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Back in the arcades of 1998 there was a vertical shooter with a premise too reckless to ignore: cops piloting giant robots and shooting up the city. That game was Armed Police Batrider. On October 10, 2026, at the M2 ShotTriggers 10th Anniversary Thanksgiving Festival ~Let’s Jailbreak Together!!~, a port of Batrider was announced under the working title Armed Police Batrider (tentative).
One caveat up front. As of October 2026, no platforms, no release window, and no price have been announced. All that surfaced was the title and the shape of what’s included. Even so, the substance of the announcement is meaty. There are 18 ships in total, M2 Gadget puts four categories of information on screen, and a Super Easy mode for newcomers is on board.
Batrider is the second entry in Raizing’s (now Eighting) Battle series, and it hit arcades in January 1998. On top of the ZERO COP ships carried over from the previous game, guests from Sorcer Striker and Battle Garegga joined the roster, and players assembled multiple ships into a team before launching — a seriously unusual design even by the standards of its day.
This article lays out what was announced about the contents, what M2 Gadget actually displays, and what kind of game the original was, sticking strictly to what can be confirmed from the official announcement and the stream. Anything unannounced gets labeled unannounced.
A shooter revival gets judged on what was added to it. With this Batrider, the explanation of those additions was unusually concrete. Let’s go through it in order.
When does Armed Police Batrider release? What platforms and price?
As of October 2026, there has been no official announcement of a release window, platforms, or price.
What was announced is the title, Armed Police Batrider (tentative), plus the included modes and features. The fact that it showed up under a working title alone makes it natural to read the release as still some way off. M2 ShotTriggers is a label that takes its time on port quality, so patience is the only option here.
| Item | Status as of October 2026 |
|---|---|
| Title | Armed Police Batrider (tentative) |
| Platforms | Unannounced |
| Release window | Unannounced |
| Price | Unannounced |
| Playable ships | 18 total |
| Modes included | ARCADE, Super Easy |
The official page for the 10th anniversary event where the announcement happened has an event rundown, timetable included. If you want to follow how the announcements played out, that’s the fastest route.
Two modes included: ARCADE and Super Easy
The port includes two modes: an ARCADE mode that reproduces the arcade original, and a Super Easy mode aimed at beginners.
Super Easy is the same feature found in Kyukyoku Tiger on M2ShotTriggers ARCADE, also announced at the 10th anniversary event, and it’s become M2’s standard on-ramp for recent revivals. Batrider is the type of game that filters out first-timers through sheer bullet density and an overloaded ship roster, so this addition carries real weight.
There are 18 ships in total. The original’s structure comes over intact: ZERO COP’s machines plus guest entries from Sorcer Striker and Battle Garegga. Simply working through all 18 in order is going to burn a serious amount of time.
What does M2 Gadget display?
This time M2 Gadget puts four categories on screen: item information, the setup status for special formations, the appearance status of hidden bosses, and your current team composition.
- ITEM INFO: displays item information on screen
- Visualizes the setup status for the Battle Garegga ships’ special formations
- Displays the appearance status of all 12 hidden bosses
- Displays your current team composition
Line those four up and it becomes very clear what M2 decided Batrider was losing out on by keeping hidden. The spawn conditions for the 12 hidden bosses and the Garegga ships’ special formations are both the kind of content you’ll never once trigger if nobody tells you it exists. Putting it right on screen is an answer to a game that has always been played with a strategy guide open on the side.
Personally, the team composition readout is the one I’m most grateful for. In a game where you pick from 18 ships, losing track of what you actually loaded is a bigger problem than it sounds.
What kind of game was Armed Police Batrider?
Armed Police Batrider is a vertical scrolling shooter that Raizing (now Eighting) put into arcades in January 1998, and it’s the second entry in the Battle series.
The first entry was Battle Garegga. Following on from that, Batrider adopted a system where you build a team out of multiple ships and threw in a huge number of guest machines, including ones from other companies’ games. A lineup that mixes ZERO COP ships with machines from Sorcer Striker and Battle Garegga looks early even measured against today’s crossover-saturated game culture.
It also occupies an important spot in the lineage of its developers. Raizing’s shooters went on to Sokyugurentai and others after this, but Batrider’s philosophy of piling up a mountain of ships and making you choose left its mark on later shooters too. If a revival makes it playable again, you get to examine that history along with the game.
What else was announced at the 10th anniversary event?
Batrider was one announcement among several, with news on three more titles coming out of the same event.
| Title | Details | Release |
|---|---|---|
| Senxin Aleste | Console release date set, physical edition preorders open | March 18, 2027 |
| M2ShotTriggers ARCADE | A launcher for APM3, with Kyukyoku Tiger as the first title | Goes live October 15 |
| THE EDWARD RAGTIMESHOW DATA EAST COLLECTION | Switch ports of The Cliffhanger: Edward Randy and The Great Ragtime Show | Unannounced |
| Armed Police Batrider (tentative) | 18 ships, M2 Gadget, Super Easy mode included | Unannounced |
Only two of them have locked release dates: Senxin Aleste and M2ShotTriggers ARCADE. Batrider and the Data East collection are stuck in wait-for-more-news territory for a while yet.
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Is the Armed Police Batrider port worth getting excited about? Final thoughts
The bottom line: judging by the precision of what was announced, yes. But be prepared to wait.
Here’s the confirmed information one more time. The title is Armed Police Batrider (tentative). There are 18 playable ships, and two modes, ARCADE and Super Easy. M2 Gadget displays four categories: item information, the setup status for the Battle Garegga ships’ special formations, the appearance status of all 12 hidden bosses, and team composition. The original is the second entry in the Battle series, which Raizing (now Eighting) launched in arcades in January 1998.
The downside is easy to state, and it all comes down to one thing: platforms, release window, and price are entirely unannounced. Since this was revealed while still under a working title, ship specs and added features could also still change. Treat all of it as information accurate as of October 2026.
With no release window and no platforms on the table, M2 still went ahead and spelled out all four of M2 Gadget’s display categories. Deciding to visualize the appearance status of 12 hidden bosses is proof the team knows exactly where this game has been losing players. It looks like a thin announcement, but the design work underneath is clearly well along.
If a setup that lets you try all 18 ships lands in your living room, that’s worth it on its own. Now we wait on the platform reveal.
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Nokko Oda
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