JOTEGO

Lighting Fighters

Added 2025-06-27 18:42:35 +0000 UTC

History

A vertical scrolling shooter game released by Konami in 1990, supporting two-player simultaneous play.

Attack items differ between solo and two-player modes, and even the way you respawn changes depending on the mode. The hitbox in this game is quite large, and each stage features both a mid-boss and a final boss. Because of this, always make sure to collect the special weapons. (You can stock up to six at a time.) One important thing to note: special weapons are not used in the order you collect them, but rather in reverse order—starting with the most recently picked up. So planning the order in which you collect them is key to survival.

The international version of the game includes the following differences:

In a new game, Player 2 can join mid-game even during a single-player session
The name of the special weapon was changed from "Lightning Sword" to "HULK BEAM"
In single-player mode, the Single Trigon does not appear
When you lose a life in single-player mode, you don't return to a previous checkpoint—instead, you respawn on the spot with one HULK BEAM shot equipped

If you're playing the Japanese version, it's best to go for the Trigon. The Trigon is an unmanned support combat pod that automatically targets and attacks enemies for you. In the international version, it only appears when playing in 2-player mode.

Technical Trivia

There are schematics available online from several sources but as it happens to KONAMI games of this era, there are missing sheets. It is not clear whether KONAMI was intentionally keeping some sheets off distribution or whether we have just been unlucky and the sheets have been lost.

The schematics do show the connection of the screen brightness logic. Thanks to this, the screen correctly dims at the end of each stage (while keeping the ship bright). This feature is currently missing on MAME.

The brightness logic is maybe the only non-trivial difference with the Sunset Riders PCB. Still, I think it would be possible to patch the Lightning Fighters software so it runs on a Sunset Riders board. The opposite may not be possible.

Other Updates

Added support for player selection to JTTWIN (Dark Adventure/Devil World)
Restored sound balance in JTS18 to previous value. Still working on Moonwalker low volume during the magic dance.
Restored fast loading on CPSx and other cores
Super Hang-On files restored for Analogue Pocket (missing last week)
Added flip option to Desert Breaker via scaler in MiSTer