Raptor is much harder than Tyrian. Mainly because regenerating shields in Tyrian. I had troubles with Raptor but it became easier when I found out that it can be played with mouse and farmed lower levels for better gun.
Then there is also Stargunner. There I wasn't able to get past level 1. Since then I will never call Raptor hard. :-)

Wow, you tell me to grow up and now you're threatening violence against me. Irony.

Ah Tyrian, the game is so good that is a shame that it's now freeware.
Low level ships are a bit difficult, but when you finally reach the.. Super Carrot, wow! XD

I still have to play Raptor, but I hope it's not harder.

It's harder all right. Unless you grind the lower levels extensively apparently.

It's true, Tyrian 2000 is a thing of beauty :') I don't want to start a war but so far I prefer Tyrian to Raptor in every respect. But I'm glad it's freeware because I'd never have played it otherwise.
I'm not surprised. But I need to keep my options open ;)

Sorry to drag you into this but was I too harsh on that sinugie guy? (You'll see what I mean in the comments).

Yes and calling someone a troll in that instance was way off.

Back then, people didn't "live" but just "survived" in those games... or at least I felt like that because I was never any good at scrolling games on any system. One big difference to today was that 20 years ago many people only had very few games at a given time, games were expensive and I often only played 2 or 3 at a time, most of them borrowed from other people. That makes it easier to fully focus on a game and memorize all the difficult sections. I didn't think Raptor was that hard compared to similar games and as I already said, I have no talent for these types of A.D.D. games. But Raptor I did love, even bought a Logitech gamepad just for that game.

Wow, I fidn tis wiered. Rap is waay esyir to me thn tyraan/ but i played raptir whne ynger so msbe thw it.

I'd get it if he was just talking about the grinding tactic like hedwards. Even then not all games require grinding.

I've never been threatened with violence on the net before. Funny it should be here on the least aggressive website I've been on. I don't get it. I don't get it at all.

If a person is willing to grind then Raptor is quite easy. If one is willing to play more like the game was intended to be played, then it's quite a bit harder.

In truth, I'm not really sure whether or not they intended for people to grind when they designed the game, or if ti's a byproduct of them not writing the consumables code to take that into account.

I'm getting this a lot. If Raptor was easy for it's time I can't imagine what other game back then were like. I still maintain that Tyrian is far easier. Especially in arcade mode where you have multiple power ups and extra lives :)
We have a saying in England: "Talk of the Devil and he will appear" it's not an insult but a joke for odd appearances. And quite suitable here.
I'm just guessing here but I don't think grinding was intended with Raptor. I think that the reason for why you can reply the earlier levels was so you didn't need to start a new game to play the earlier episodes (A bit like what the Duke Nukem games had). So maybe while grinding wasn't prohibited it wasn't expected of the player either.
But that's just a theory....

......(A game theory!)

In terms of just the shooter gameplay I wouldn't consider Raptor to be particularly difficult. I think what tends to throw a lot of people, though, is the strategic aspect- while the first few levels you could get through with just the weapons the game gives you, pretty quickly you need much better firepower to have any sort of chance, and if you haven't budgeted carefully for upgrades then you can find yourself in a very tough situation. Once you have enough money to be packing twin lasers and 5 phase shields the game is pretty easy- it's just getting to that point that can provide a bit of a challenge (at least when starting on Elite and playing straight through).

Raptor is exceptionally hard if you begin play on the elite difficulty and don't use money exploits. You have to pinch pennies to get the more powerful weapons and keep up with the game's difficulty curve, which leaves you very fragile and easily killed because you cannot afford the game's ludicrously expensive shields. Once you save up and get the twin lasers (around mid-Tango sector) the difficulty collapses; at this point, the huge waves of enemies the elite difficulty throws at you become easy money to your fully-equipped ship, and without any other costs you can just direct all that money to keeping your ship fully-equipped with shields.

Raptor's difficulty comes down to income versus expenditures. If you can balance those things so you get the twin lasers the game's difficulty is all down-hill from there. If you can't, you will eventually hit a brick wall.

Funny thing I started this post when I had just beaten Level 2 of Episode 2 Now I'm onto Level 7 of Ep 2 and none of the subsequent levels have given me a fraction of the Challenge of level 2. Weird.
Sadly I'm no ware near rich enough to buy the Twin Lazers (10000000 short) Maybe if was better with cash/was as versed in the game at the start as I am now...... Still It's funny how it's only now the game decides to cut me a break XD

However I'm still a little cross that this game charges you for boss bars >:( I've never seen such cheek from a game.

It's the old "snowballing gains" thing. If I save an extra 10k per mission (either by killing more stuff or purchasing less stuff), then I'm going to be able to afford the next cool weapon sooner than you. And if I have better weapons than you, now I can save up even more than I was before. Probably the biggest difference is that I don't buy shields until I get twin lasers.

With that said, the game gets really generous with money drops in Tango Sector, which is probably why you're finding it a lot easier. It's seriously possible to start a new career on elite and jump straight to Outer Reaches and win. The boss of the first level is a doozy, but if you survive that the massive income the game throws at you in this sector means you'll quickly be up to speed.

I think I am one of the few gamers who find old school games relatively "easy" and some modern games relatively "hard".

I didn't find Raptor hard at all, but that was because I am ok at games that just require me to drive a ship around and shoot things. I can handle that no problem. I didn't think it was particularly difficult to avoid getting hit and the game was pretty forgiving, you had a life bar, it wasn't hard to dodge bullets, etc. The boss fights were ok and worst case scenario you drop a few bombs.

I find some modern games hard for a number of reasons:

1. So many buttons! Admittedly the number of times I have played on the original XBox and PS1 could be counted on 2 hands, the number of times i have played on the PS2 on one hand and I have never played on any machine more modern than that, but I just can't keep track of all the direction pads and the buttons and the should buttons, etc. I just found that I constantly pressed the wrong button. I lack the cognitive capacity to deal with much more than directions, jump, shoot (maybe other shoot button too).

2. Precision games. Again, I haven't played these games too much but the limited frustrating experience I have had with them demonstrated to me that I just lacked the skill and patience to be precise enough to play these games.

3. I can't remember other reasons but I think there must be more.

Sure, some modern games are easy and some old games are hard. There are plenty of old games that are cheap, designed to take your money in the arcades, etc, but overall, I find that I am better at old games than new ones. I suspect that part of the reason is because I am old.