The original arcade release of "Raiden" did not make as much money initially, with Komazawa attributing this to the game's underpowered hardware and lack of flashy visuals to draw players in. A few months after its release, the game began to generate increased income, resulting in an increase in arcade establishments requesting orders of the hardware. Seibu Kaihatsu ended up selling around 17,000 units through steady sales for a year. In Japan, "Game Machine" listed the title on their 1 July 1990 issue as being the most-successful table arcade unit at the time, outperforming titles such as "Trigon" and "Columns".