and the AC2-K11 sector of the Galaxy, and some interactivity with a branching level path. The gameplay for Story is similar to the Arcade mode but there the only goal is to beat the highscore.

The playfield only takes up about 50% of the screen in the center. On the left there is a picture showing a control element of a space ship and the right part contains the HUD elements. In the Story mode the HUD shows the remaining time, the level objective such as the number of lines, bombs and bugs, and the number of bullets you can shoot at the same time. In the Arcade mode the HUD shows the score, the number of lines, the current level and the number of bullets you can shoot at the same time.