Mini Making of... r-type dx
BOB pape recalls The Bumper r-type package That delighted all Game Boy owners
Did having the ZX Spectrum version of R-type on your CV help you get the Game Boy R-type II gig? R-type
Well the original for the Game Boy was converted by Jas Austin but he was busy on another game, while I was free and had the experience of coding the Spectrum version. I don’t know if it had been offered to anyone else but for my self-confidence I’d like to think my name was somewhere near the top of the list!
The pair of you later updated your R-type games for R-type DX on the Game Boy Color. What was the impetus there?
It was a quick money-spinner. The DX versions replaced the mono sprites and backgrounds with colour versions and I also added a brand-new backdrop to the third stage of R-type II. We found out that it was very easy to convert an existing four-colour Game Boy game to a full(ish) colour one, so much so that perhaps the console should have been called the Game Boy Color-ised.
Besides the colour versions, R-type DX also included the original mono games that could be enjoyed on both Game Boy and Game Boy Color. How did that work?
I had to add a piece of code to the mono Game Boy versions that checked if it was running on a Game Boy Color. If it was then it set the first four colours of the Game Boy Color palette to an approximation of the Game Boy, with a slight yellow tinge. Disregarding the differences in colour the Game Boy Color versions are pretty much identical to the originals. Nintendo did ask for some minor tweaks such as asking for the level one boss to be made harder to kill.
R-type DX includes a cryptic messages on the end credits: ‘For Arch Stanton, The World Is Yours?’ Was this down to you?
Yes, that’s another of my little messages at the end. Arch Stanton plays a key part in the finale of The Good, The Bad And The Ugly, while ‘The World Is Yours’ is the motif that drives the protagonists of both versions of Scarface.