Raiden Fighters Jet (Arcade) - ALL3 (Judge Spear)

Played on MAME 0.256
Raiden Fighters Jet is the final game in the Raiden Fighters series and also happens to be the last game developed by Seibu. I always found this game interesting since for me, RF2 was about as good as it was going to get with the general formula they had and I guess they reached the same conclusion since Jet took things in a more "interesting" direction.
So the first and most awkward thing initially is the new medal system. To max out the medals you combine them by dragging them around while you have an slave item. The problem here is not only the same one Raiden Fighters 1 and 2 had, where eventually it's an stage 1-only thing, but also that here it's way more all-or-nothing since screwing up means you're always starting from scratch and being realistic anything past like, level 05 feels way too chaotic to try doing the medal ritual without either dying or losing your slaves.
After that, making 10 medals be on the screen replaces them with the regular gold medals from the previous game and the focus is just not dropping any (well, ignoring the fact they made their hitbox a lot smaller but you get used to that).
The other notable and more natural addition is the combo system. When achieving several secrets in quick succession a multiplier is attached that caps at X9 and basically as long as there is a bonus still displayed the combo is kept. It's simple yet can make the game absurdly hard if you want, especially considering the miclus and fairy's score is only given by destroying the miclus and grabbing the fairy, so their bonus can be "delayed" during chains for a higher multiplier.
On top of that, there are large enemies with their own bonuses and (sometimes) bomb drops that only appear when already doing scoring tricks, further complicating the routing. For example achieving all the Quick Shots at the start of level 01 triggers an extra truck, uncovering all the miclus (I think that's what causes it) in level 05 has the big plane at the end and getting the 2 miclus at the start of level 45 triggers a third submarine before the boss.
Also the giant boss stages from RF1 and 2 are gone which I consider a downgrade. Instead this game has the level progression system. How well you play sends you to different stages, mostly not dying but also having gold medals activated and not timing out boss fights (luckily doesn't apply to the first phase of any boss) sends you to the "Real Battle Phase" stages, which are the true endgame as part of the ALL3 route.
Phase 1 is just a memorization test although it looks quite insane at first. Phase 2 is honestly just a shitshow lol. The TLB is also a lives check and basically why you don't want to die at all even if the ALL3 route allows some mistakes.
Aside from that the general gameplay is untouched with the exception of the "Gradius options" formation, where they now fire a surprisingly strong laser, practically mandatory for safely destroying the level 45 boss with 1 bomb and useful for many other sections.
Judge Spear is also unchanged with the best bomb in the game and good damage all around, although some enemies are still somehow too strong like the 4 large planes in level 15 lol
In level 45 I failed to uncover a fairy at 9:20 so I'm one bomb behind for the rest of the run after that, not a huge deal however. When I was practicing I always ended somewhere in the 130m range as far as score goes but here I dropped medals one too many times.