First off, great job! Second, I know it's still beta... but I do have a few comments.
The shooting: having to push it repeatedly tires my thumb.
Background: although very nice the enemy bullets are hard to see.
Other than that, good job.

agreed entirely. the bullets(especially the green ones) were relatively hard to see. maybe if you added a white outline around them?

Edit by Merth: Enabled BB Code so the quote tag looks right.

Yes, I agree also. I was going to post about it but found that someone already did. Several times I didn't even see the bullet that killed me

Among my specific criticism, which has just about all been covered already:
:: Green bullets are hard to see
:: Difficulty level is rather challenging, and at least should be adjustable
Other than that, fun and awesome!

okay, well I have this wonderful period of time coming up, under the name of Spring Break. I'm planning to release a very updated version of Raptor by next Tuesday, which will fix the following:

:: 20 more types of enemies; re-vamped, cooler bosses; 8 more stages, and a final boss
:: Rookie, Pilot, and Starfighter difficulties (correspond to Easy, Normal, Expert)
:: Bullets will be many shades brighter in needed cases
:: Only 4 enemies maximum per wave, instead of 8, in every difficulty
:: Rate of baddie bullet genesis, amount of baddie health, amount of money dropped on average by baddies, etc. varies between difficulties
:: Difficulties played at will be showed in highscores, so you can have bragging rights for beating "DAL" in Starfighter mode -- I'm making sure "ASH" is unbeatable without les hax, though (think the highscore entry "FLYN" in Tron )
:: Cheats being removed (well, at least you'll think so -- good luck finding them!)
:: additional reasoning for shields (will cost more than lives, but when penetrated you don't die instantly -- good for intense battles)

Crazy ideas for the far future:

:: Customizable enemy and player skins, using a spritesheet in Storage memory (similar to how some of those "rare" phoenix versions allow)
:: 2 player co-op through link cable
:: 1-on-1 player battle over link cable

Wow! I can't wait for tuesday! I really like the idea of custom skins.

Ashbad, will these updates finally bring Raptor to version 1.0 (hopefully)? I too look forward to seeing how your plans work out and wish you success in getting it all done.

Hopefully it will bring it to 1.0; we'll just have to see about the quality level when Tuesday comes. If I'm satisfied, I'll take the Beta stamp off. I probably won't be getting to work on it until Friday night though, since I have 7 hours of homework tonight and then have to do final studying for 3 tests tomorrow Last few days of the quarter are always hectic, it seems.

can't wait and I'm sad about the cheats being removed.(so much fun With cheats) will they be multiple button presses and if so how many buttons per cheat(3 like the beta?)

No idea, all I can promise is that they'll be much harder to find, and I won't be sharing them

Will you share the source code?

Indeed, though it's one of the biggest messes I ever have made -- I have about 20 nested functions, 50 local variables, tons of #defines, and all of this is inside the 1500-line long main() function. I never code very organized under a time crunch (this was originally for that contest it got 2nd place in), and this code will take many hours to clean. That being said, source is actually already released for the current version, it comes in the download zip archive

when will the new version come out again?

Ashbad, you should have an ultimate weapon that wipes out any enemy on the screen(with limited uses of course).

Meh, probably not, that'd make everything too easy (especially if you save its use for a Boss). As for updates, I'm getting to this game again, don't worry

Is this game on hold for the time being?

essentially yes, for now. I'm busy with my internship and have maybe about 3 hours a day where I'm not commuting/working to myself, so I've been trying to cram that time doing things I really want to get done (it's been more on the pixel art side of the spectrum of my activities) I'll likely resume it in about two months.

ah ok understood.

Since you only have a few hours of work left on it, would you consider handing it over to someone to finish up as pro-bono work? Or are you set on finishing it off yourself?

Someone else can *attempt* to finish it.. if they can figure out how the code works. I've been working on cleaning it up a ton, but it's still not quite there yet. Maybe I can try to make it understandable enough for a decent C programmer to understand things easily, and then offer the source out here for anyone who wants a stab at it. Then, in September I can take whatever it's gotten to and work from there to make it even better.