R-GEAR

R-GEAR was the first concept for a sequel to Taito's 1994 arcade shooter RayForce. Had it been released, this would have run on on the same Taito F3 hardware and would also have been a 2D sprite-based game featuring Super Scaler-style effects. It was intended to feature similar gameplay to the original, but introduced a second ship with a new twist: it has the ability to lock onto twice as many targets as the original ship, but with each laser doing less damage. The RayForce ship is available when picking the player one side and the new ship is available when picking the player two side.

R-GEAR exists in the form of a single-level pitch demo; it contains original graphics, both playable ships, one full stage, and a boss. The pitch wasn't taken up, but the second ship's concept was recycled for RayStorm when that entered development as the RayForce sequel. Although some footage was eventually made available, R-GEAR wasn't playable by the public until 2023, when a downloadable emulated version was included as a bonus in the Japanese Amazon Prime Day edition of the Switch and PlayStation 4 versions of Ray'z Arcade Chronology. This edition includes newly-composed music from series composer Tamayo Kawamoto since the original demo had no music. It was later made available as a standalone purchase in 2025.