R-Types

"Humbling."

I like to think of myself as a fan of shooters. Not quite a connoisseur, no, I’ll save that term for after I track down Radiant Silvergun. Let’s just say that for the sake of argument, I’m so hard-core that I’ll shell out 40 bucks for a disc with two old-school shooters on it. Or maybe I’m just dumb and trying to fool myself into thinking that I’m hard-core. Whatever the case, I have it. I’m led to believe that I’m not a fine lover of shooters from my purchase—R-type is not exactly a game I particularly love now that I’ve really sat down with it, even though logic dictates that I should.

R-types is a simple game with three buttons: fire (hold to charge), rapid fire, and a button to fire off or reattach your “force unit,” a half-shield and half-gunpod that has become a staple of the series. Hold down the fire button to charge up a powerful blast, or hold down rapid fire to inundate the screen with fireworks. Collect pretty looking orbs to boost your firepower, bits to block enemy shots (however poorly), and speed capsules to increase your maneuverability in order to find the razor’s edge between sluggish beast and kamikaze pilot speed settings. Unique to R-type II are two new weapons.

Pretty ‘friggin hard for a such a basic game…

R-Type gives the shooter fan a workout, that’s undoubtedly true. A series known for its staggering level of difficulty, R-Type makes this strength known to you almost immediately. As soon as your fighter reaches the first enclosed area of R-type, the challenge is on. Most folks will be able to get past it, but that’s normal. Then comes level 2. With several monsters sporting gunfire-retardant armor coming out of the woodwork and several other bio-mechanoids trying to blast you, level 2 will test the mettle of the casual shooter fan. And then level 3: perhaps one of the most famous of all shooter stages, ever, level 3 gains its notoriety from the fact that the stage is one giant battleship that is to be defeated in chunks. No way are you going to fight it as a whole and win, so the stage’s beautifully scripted motions and progressions around the behemoth are really something to behold.

And then comes level four. Frankly, I’ve only gotten through level four a few times, and it involved an ironic combo of prayer and profanity. Perhaps it’s because I’m an atheist that I didn’t often manage to get much farther than level four, and that was challenging enough, what with its enemies that fill the entire screen with bubbles that will destroy you with a single touch. Once I realized that I was not hard core enough to defeat level five on my own powers, I turned to cheat codes.

To my dismay, the game became even harder.

In fact, level five with cheat codes (limited to only Max weapons) was in fact harder than level four, almost as if Irem had anticipated my n00bish buffoonery years before it happened and curtailed it in this wicked chess game of 2-d action. In fact, you’ll almost need heavier firepower to beat level five’s combination of segmented worms and annoying rapid-fire creatures, because what power-ups they fairly give you doesn’t seem to be enough.

More cursing finally got me to level six, and seven. After the hell that was certain sections of level seven, where Irem saw fit to include an enemy in every area that could have possibly held an enemy, I got to level eight: the final showdown. R-type is no everyman’s shooter. As a shooter to challenge the cream of the crop of shooter fans, I can safely say that for the average Joe, this stage is impossible. Though I like shooters, I cannot beat R-type. It’s just too hard for me.

R-type II seems to lose this steep difficulty curve. Rather, it starts out a notch below impossible and slowly moves upward, even though it has no discernable need to best itself in difficulty after the second stage. Gameplay is no different from the first game in terms of feel or control; it’s a more difficult remix of the first, it seemed to me. If anything, I would have rather R-type II been easier, as level four and five are perhaps the most sadistic levels ever designed: four with its constantly shifting geography, five with its enemies that make their own walls in combination with suicide tactics.

So really, I’m not a wuss here… it’s just that hard.

It’s a highly subjective guess to say whether the graphics hold up; if anything the R-type games are relics from years past, even if they are detailed and possessing of a certain appeal. The audio fares considerably less well; the music and sound is very basic and reeks of midi-quality fetidness.

R-types gives you more than just R-type and R-type II, it delivers a gallery of all the enemies in both games, a list of all R-type fighters ever created in the story accompanied by stunningly low-polygon models, and a fairly long description of R-Type’s story. As is the universal standard, games with a large background story such as this never allow any reference to it in-game. Then again, there’s not much to grasp outside of the minutia: aliens called the Bydo have attacked Earth and you need to kill them. To compensate for the simplicity, Irem has decided to include the specifications for several events and R-type fighters that never saw the light of day; it doesn’t make for a particularly interesting read, unfortunately.

If you’re strong enough to tackle the nightmarish difficulty, open-minded enough to embrace a game that clearly shows its age, and able to chain four curse-words together, R-Type may be worth your while. I would have liked to see R-Type Leo and Super R-Type included as well (hell, the PSX has enough room to spare on that disc), thereby making a more complete collection.

R-type has evolved. It’s called R-Type Delta. This is not that game. Essentially, R-Types is two-game collection from a time gone by, sandwiched on a PSX disc with some interesting but minor extras. Whether it’s worth your time and frustration hinges directly on your past experiences with R-type: don’t expect anything different. As someone that played a few R-Type games here and there with casual interest, this compilation feels very average to me; I wish I would have gotten a little more enjoyment from one of “the greatest shooters of all time,” or so the CD case says.

OVERALL: 5 / 10
Two very old and dreadfully hard games in a bare-bones compilation.

---------------
*Maybe I am just a wuss.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 07/25/02, Updated 07/25/02