THE HISTORY OF R●TYPE
WHEN R-TYPE ARRIVED IN ARCADES IN 1987, HORIZONTAL SHOOT-’EM-UPS WERE NEVER THE SAME AGAIN, AND THE SERIES HAS CONTINUED TO REPRESENT THE BEST THE GENRE HAS TO OFFER EVER SINCE. WE SPEAK TO KAZUMA KUJO TO FIND OUT HOW THE SERIES HAS EVOLVED, AND WHAT’S CO
Many games have unforgettable moments, but few have moments that transcend the game itself and become iconic of the entire genre. R-type is one of those games – a game which stands alongside the likes of Scramble and
Gradius as a milestone in the evolution of the horizontal shoot-’em-up, and a game which has been plundered repeatedly by imitators.
But then, the game’s own successors have leaned just as heavily on the most memorable parts of the original game, while evolving just enough to ensure that the series has always represented the best that the genre has to offer.
R-type is a horizontal shoot-’em-up that pits the player against the evil forces of the Bydo Empire – later established to be living weapons, created by humanity. According to a developer interview from Gamest magazine, translated by shmuplations.com, the genre was chosen as a way to show off the developer’s new
16-bit arcade hardware. In many ways, R-type was similar to other games in the genre such as Gradius, challenging not only the player’s reflexes but also their memory, as there are optimal ways to play each stage and death can cost you your power-ups. But R-type carved out a distinct identity thanks to some mechanical innovations and memorable stage design.
The first of these innovations was the Wave Cannon attack, a powerful shot achieved by holding the fire button for a few seconds.
“The Wave Cannon is a mechanism that allows for strong attacks without power-up items,” says Kazuma Kujo, who joined Irem in the late Eighties during the development of R-type II, and has been involved in the series’ development since R-type Delta. “I think this function was lucrative in creating a strategy against hostiles that can instantly target the player’s weak spots.” Though he wasn’t directly involved in creating the game, Kujo remembers the insight of those that were. “In regard to the Wave Cannon, while the beam it fires is important, the charge gauge at the bottom of the screen is also crucial. The developers told me that the reason they chose to use such a long gauge for the charge despite working under strict hardware limitations was to express the charging of the energy in a more dynamic way. I even heard that the gauge’s maximum length was meant to match the length of the beam at maximum charge.”
While the Wave Cannon is memorable, the Force is the signature mechanic of the R-type series. This drone unit can attach to the front or back of the R-9A Arrowhead ship you pilot, or be deployed as a floating, semi-autonomous unit. In the Gamest interview, the designer refers to it as a joke born from the idea of a dung beetle – and that you would power up the ball, rather than the ship, with Laser Crystals. “It takes some skill to master, but I think it’s interesting how
“I THINK THIS FUNCTION WAS LUCRATIVE IN CREATING A STRATEGY AGAINST HOSTILES THAT CAN INSTANTLY TARGET THE PLAYER’S WEAK SPOTS” KAZUMA KUJO
the changing of its position was expressed and that the fun of this game is that you couldn’t change the Force’s position from the front to the rear with a press of a button. The process of mastering this is the fun of playing R-type,” says
Kujo, before divulging some more details from the original team. “At the beginning of development it seemed it was difficult for the Force to be understood as an ‘ally’. At the start, it wasn’t surrounded by metal rods as it is now. It seems that these rods ended up being devised to make the Force not look like an enemy unit. I also was told by someone who was in charge of development at the time that the Force’s mechanic of appearing from the left side of the screen was so that it wouldn’t be mistaken as an enemy.”
For all of the great shooting mechanics, R-type wouldn’t have been nearly as memorable had it not been for the visually impressive stages and the malevolent monstrosities that inhabited them. The bosses in particular made an enormous impression on players, with the Alien-inspired first boss Dobkeratops gaining truly iconic status amongst fans. “This boss’ characteristic design is fascinating, but I think there is a kind of indescribable fear from its combination of biological and mechanical elements,” says Kujo. “The first R-type boss scene song you hear perfectly matches Dobkeratop’s visuals and leaves a strong impression. It is a symbolic boss of the R-type series in every sense.”
The third stage also drew the attention of players, as they flew around a huge battleship that served as both the setting for the stage and its boss. “I heard from the person in charge that it was made on the basis of being a stage of defeating enemies larger than the screen,” remembers Kujo. “At the time of development, it seems he was thinking about making it the final stage. But because other development staff found this stage impressive and there were a limited number of players who could reach the final stage of the arcade game, he decided to make it the third stage set in a mountainous area.” The concept of a fight against a giant battleship has become symbolic of the series too, and is often duplicated in later games.
R-type made its arcade debut in Japan in 1987, and was an instant smash – Japanese arcade operators surveyed by the trade magazine Game Machine ranked it as the best earning non-dedicated game for three whole months, dethroning Capcom’s 1943, and it would hang around the top ten rankings into early 1988. In the US, the game was picked up for distribution by Nintendo, becoming the first dedicated cabinet the company had offered since Punch-out!! three years earlier. Reviewing the arcade game, Commodore User noted that while the concept wasn’t original “what it does, it does so incredibly well”, and described the first boss as “one of the most loathsome and graphically complex monsters captured in an arcade game yet”. The review concluded that R-type was “one hell of a game” and awarded it a 9/10 score.
The game’s popularity meant that it was soon converted to a wide variety of consoles and computers, where it achieved even more success. Particularly notable conversions included a very good Master System version by Compile that featured an extra exclusive bonus stage, a technically extraordinary ZX Spectrum version coded by Bob Pape, and the Amiga version that Factor 5 was compelled to create due to legal threats. The best of the lot was the PC Engine version, which was as close to arcade perfection as was possible at the time, and served as a fantastic advert for NEC’S console. Even the fact that the Japanese Hucard release was split into two parts didn’t diminish the impression that conversion made, though the complete game was later issued on CD-ROM complete with a remixed soundtrack.
It’s no surprise that R-type II was quickly put into production, and the developers chose to make modest changes to a successful formula. In fact, the second war against the Bydo maintained an entirely familiar rhythm. Like the first game, the opening stage saw you flying into a base from open space. The second took you into a cave of fast-moving creatures – this time filled with water – and the third pitted you against not one large battleship, but several slightly smaller ones that still dwarfed your own R-9C War-head. That too was a redesigned version of the R-9A from the original game.
One thing that was notable was that the game was harder. “R-type II became more difficult because it was necessary to stoke the desire to challenge and overcome within fans who thoroughly enjoyed playing R-type,” says Kujo.
One of the major changes that was made was to the weaponry available. “There were many original ideas for lasers and Wave Cannons from the first R-type, so I’ve heard that new weapons were taken from there, chosen to be used as differently as possible from the original three lasers,” Kujo tells us. A new two-stage charging process was introduced for the Wave Cannon, with the first step unleashing the standard blast and the second launching a new multi-directional attack. Additionally, two new Laser Crystal power-ups were introduced – the green Search Laser, which adjusts in the air to find targets, and the grey Shotgun Laser, which fires a short range explosive shot.
Released in December 1989 in Japan and to the rest of the world in 1990, R-type II didn’t have the same impact as the original. Rankings in Game Machine show it as having a strong start, entering the chart in second place and staying in the top ten for the month that followed, before declining over the following two months until it left the top 25. R-type II
was popular with the UK press, though most noted the game’s similarity to its predecessor.
Zzap!64 claimed that “Irem are marketing the sequel as an upgraded version of the original and that’s about all it is”, while Your Sinclair
noted that the game “feels more like a set of additional extra levels for the original game than a brand-new one”.
R-type II didn’t receive the same wide home release as its predecessor,
initially appearing in well-received Amiga, Atari ST and Game Boy versions. But the game did find a second life as the basis for Super R-type
(1991), a SNES game that heavily remixed the arcade original. Four of the original six stages came across, joined by three brand-new stages, and the new grey and green weapons had their functions replaced too. Reviewers at the time gave this version a reasonably warm welcome, but had their reservations. In CVG, the reviewers awarded it 91% in spite of complaints that while it was “one hell of a good conversion and a great game”, Super R-type “ought to be flawless on a machine like the Famicom”. Raze awarded it 77%, noting that “you get more than five sprites on-screen and the whole game locks up”, while
Super Play Gold’s retrospective review awarded it 72%, noting the slowdown and “an infuriating lack of restart points”.
In the arcades, Irem decided to take the series in a different direction. Cosmic Cop, or
Armed Police Unit Gallop in Japan, is a spin-off that is officially considered to be related to the series and has been referenced in later games, but doesn’t bear its name or use its signature mechanics. Instead, the next game to bear the R-type name would be R-type Leo. “R-type Leo
originally began as a new shooting game. By the time I was shown this game during a test play, it had a different title. After that and discussions with those from various positions and the development team, it was given the R-type handle and the non-numbered title of Leo,” Kujo recalls. “I support this change because while R-type Leo doesn’t have a Force or a Wave Cannon, signature side-scrolling shooter-game tactics and gameplay elements such as the utilisation of space in front of and behind the fighter made it into the game,” he says.
R-Type Leo differs from the main series games in many ways – much more natural imagery is used in the stage themes, and two-player simultaneous play is possible for the first time. Rather than the standard Force, R-type Leo
allows players to equip with two Psy-bit devices, which provide auxiliary fire that can be switched to give rear cover. “You can say that the Psy-bit installed in R-type Leo is an evolved form of the R-type equipment,” says Kujo. While R-type Leo
is considered to be a bit too different from the norm to count as a main R-type game, Kujo still respects its place in the history of the series. “I believe the Force is an essential element of R-type, but Leo is the title that showed us new possibilities for the R-type series. We were inspired by Leo in the production of R-type Delta, R-type Final and R-type Final 2.”
R-type III: The Third Lightning was the first wholly original R-type game to be developed for the home market, and was handled by
Irem’s Tokyo subsidiary, previously known as Tamtex. Some new mechanical wrinkles helped to freshen up the R-type formula, which by now was well-known by players. This game reverted to the standard three Laser Crystals, but introduced the choice to select your Force at the start of the game. The standard Force was joined by two new types, the Cyclone
Force and the Shadow Force, each of which offered different weapon capabilities. R-type
III also introduced a new Hyper Wave Cannon mode, which allowed for consecutive shots once charged but had a cool-down period that the regular Wave Cannon didn’t. Fortunately, perhaps in part due to being designed for the SNES from the very start, R-type III didn’t have the technical problems with slowdown and flickering sprites that had plagued Super R-type. Better yet, what it did have was some smart boss designs that used the system’s famed Mode 7 for rotation and scaling.
Japanese players got R-type III: The Third Lightning in 1993, with other markets following in 1994. “Gone is the slowdown, the jerky graphics and unintelligent baddies”, proclaimed CVG’S review. “In are three new weapon system defaults, lashings of bolt-on weapons and clever Mode 7 effects which are part of the gameplay”. The game scored 88% – a little higher than the 83% awarded by Super Play. “All those ideas may be getting a bit old now”, the popular SNES magazine opined, “but when they’ve been twisted, moulded, morphed and improved to produce a game as impressive as this, what does it matter?”. Raylight Studios later ported R-type III to Game Boy Advance in 2004, but it is unfortunately rather less polished than the original SNES game.
The series fell dormant after R-type III, in part thanks to Irem’s decision to wind down game production for a time. Kujo would briefly leave the company to form Nazca, where he would work on the original Metal Slug, but returned in time for his first direct involvement with the series. Having tested the waters with R-types, a Playstation compilation of R-type and R-type II, the company was convinced that a brand-new game in the series could potentially be profitable. From this, R-type Delta was born. This new game didn’t do much to mess with the winning formula the series had established, with familiar attack waves and even some classic bosses returning, but it did give the series a fresh coat of polygonal paint. “I was prepared for opposition against the 3D graphics, but I got a more favourable reception than expected,” Kujo recalls.
One of the major additions was a new ultimate attack. “From the planning stages, Delta was an R-type title designed for home gaming consoles. With those that purchased the game being able to play as far as they can in mind, I decided to implement an attack that could purge all bullets on the screen while still maintaining a certain level of difficulty,” says Kujo. “The core function of R-type is the Force, which incorporates the power of the Bydo, so we made it possible to accumulate energy by absorbing bullets or directly damaging the enemies.” This reward for using the Force as a shield became known as the Dose system, which would return in both R-type Final and R-type Final 2.
While that concept survived from planning to completion, another one was changed heavily
“IN THE PROJECT’S FIRST DRAFT, A COMPLEX POWER-UP SYSTEM WAS CONSIDERED BUT WAS LATER CHANGED TO THE ABILITY TO SELECT CHARACTERISTIC AIRCRAFT IN THE RE-PLANNING STAGES” KAZUMA KUJO