One of the new weapons featured in Thunder Force V are the CRAW, the Constituted Ray Art Weapon-unit, which consists of a spherical radioactive central core coated with a thick layer of approximately 80 trillion artificially engineered microscopic particles, such as nanomacine.
The constant nuclear reactions between the core and the particles causes the CRAW to glow a neon-bright shade of blue.
CRAWs maintain a tight orbit around a starfighter and boost the energy levels of its conventional weapons.
They can also be used as a protective shield of sorts to protect the starfighter against enemy attacks.
What's inside the center of a CRAW Unit?
CRAWs can be used not only for power up the RVR, but also as the power to unleash the Over Weapon, but it burns the CRAWs energy, making the blue neon-bright sphere to turn into a small, red ball, if a bullet hits the CRAW when it's red, it'd be destroyed.
The CRAW units are also featured in the doujin game Broken Thunder and the PS2 game Thunder Force VI.
Trivia[]
- The concept of CRAWs are derived from the concept of bomb mechanics in most shump games (e.g. Options from Salamander 2 are sacrificed in exchange for 2 short-term homing lasers) and the predecessor, CLAWs, from previous Thunder Force games.