R-Type, Pulstar, Last Resort - what's the actual connection?

[uzernaem]

Hello everyone! This is my first post here so excuse me if this was answered before.

It is a common knowledge that Pulstar was made by some ex-Irem developers. But according to Mobygames, it's only one guy - Toshiyuki Nishimura, that has anything to do with Irem games.
Last Resort has no connections to Irem in its credits but it has that distinct "Irem" graphics style that had influenced King of Fighters 94 later.
Funny thing about Last Resort and Pulstar is that they were made by completely different teams and there is not a single guy that was working on both. BUT Last Resort guys did work on KoF94 and 95 later, and there are some guys from Pulstar team that worked on KoF95 too, so they did know each other and worked together on at least one game.

The questions are - have any of the Pulstar developers really worked on R-Type or R-Type 2 arcade games? Is there a possibility that Last Resort was made by ex-R-type guys too? Were R-Type and R-Type 2 made by the same guys at all? All I know is that Leo was made by different guys and then R-Type 3 was made by other different guys and it all is very confusing.

All I need to solve this mystery are R-Type and R-Type 2 credits. But I'm out of luck finding any reliable sources.

[SuperDeadite]

I would be quite surprised if Armed Police Unit Gallop and Last Resort's boss sprites were not drawn by the same people. The pixel art style in both is too similar to be coincidence.

[VRC-7]

Nishimura worked for Taito at one time, not Irem.

I'm not convinced Pulstar had any major involvement from ex-Irem staff. I had asked somebody before, and they weren't even sure.

[Pretas]

Small discovery about the Irem-developed fighting game Perfect Soldiers/Superior Soldiers: It's revealed during the ending that the boss character Skull Reaper is being controlled by the soul of "Bydo."

[OdiousTrident]

Just went back and looked at some Perfect Soldiers footage. Skull Reaper appears to have the R-Type core at the center of his body. One of his projectile attacks is clearly the helix-like beam from R-Type as well.

[gray117]

R-type - original.

Last resort had ex irem staff/contractors working on it, but it's more of a stylistic/feel thing imho... interesting but more so a product of it's time/place as an early impressive in neo geo library.

Pulstar not sure... personally I thought it was more likely they just copied something that worked - really well done, but no substantial lineage. there's various theories that staff went here and there but I don't know...

Moby games is often a good starting point, but it's not always 100%...

... but then again I'm not either