I first played this game on one of my mate's Play Stations. I got addicted to it and after 5 years i decided to hunt it down.
The graphics aren’t bad to say its an old game, and the game play is second to none! It was one of the first to use horizontal scrolling and had inspired many other games of the same genre. At first you’re flying a single manned space craft with only one front firing weapon, this can be charged up to many levels of power.
Up grades are available but can be tricky to get.
There is however one more feature, one that I have not seen in any other game, the adoption of a "ball". This red ball as far as I can remember attaches its self to the front of the cock pit and acts as an impenetrable shield. This offers some resistance to the opposing forces about to try their chances against you.
This shield can be fired off at the enemies and it fill attack them at its own accord. I think that it is possible to reattach it simply by touching it or pressing a button. The red ball can be upgraded to fire more frequently or fire missiles homing
or otherwise.
A feature that I have seen that has been taken into a mobile phone game is a boss at the end of the level that has some form of defense unsimilar to the other units. This sounds common in games but in this particular game the first level boss looks identical. Save for that it’s more pixelated and black and white.
My favorite part of the game is when on the second level, I think, there are creatures hiding in the scenario which fly out into the middle of the screen towards your ship. They are well camouflaged and make the game a little more challenging. The levels can be a bit maze like at times, on the first level you have to navigate through a ring of spinning enemies, I could never do it and my mate laughed and did it with ease. Now after all these years I remember my defeat and I AM going to regain my honor.
With my power ups and ball shields and not many lives I am determined to fight my way through the creature infested levels of what is R-TYPE, I play as the last survivor and I hope I do. And after, I think I’ll head for R-TYPE two, and three. The trilogy is worth getting. But there may be more than three!
