Rapid Hero, also known in some ports as Arcadia, is a 1994 arcade Vertical Scrolling Shooter produced by NMK.
The player (both of them) spend the entire game fending off a seemingly-endless wave of robot starships and giant mechas, through eight levels across the world and the galaxy, while in pursuit of a mysterious, unnamed ninja-like supervillain (depicted on the cover) who repeatedly challenges the player heroes with his legion of mechs, before confronting them mano-to-mano at the end of each stage. Each and every stage ends with the villain's mecha being destroyed, at which point he jettisons his ride and leaps out of the screen, prompting the player to pursue him to the next level, and so on, until finally facing him in his Space Base.
And that's pretty much all the plot there is. No, seriously, that's all the game's about.
Not to be confused with Arcadia, a 1983 arcade game also in a sci-fi setting.
Rapid Hero contain examples of:
- Ace Pilot: Both players.
- Bullet Hell: Every single boss fight and most of the enemies can make the screen a maze made from deadly projectiles. Get busy dodging!
- Combining Mecha: In his fourth encounter, the villain controls his mech to absorb a dozen other mechs around him, turning into an enormous giant robot with himself in the center as a Meta Mecha of sorts. The player will need to destroy his parts separately, blowing up one segment at a time until all parts are destroyed. This is notably the villain's largest onscreen form, though not the toughest compared to the final encounter.
- Diagonal Cut: How the main villain introduces himself; piloting a giant mech holding a spear, who then cuts a skyscraper diagonally into two. Cue first boss fight.
- Doppelgänger Spin: The main villain in the second stage boss battle has a new ability to create duplicates of himself, two at a time. This ability returns in the Final Boss encounter, only this time he can create eight.
- Humongous Mecha: Every stage boss is a giant robot of sorts, compared to the player which is in a spaceship.
- Ninja: The main villain's final form, where instead of piloting a mech like his previous battles, he instead turns into a ninja as large as the player's ships and attack by releasing shurikens on the heroes.
- No Name Given: The player characters aren't named onscreen, and neither is the main villain.
- Recurring Boss: The game's Big Bad who survives every single encounter, being the boss of ALL stages, coming back to periodically challenge the heroes, over and over again.
- Retraux: Much of the game's animation resembles old-timey NES games from the 80s, despite the game itself coming out in 1994, which seems to be intentional.
- Sequential Boss: For the Final Boss encounter. Like usual, the main villain sics a gigantic mech at you that you defeat as usual, but immediately afterwards he reveals himself as a ninja as large as your ship... cue second and last phase.
- Smart Bomb: Part of the players' arsenal. It releases a massive explosion in the center of the screen which kills all enemies (save for bosses) and can even remove bullets and dangerous projectiles.
- Spread Shot: One of the many, many power-ups, of the classical three-spread variety.
- Villain: Exit, Stage Left: The main villain shows up at the end of each stage piloting a giant mech armed with various weapons, and each time his mech gets totaled, he then ejects and leaves the screen. It's not until the final level where players finally confront him in a final battle.
- Zerg Rush: Expect onscreen enemies to total up to several dozens in later levels.
