A shot of nostalgia for fans of this arcade classic

In the good old days, before mass-produced computer console games, I went to the arcade to waste my coins.
There was one Japanese game in particular I loved to play and spent much of my pocket money trying to master it. Enter R-Type.
Local shooting-game fanatics will remember this name from its arcade history beginning in the late 1980s. Blasting away enemy spaceships while collecting power ups, enabling the gamer to change laser directions or fire homing missiles, are the main forms of action.
But after battling through the defenses at each stage, the mother ship awaits a further challenge. Figuring out the pattern of how the mother ship defends itself provides most of the fun of the game.
Each mother ship battle is a classic. The gamer has to anticipate attacks, dodge them and keep striking until the ship is finally destroyed. Doing that at the first attempt is almost impossible, unless you have Nostradamus-like powers of prediction.
But as I said, figuring out the attack pattern is where most of the fun comes from.
The verdict: Not yet released in Japan or the United States, R-Type has come back into a world where anything less than smooth 3D-type graphics is a crime.
Nevertheless, this 2D classic shooting game boasts all the qualities and more to make it another successful sequel in the series.
Gamers won’t notice the 2D-world or the cheap techno music because they’ll be busy trying to memorize each stage. Because, as any R-Type veteran will tell you, hitting the buttons madly just won’t cut it. This is a shoot-em-up game that requires players to have a photographic memory to have any hope of beating it.
Luckily, once a player has purchased R-Type Final, the only additional cost to conquer this game is an investment of time.

by Brian Lee