R-Type is complete rubbish

[Xyga]

How does R-Type hold up to SDOJ?

Bad choice, SDOJ is pretty weak.

R-Type is a game design masterclass. The pace is much slower than modern games, that doesn't make it worse - it makes it different. The level design is still clever, the graphics are still well drawn, the music is still pretty cool.

A discussion I saw on IRC made me think recently. There's a small group of players who have only grown up knowing modern games. To me, a lot of the modern games look very much the same, often using similar engines, while these new players consider each radically different due to what I see as minor differences. It's like a gaming version of tunnel vision, or a music fan who can only accept a single narrow genre. Those guys have a big void in their knowledge and experience and it leads to only caring about shades of blue instead of considering the whole spectrum.

When you approach things with a more open mind, you can find more fun, and ultimately you can start to appreciate other qualities in games.

Then you'll understand why R-Type was such a hit and has endured as a popular title.

Side note - if you've ever played a Cave game for score, you'll want to stop calling R-Type a memorizer. Seriously.

^ This. Exactly my point, though much more cleverly worded. ^^"

[chum]

Side note - if you've ever played a Cave game for score, you'll want to stop calling R-Type a memorizer. Seriously.

This is a pretty dumb argument that I've seen before.

Nobody is referring to scoring when they call games memorizers, so why are you? They are referring to casual play, and having to pass a memory test lest you be sent back to a checkpoint is rightfully met with some scorn. Cave games do tend to turn into memorizers in the last stage or two (again, referring to casual play) but comparing serious score play to casual play is stupid.

[Erppo]

R-Type is very much a memorizer, because it's full of seemingly difficult parts that become incredibly easy as soon as you know what to do. Everyone who has tried scoring in a difficult game knows that's not the case there.

[system11]

Side note - if you've ever played a Cave game for score, you'll want to stop calling R-Type a memorizer. Seriously.

This is a pretty dumb argument that I've seen before.

Nobody is referring to scoring when they call games memorizers, so why are you? They are referring to casual play, and having to pass a memory test lest you be sent back to a checkpoint is rightfully met with some scorn. Cave games do tend to turn into memorizers in the last stage or two (again, referring to casual play) but comparing serious score play to casual play is stupid.

I take exception to the use of memorizer as if it's a slur.

They're calling them memorizers because people have to memorize what to do to survive. A memory test. Thats EXACTLY what Cave games make you do if you want to score, and often to survive.

It's a stupid, poorly defined label and it needs to die. If you don't like checkpoint games, bitch about that - it actually means something as an opinion.

[chum]

R-Type is very much a memorizer, because it's full of seemingly difficult parts that become incredibly easy as soon as you know what to do. Everyone who has tried scoring in a difficult game knows that's not the case there.

Echoing these sentiments.

Memorizer may not be the prettiest label, but it's pretty clear what people mean when they use it, generally at least.

[trap15]

R-Type is very much a memorizer, because it's full of seemingly difficult parts that become incredibly easy as soon as you know what to do. Everyone who has tried scoring in a difficult game knows that's not the case there.

Echoing these sentiments.

Same.

[Bananamatic]

I bet less people would play sdoj casually if a death meant going back to a checkpoint with the difficulty for the next minute being set to expert at rank 50

[Master O]

Gradius > Darius > R-Type

Fixed your post.

The title is first and foremost for provocation purposes and is not meant seriously. Please don't feel offended, I'm hating the bydo empire as much as you do!

The original R-Type is the only shooting game from the '80s that still regularly appears in the annual top 25 lists of this forum. Its historical importance is undebatable and so is our nostalgic love for this game. However, I was asking myself the question if maybe these are the only reasons for R-Type to still have such a high reputation.

If you grow up with CAVE and Touhou shmups, could you still enjoy R-Type? Will R-Type be voted a top 25 game in a future poll with all voters being born after 1995? Is R-Type a timeless classic or merely a nostalgic relict? How does R-Type hold up to SDOJ?

Discuss!

R-Type will never hold up to the greatest horizontal shmup series ever: Gradius.

[Squire Grooktook]

Gradius and Darius are pretty evenly matched for me.

[jepjepjep]

R-Type is very much a memorizer, because it's full of seemingly difficult parts that become incredibly easy as soon as you know what to do. Everyone who has tried scoring in a difficult game knows that's not the case there.

That's consistent with an easy checkpoint game. A hard checkpoint game would be Same!Same!Same!. Even after you memorize where to go, there are still spots that require precise execution.

For non-checkpoints or "modern shmups" you have the same divide. DDP first loop requires little to no memorization but Futari Ultra requires strict memorization from the get-go. Not even considering playing for score.

[Squire Grooktook]

Whether a game is a "memorizer" to me, really only depends on one question:

Do the challenges involve rng and improvisation?

If the answer is yes then it's in no way a memorizer.

The first R-Type actually has a fair number of random elements, and the telegraphing isn't as bad as later titles. I personally wouldn't call it a memorizer tbh. The rest of the series is a different story however.

[jepjepjep]

What do you guys think about V-V (Ikeda style with checkpoints) or Gradius IV (rng & rank)?

[Squire Grooktook]

I like V-V a lot.

I'm kind of neutral on checkpoints. They can be good or bad depending on execution. I think they work for Gradius in particular because the power up system is designed to be a psuedo-rpg element (it's essentially ultra quick character building), and checkpoints add a unique strategic choice (in most checkpoint shmups it's just power up immediately. In Gradius you actually have to choose what you want to upgrade for each situation).

Personally if I was making a shmup, I wouldn't bother with checkpoints, mostly because I feel boss fights should be moderately long (by genre standards, of course) and checkpoints in such a situation would destroy the pacing (notice how short most of Gradius boss fights are when done right).

[To Far Away Times]

I'd say the Original R-Type and Delta give the best CAVE games a run for their money.

The Original R-Type is in my top 3 games of the 80's (Along with Megaman 2 and Mario 3). It's really pretty great. It was extremely rare to see games with such strong visual design from the 80's but R-Type has a very well executed visual theme. The music is great. The slow pacing, emphasis on corridors, and force pod give R-Type such a unique flavor. And the level design is really, really good. Give it a chance and spend some time with the game and you might come to appreciate what they're doing with stage design. It's very methodical. Everything in the stages is there for a reason, every section has a purpose and idea behind it, and the game doesn't overstay it's welcome. R-Type can feel almost like a puzzle game at times, where the goal is figuring out the solution, but once you've figured it out the execution is usually pretty simple.

And if you're playing some of the more modern shmups for score you're likely having to do much more intensive memorization than you would in an R-Type game anyway.

[Doctor Butler]

Just because it's obviously inferior to Gradius doesn't mean it's bad.

[dosu]

I grew up on Gradius and R-Type but I'm not a fan of horizontal shmups anymore I'm not sure why, vertical seems a lot more enjoyable to me for some reason.

[ACSeraph]

Gradius and Darius are pretty evenly matched for me.

As a matter of personal taste I prefer the simplicity and speed of Darius, but I do think Gradius is somewhat better designed overall. R-Type feels just a little bit too slow paced to me, and I've never felt comfortable with the weapons. I really just need to spend more time with it I think.

As someone who likes a pretty large variety of shmups I don't think that the 80's love is nostalgia. It's just a matter of taste as mentioned before. I like my Cave stuff, but it's very passive outside of score play. The reason I appreciate the old stuff is because there's often a particularly high emphasis on maximizing your offense since your large hitbox makes wars of attrition very dangerous. And the older stuff also tends to have a bigger sense of creativity in the visual design of enemy attacks. I get a better feeling from dodging weird alien sea urchin spines than I do from your average field of pink Cave jizz. I get that there's a beauty in the pattern, but it's too often that I feel like I'm dodging shiny shit in a kaleidoscope rather than waging brutal intergalactic war. If I want an experience, I typically bust out something oldschool.

[Acid King]

I think a more apropos music analogy would be something like comparing Scream Bloody Gore to modern super technical death metal. No amount of complexity, musicianship, and amazing production values can make up for a lack of songwriting ability and the same can be said of game design. There's a reason R Type is still remembered and played while lord knows how many other shooting games and arcade games released during the same period are relegated to history's trash heap. It has an interesting mechanic, great aesthetics, and the gameplay is fun in that pure kill-fucking-everything way that appealed to me when I started playing these games. I play R Type now and again for the same reason I listen to The Minor Threat EP; cause that shit still rips even 30 years on.

[indutrial]

Being a lover of shmups who kinda sucks at playing most games in the genre (i.e. I wish like hell I could make the time to practice, but I have too many other hobbies!), I still find myself regularly revisiting the three initial pillars of my love for the genre - Gradius III, UN Squadron, and Super R-Type on the SNES (an earlier fourth pillar would be the NES version of Life Force). All three games captivated my imagination at a young age and still, to this day, compare favorably in terms of visual design, music, and gameplay.

As a younger gamer, Super R-Type was certainly a pill of a game, with its complete lack of mid-stage checkpoints and tons of shit that, first time through, can catch you by surprise. Later, in the mid-00s, when I got back into shmups after several years of not gaming much at all, one of the first PS titles I picked up used was the compilation of R-Type and R-Type II for PSX. Both games lit up my imagination all over again and led me to dig up all kinds of information on Irem, etc..., which in turn led me to discover other favorites like Xexex and X-Multiply.

I think I tend to enjoy these games more because I don't fine-tune my memorization of them too much. Some of the more clusterfuck-like parts are just far more exciting when you improvise your way through the swarm of enemies (for some reason, I'm thinking of the latter half of that water level in Super R-Type, when some big-assed crab/spider thing is trudging back and forth and other enemies are crawling in along the floors).

I can't quite see any point in comparing them with the bullet-hell games of late. They may as well be different genres at this point. I tend to prefer the old Irem and Konami shooters because they put a strong emphasis on level design. The recent games I've played by Cave, etc... are fun as hell to play, but I barely ever remember one level or boss from the next. You're too busy dodging crazy bullet patterns to see much of anything and there's too many explosion and item-pickup sounds to hear the music very well. I guess Psikyo and later Toaplan plans strike a better balance for me, but I've not yet played as many of those.

[pegboy]

I personally think Gradius 1 still beats R-Type (despite being released 2 years earlier) from a pure gaming experience but R-Type is still awesome. The atmosphere and creepy alien shit you encounter is pretty intense for that time period, very innovative and imaginative, especially given the limitations.

[evil_ash_xero]

Darius better than R-Type???

You guys....

[indutrial]

I personally think Gradius 1 still beats R-Type (despite being released 2 years earlier) from a pure gaming experience but R-Type is still awesome. The atmosphere and creepy alien shit you encounter is pretty intense for that time period, very innovative and imaginative, especially given the limitations.

I would agree with this. Things like R-Type's second stage are completely menacing, whereas pretty much the whole of the first Gradius is suffused with the arcade vibe. Even the final battle, where you finally have a showdown with the enemy's mother brain, still takes place with that damned 'Aircraft Carrier' theme, which to this day still always makes me think that my console is going to announce 'multi-ball' or something. As well, the music accompanying the Moai heads has always served to pull me out of the game experience a bit. It's just so goofy. Gradius got better with creating an immersive vibe with the second, third, and fifth entries and, for me, did better still with the first Salamander game (not so much with the second of those or Gradius IV).

[ciox]

Personally if I was making a shmup, I wouldn't bother with checkpoints, mostly because I feel boss fights should be moderately long (by genre standards, of course) and checkpoints in such a situation would destroy the pacing (notice how short most of Gradius boss fights are when done right).

Ah, but that's why there are games that have checkpoints during stages but not during bosses, Border Down is like this I think.

Darius better than R-Type???

You guys....

Yeah I don't get it, the Darius series seems to have been more influenced by R-Type than the other way around, in the beginning.

[Plasmo]

Darius better than R-Type???

You guys....

Yeah I don't get it, the Darius series seems to have been more influenced by R-Type than the other way around, in the beginning.

Except that Darius came out before R-Type.

While gameplay surely isn't the strongest point of the early Darius games, I prefer their dreamy, almost psychedelic atmosphere and the superb soundtrack by Zuntata over R-Type.

[The Coop]

Personally, I love R-Type. The memorization patterns, the stages that can actually kill you (no harmless backdrops here), the music, the bosses... they're nicely done. The challenge level is good without being ridiculous, and it just feels like a well thought out hori. I can understand why it's not for everyone, but I can see why it was both influential in the development of the genre, and why players continue to go back to it.

[Lord Satori]

R-Type Command/Tactics is where it's at.

[ciox]

Darius better than R-Type???

You guys....

Yeah I don't get it, the Darius series seems to have been more influenced by R-Type than the other way around, in the beginning.

Except that Darius came out before R-Type.
While gameplay surely isn't the strongest point of the early Darius games, I prefer their dreamy, almost psychedelic atmosphere and the superb soundtrack by Zuntata over R-Type.

I'm talking about the Darius games that came out after R-Type, I already linked the upside down Dobkeratops from Darius II here.

[Squire Grooktook]

As someone who likes a pretty large variety of shmups I don't think that the 80's love is nostalgia. It's just a matter of taste as mentioned before. I like my Cave stuff, but it's very passive outside of score play. The reason I appreciate the old stuff is because there's often a particularly high emphasis on maximizing your offense since your large hitbox makes wars of attrition very dangerous. And the older stuff also tends to have a bigger sense of creativity in the visual design of enemy attacks. I get a better feeling from dodging weird alien sea urchin spines than I do from your average field of pink Cave jizz. I get that there's a beauty in the pattern, but it's too often that I feel like I'm dodging shiny shit in a kaleidoscope rather than waging brutal intergalactic war. If I want an experience, I typically bust out something oldschool.

Agreed. I also think the larger hitbox sometimes (depending on the pattern design, small hitbox games can emulate this if they try hard) leads to a more frantic dodging experience. When you have a bigger hitbox, you generally have to move farther and faster in order to get out of the way of even single small bullets. There's a big difference between this kind of super fast dodging and the slow microscopic dodges of most bullet hell shooters.

[indutrial]

Except that Darius came out before R-Type.

While gameplay surely isn't the strongest point of the early Darius games, I prefer their dreamy, almost psychedelic atmosphere and the superb soundtrack by Zuntata over R-Type.

I haven't played either of the original two Darius games, which I suppose would be best played on PC-Engine CD or Saturn (??), but the two SNES offerings in that series felt incredibly dull compared to even just Super R-Type (I'm leaving aside R-Type III, which I haven't played recently). While I've always liked Zuntata's music and enjoy the game's boss sprites, the level design and pacing is kind of terrible. Darius Force/Super Nova brings a bit more variety, but a lot of it feels like half-assed versions of ideas from the Gradius (shooting through mud) and R-Type (going inside of a big ship) series. In both games, I kinda hate how the enemy formations come at you regardless of obstacles in the environment (i.e. flying right through walls, cave ceilings, etc..).

[Sly Cherry Chunks]

I only care about R-Type.