Some
of you regulars might know me as a bit of an R-Type fan. I've played
every version avidly until well beaten and frothed, and would probably
marry one of them if I was single. Before Irem went all inexplicably
weird on us and temporarily stopped making shooters and created
stupid pachinko machines instead, this company was responsible for
some of the best shooters in the arcade, setting a new standard
in level and powerup design and playability.
R-Type
3, in my opinion, was the game that R-Type Leo should have been.
Don't get me wrong, I do love Leo. But it's not a true R-Type game
- because of the insane omission of the attaching PowerOrb, and
less inspired level design. R-Type 3, on the other hand, gives you
3 different orbs to play with, each of which has varied weapons
which affect how you play the game.
Irem
wrung almost every effect out of the poor abused SNES in R-Type
3. You'll encounter all sorts of transparent effects, Mode 7 at
every turn, and huge brilliantly animated Baddies. The music is
amongst the best of the various R-Type remixes you've heard, slightly
heavier and chunky. In comparison to the 'housy' flavour of R-Type
Complete CD on PC-Engine, its fabulous! Each level is brilliantly
designed, with astounding special effects and set-pieces, more of
which I will show you in a wee moment.
The
gameplay is EXTREMELY hard later on, with a perfect memory and lightning
fast reactions needed to survive. This is my only gripe about the
game, there are sections where you just WILL NOT survive unless
you've been there before and learnt how you died last time! Still,
it's not as if we needed to pump coins into it eh?
Because
I had an awful lot of good screenshots of R-Type 3, this review
is split into level sections, just choose which one you want to
look at first. 9/10
