Ahh, the space shooter. Of all the space shooters out there R-Type is my favorite. G.Darius, Einhander, Raiden, and some other are really great, but R-Type can't be beat and here's why. Most shooters start you off with one measly gun and quickly load you up with tons of other nasty weapons that waste every bad guy on the screen like homing missiles, lasers, or miniguns. R-Type does this, but bad guys in R-Type are to distract you not to kill you.

The weapon system in R-Type is confusing only when you try to explain it, but not when you play the game. It really doesn't matter because it is the most genius system ever devised. You start off by choosing a shield unit, in other R-Type games there is only one shield unit, 3 was the first to give you a choice of 3. But when you start the game this unit is nowhere to be found! You have to get it. When you start there will be bad guys flying at you which die in one shot, but at intermittent parts of levels pod ships will appear. They look just like bad guys except they have legs, walk, and have colored cockpit windows. When you shoot these ships they drop one of four things. A pink circle, a blue circle, a yellow cirle, or a speed upgrader. The speed upgrader makes your ship maneuver more quickly when you press the controller, but they also make it hard to make small moves. It's better to get speed upgrades though, so get them all. There are also max speed upgrades, when you get one of these your speed maxes out. The circles are weapons. If you have no shield unit then when you pick up a circle your shield until will appear in stage 1. Then when you get another circle the unit will upgrade itself and begin firing whatever weapon you got. There are three weapons for each unit (pink, yellow, and blue). Each unit does different things for each color for a total of nine weapons. The shield will upgrade itself a third time and reach full power when you get another weapon. Any more weapons after that and it just changes weapons. The best thing about the shield though is it's defensive qualities. If anything touches the shield it dies, but if anything touches the R-Type ship you die. Even if it's a little speck. Anyway the shield detaches from the ship when you press the shield button. You can then let it fly around and kill things, or grab it on the back of your ship to fire in reverse. On numerous occasions this is necessary, and if you don't already have it there it will be too late to switch. When it is on the back of the ship only the shield weapon will go backwards, the other weapons will fire forwards as usual, but they are weak in comparison. The R-Type has four real weapons. The gun, the blocker, the hyper, and the beam. The blocker is the only weapon you have to get. The gun is the measly machine gun you start with. The blocker is a little half sphere that floats around your ship, it fires and swirls and does whatever good stuff it feels like. You can have up to two blockers at once. The beam and hyper are charge weapons you always have. You press the non-rapid fire button and the meter begins to charge, the longer you wait the better the effect of the hyper or beam. The beam is a big blast of energy that destroys everything in one shot, it also hurts bosses a lot, but not dead in one shot. The hyper makes your blockers swirl around your ship to sheild you from almost everything while your ship rapid fires multiple semi-charged beams. However after you hyper your ship overheats, and can't beam or hyper again until the heat goes away. If you understood any of that you've either played the game before or are a genius.

The story of R-Type is simple, there are evil aliends in the BYDO empire who are making mischeif. You are the best fighter pilot there is. They made a special prototype space ship for you to use caled R-Type. Because you don't have the power to bust the bydos with a massive battle they send you all alone to take 'em out. You end up finding all kinds of big nasty bad guys and evil bosses to destroy and then the game is over after like 30+ levels with a boss at the end of each. The worst thing to do in this game is die, but as I said it is hard to avoid. The whole R-Type logic is that you have to actually figure out how to move and use your shield to get by obstacles. Because you are busy moving into position to shoot enemies, which often you don't have to in order to survive, time runs out and your hyper isn't charged, you shield is on the wrong side, or you are on the wrong side of the screen, then you die. It gets especially hard when there are walls with tight entryways, or moving walls. If you even so much as graze anything not an item with your ship and not your shield you die. That is what makes R-Type great. Especially when the screen scrolls in other directions than straight forward. When you die it is a real bummer. You come back to life usually just a few screens before where you left off. Sounds good, but not when you have no items at all, not even a shield, and there weren't any pod ships from there to the boss. If you end up in that position I advise a start over. Although you get a generous amount of lives and continues.

No matter what you say R-Type kicks ass. Other R-Type games to check out besides three are... R-Type, R-Type2, R-Type DX, R-Type for Turbo Grafx 16, and new R-Type Delta. Blast off and strike the evil BYDO empire!

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