SHMUPS!

R-TYPE - IREM
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R-TYPE either redefined the horizontal shootemup, or was merely a sidestep from Nemesis

(PC Engine hucards 1&2) Reviewed by Malc

Subject of a few arguments this one, you either think its the best slice of Xenocide ever, or are left cold. Well, it leaves me steamingly roasting hot - I met RType while on my hols in Scarborough (that's in the east of England, my yank chums) at the same time as I spotted the three screen monster Darius. I nearly had to come home early after spending a right truckload of ten pees on it. 10 years later I invested in the arcade board, and now it's free!

It's a damn hard to get board these days, as R-Type is practically a legend. Oh yeah, here's a nice pic of the R-Type R9 fighter, kindly sent to me by JC!

First level, and it's the vice-like grippers halfway through the stage. I always wondered why they didn't move, would have been great if they went and SNAPPED SHUT once in a while eh?

First level boss is the amazing tail-swishing foetus-like alien, which is disappointingly easy to kill (just fire your bolt-on into the wee beastie in its tummy and relax!)

Ever seen that daft cartoon called The Tick? Doesn't that white monster look exactly like it (squint a bit).

This is level two, end of level boss is a suspiciously-female-genital-like 'mound', with a snakey thing zooming in and out of its, er, orifices. Hmm... ;)

Aha! Level 3's mothership - one hit and its right back to the start - oh how I hated that bit. One little nick on the paintwork and BLAM! back to the effin' start.

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By now, if you havent died much, your ship should be nicely tooled up like this!

Onto level 4 and this mother breaks up into 3 bits and tries to get you all confused.

Another snakey level, which ends with a large blobby pustulous mass to splat.

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I liked this level, being an avid pustulous-mass-splatterer.

Bollocks Hard this level. This is one thing I didnt like about R-type (Agh, heretic!) - it got too bloody tough and structured later on - very hard to stay alive if you didn't follow the right path.

This is one level in particular that cost me dear. There's just not enough room to manoeuvre (I can never spell that word right)

Superhuman. With independently controlled eyeballs and wrists of lightning. That's what you need to be to pass this beast of a level.

Everything, even the walls are out to get you here. To tell you the truth, I get scared when I get here. I normally don't get much further than this, that's why the screen shots nearly stopped here;)

Level 8 and it's nearly all over for the bad little Bydo Empire. Negotiate the flying green alien babies and spikey balls and breath a sigh of relief as you're told you have to do it all over again! Hmph!

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Here your tired and bruised little shippy totters its way home for a respray.

So, where can you play R-Type these days, apart from scouring the darkest corners of the dingiest, most out-dated arcades?

There's a lovely pack for the Playstation called R-types: Irem's official site has some smart wallpapers and pics 'n stuff on all the R-Types too: (ta for the info, Steven:)

Oh, and thanks to 'Phorce Phed' (someone really ought to talk to his parents about that name), for reminding me about www.rtype.com - a fan-run site, predictably all about R-type in it's many guises!

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