Don't tell me how to beat the stage 8 boss (I like to figure stuff out), but please tell me what stage 9 and 10 are like!
Since we're on the subject: I've been playing Raiden 2 at the laundromat a lot recently.
Sure I’ll describe what you’ll encounter and I’ll leave out any boss strategies too.
Stage 9 starts out in deep black space with bright-blue black holes in the background, but most of the battle is on a space station. The stage introduces two new annoying enemies that will irritate you in Stage 10: the blue flying robots and the brown walking robots. The blue robots come in packs and love to scare you by almost running into you. Their attack style is to shoot you up close and run away (cowards). The brown robots also attack in numbers but only appear midway in stage 9. They'll first appear coming out of a hanger in groups and will each shoot a bullet. What’s tough about them is they appear at a moment when you’re very close to them, and they’re the quickest shooters. Even if you kill them first, they’ll still manage to take shot at you, and you’ll have to quickly get out you’re their way.
Right after you encounter the brown robots you'll be in corridor with water below, and purple boats racing around. I have no idea why there is a pool of water or even boats in space, but don’t underestimate the purple boats. Three boats will appear going in opposite directions shooting at the same time to intercept you, and then three more from the top of the screen. These bastards have plenty of hit-points and they shoot three bullets in your directions.
After passing the purple boats you’ll reach the end and meet the boss. There are two bosses here. Both have a square-frame with four legs coming out of them, and they shoot all over the place. These guys had me pushed to corners dodging all their bullets and always getting killed, but they have a weakness. I won’t spoil it for you but when found out its weakness I was laughing my guts out when I destroyed it in 19 seconds, no bombs needed.
Stage 10 is the toughest. Still set in space on another space station. The blue and brown robots in the previous stage are here and you will be seeing a lot of them. Also a brand new annoying enemy appears here too and I call them streamers (like firecrackers). They look like gliders and arrive in pairs of three, and spin around shooting bullets. Fighting one of them is enough, but three makes it difficult to get in close to kill them. Not to mention you’re still dodging and killing those pesky blue and brown robots at the same time.
The hardest part in this stage is an area before you meet the boss. You’ll know when you see two rows of blocks. The block have the colors blue/green on the outside and solid red on the inside. When you make it here, it’s the checkpoint so if you die at the final boss you’re spawned back here where those blocks are. This is not a good thing because this area is the worst place to be re-spawned. This area has railroad tracks on both sides of the screen, and they going up and down. The right side railroad has three tanks moving up along those tracks constantly attacking you pushing you to left side. These tanks are difficult to kill, and throwing a bomb at them doesn’t always kill them. As you’re being pushed to the left side, there is also a one large tank on the left railroad to nail you. That’s not all because you still have to deal with the constant barrage of streamers and blue robots.
If you made past everything else you see the final boss. It’s a large and almost circular ship with two crab-like appendages. It has six smaller guns and its attack pattern is similar to Stage 7 boss. This thing has the most hit-points in the game and when you think you’ve destroyed it, this boss will try stab you in back with a cheap shot. I’ve only been able to beat this boss once.
Boss Speed Kills
Stage 1 - 15 sec (no bombs used)
Stage 6 - 10 sec
Stage 8 - 30 sec
Stage 9 - 19 sec (no bombs used)