R-Type Delta

[MikeB]

Hi guys

Does anyone fancy helping me out on a Retro Gamer article (I'm a bit pushed time-wise)?

I'm looking for scans of Famitsu magazine (with the R-Type Delta Gold Medal) if anyone has it and has access to a scanner.

Also level/boss screenshots of the game, particularly the later levels. I'm also thinking of bolting together the level 3 walker battleship if anyone can help with that. Cheers.

[Mortificator]

I can't grab screens for you, but here are the names of the end-of-stage bosses:

Stage 1: Moritz-G
Stage 2: Dastonate Cocoon & Dastonate Worm
Stage 3: Gates (or maybe Gaits, since it's a walker)
Stage 4: Q.T. Cat (there's an R-9 inside it)
Stage 5: Gondolan (from R-Type's first stage), Gomander (from R-Type's second stage), and the giant Warship (from R-Type's third stage)
Stage 6: Three infested R-Types and Dobkeratops
Stage 7: Bydo Core

These are probably useless to you if you're writing a general article, but if you talk about bosses at any length it might be useful to say "Dastonate" instead of "those two ugly things that have sex while you shoot them."

Irem's English R-Type site also has stage names and some background info on Delta.

[MikeB]

Thanks Mort. This has been most useful.

[Mortificator]

You're welcome.

I notice that there's a save on GameFAQs with stage select unlocked, which might make it easier to get screens from later on in the game.

[MikeB]

Mmm.. pretty much all sorted now thanks Mort, just got to get a grab of Dobkeratops and I'm done

[Sly Cherry Chunks]

some screenies in an old journal of mine:

http://slycherrychunks.livejournal.com/100922.html

[MikeB]

That's a really nice piece. My grab of Dobby wasn't anywhere as good as yours, so I went back a tried to survive until the later attack phase and its made a much nicer pic

[Lawfer]

R-Type Delta, nice game I managed to reach lvl 5 until the stage started going really fast and you had to avoid being crushed on stone parts.

[m.sniffles.esq]

Coming in HD for Steam, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, and Xbox Series X/S in 2025

[Firehawke]

A little sad it's not getting the Final 2 treatment graphically, but just cleaning up the textures, bringing it up to higher resolution, and so forth is decent for what's probably going to be a $19.99 or $29.99 title.

[Klatrymadon]

I'm really glad it's being tastefully upscaled (like G-Darius HD) rather than reworked in another engine. Most of Delta's stages are already represented in RTF2/3 at this point, and it's partly due to the off-the-peg engine that they just aren't anywhere near as visually interesting or evocative as their source material...

[Sengoku Strider]

I'm really glad it's being tastefully upscaled (like G-Darius HD) rather than reworked in another engine. Most of Delta's stages are already represented in RTF2/3 at this point, and it's partly due to the off-the-peg engine that they just aren't anywhere near as visually interesting or evocative as their source material...

I agree that a low budget 3D update is undesirable, but I have zero nostalgia for the PS1 z-axis judder they were unable to remove from G-Darius. I expect to see the same here.

It's City Connection so I don't have sky-high expectations, but I am glad it's getting a re-release as I've never played it, and with a PS4 version no less. The system is immortal.

[pablumatic]

I do hope whatever emulator City Connection picks for their Delta release is better than the Saturn one they went with. I think most PS1 emulators are in better shape in that regard anyway.

[Steven]

Let's hope it's not called Boosted because they boosted the input lag. That trailer's aspect ratio also appears to be 4:3 stretched to 16:9, or at least the HUD is. I'm assuming that's an option, but do not want.

[Firehawke]

I'm surprised this is getting a PS4 release, as Sony seems to be heavily pressuring third party studios to stop supporting the PS4 in favor of making stuff PS5 at minimum even where the PS4 would play a game fine.

I'd missed the City Connection name on the first two watchings as it's only there for a moment and the trailer doesn't give you much chance to focus on anything actually going on. One might even think they were trying to avoid showing any more of the game than necessary.. which I'd consider a bit worrying in light of CC showing up with this.

I went from "Oh, hey, I'd like this.." to "..I'll wait until there's at least one or two trusted reviews AND hope they're not going to try to charge $40 for this.."

Originally I was thinking $20, but somehow I feel like this might end up being $30-40.

[Sengoku Strider]

I'm surprised this is getting a PS4 release, as Sony seems to be heavily pressuring third party studios to stop supporting the PS4 in favor of making stuff PS5 at minimum even where the PS4 would play a game fine.

They've obviously relaxed on that one. Sony owns Bungie, and the new Destiny 2 Star Wars expansion they just showed will still be releasing content on PS4 halfway through 2026.

This time last year, Sony said half their players were still on PS4. The PS5 only getting more expensive at the same time Trump is wreaking havoc with the global economy and AI is shrinking job markets while PS5's exclusives have remained thin probably hasn't dented the divide that much. Switch 2 has been looming as a competitor for people to put their money on instead too. I just read Call of Duty will also be releasing on PS4 again this year.

[tizerist]

Wheres the improvements? I'm still seeing the same old jittering PS1 textures. At least give it a lick of paint. Its looking like the G Darius 'upgrade'

[dai jou bu]

Wheres the improvements? I'm still seeing the same old jittering PS1 textures. At least give it a lick of paint. Its looking like the G Darius 'upgrade'

This is probably the same problem Konami had where they wanted to make gradius V, but everyone in their company who used to know how to make a good shmup either got thrown into Kojima project jail, so they had to bring an outside team to work on it.

TL;DR- if they can't make a decent modern R-Type game, it's better not to try to break porting a really old game that was already pretty solid for the sake of graphical fidelity and just focus on keeping the game running as faithfully on modern systems as possible.

Although I do hope they have the original audio assets because the audio compression in the original release made all of the SFX and music sound so soft to the point that the programmers realized this and had to make your death animation more visually striking to show that you got hit by something. I literally had to set my speakers to full blast whenever I booted this game up and then would literally get blown away when I used the same setup for another game or watching a movie because the gain was that high.

EDIT: Ugh, this is being published by clear river games, one of LRG's subsidies that focuses on mass-market distribution of their games outside of the United States. Time to preemptively get angry.

[Firehawke]

Fes video is live, and it looks like Irem is, in fact, involved with the game.

There's an arranged OST from Masahiko Ishida and Chris Huelsbeck. The former did R-Type 2 and Image Fight, the latter did the C64/Amiga conversions of some Irem games.

Not sure on the notorious PSX jitter; the video we have so far isn't great so it's really hard to tell how much of that is legit PSX jitter and how much of it is the video being bad.

Edit: Oh, right, it's up on Steam now for wishlisting. https://store.steampowered.com/app/3072 ... D_Boosted/

[Steven]

TAKE×0FF is here. Never played anything that TAKE×0FF has done, but from what I have heard, this should be perfectly fine at worst. I think Jaimers said that TAKE×0FF's PC Deathsmiles I and II are the best way to play both of those games or something like that, so that's nice, and also promising.

I have this game on PS3 and have been meaning to pick up an actual PS1 copy, but I may skip that and get this on PC instead, especially if it has the original graphics and doesn't force the player to use the HD-ness or some sort of annoying background picture thing.

[PC Engine Fan X!]

TAKE×0FF is here. Never played anything that TAKE×0FF has done, but from what I have heard, this should be perfectly fine at worst. I think Jaimers said that TAKE×0FF's PC Deathsmiles I and II are the best way to play both of those games or something like that, so that's nice, and also promising.

I have this game on PS3 and have been meaning to pick up an actual PS1 copy, but I may skip that and get this on PC instead, especially if it has the original graphics and doesn't force the player to use the HD-ness or some sort of annoying background picture thing.

Back in the day, National Console Support (NCSX) sold the original JPN PSX import of R-Type Delta and bought a copy from them brand new & sealed. Upon booting it up for the first time, Irem knew how to showcase the incredible vibrational haptics afforded of the Dual Shock 1 controller indeed. The only other PSX game to show what the DS1 can do with haptic feedback effects masterfully, is none other than Squaresoft's iS: internal section -- a 3D polygonal-based Tempest clone running in 640 x 480 interlaced mode.

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

[Klatrymadon]

There's some heartening stuff in the Steam screenshots: the new textures are still quite grungy and murky, against the usual tendency to 'clean up' older work, and (although it still looks slightly stretched to my eyes) they seem to be trying to preserve the original play area despite giving an extended widescreen view.

[TransatlanticFoe]

EDIT: Ugh, this is being published by clear river games, one of LRG's subsidies that focuses on mass-market distribution of their games outside of the United States. Time to preemptively get angry.

Why is this something to get angry about? It means the physical edition gets a proper retail release.

[Sengoku Strider]

There's an arranged OST from Masahiko Ishida and Chris Huelsbeck. The former did R-Type 2 and Image Fight, the latter did the C64/Amiga conversions of some Irem games.

Specifically I'm sure the reason Huelsbeck is here is that he did the epic title screen theme for the Amiga version of R-Type. That port was the first I got to play, I was disappointed to discover the theme doesn't show up in any other version. It was so memorable.

[Lemnear]

Chris Hülsbeck? he's one of my favorite composers in the video game field (along with Yuzo Koshiro)...will there be more OSTs then? Original and Rearranged?

[dai jou bu]

EDIT: Ugh, this is being published by clear river games, one of LRG's subsidies that focuses on mass-market distribution of their games outside of the United States. Time to preemptively get angry.

Why is this something to get angry about? It means the physical edition gets a proper retail release.

1. Be me
2. Notice that LRG put up preorders for radiant silvergun for switch
3. Missed the pre-order window, and hate paying the prices for their barebones releases on there because they will literally charge you $20 for shipping on top of state taxes, so you’re actually not laying $34 for that retail copy.
4. LRG didn’t put out a retail version of the game at Best Buy stores in the United States like they used to because it seems like they’re transitioning away from using them as an exclusive brick and mortar retail store in this country
5. This was an intentional business move to increase FOMO as the USA is the biggest market for collectors
6. Discover on play-Asia, of all places, that LRG put out a retail version of the game.
7. IN EUROPE.
8. UNDER THEIR CLEAR RIVER GAMES LABEL
9. TWO YEARS LATER

Now you see why I’m a little bit peeved?

[CerealPT]

would you feel better with no retail version of radiant silvergun at all?

I am all in for the physical release of Rtype Delta.

[dai jou bu]

would you feel better with no retail version of radiant silvergun at all?

You don’t quite understand the problem I have with LRG.

Citizens in the United States of America did not get a retail copy of radiant silvergun. Period. Our only choice was to get shafted by LRG’s online pre-order system and pay way more than MSRP than if we were to wait for them to show up at a local retail store.

We also did not get an advance notice that a retail copy was even coming out at all, and two years of radio silence increases FOMO in the speculation market (ie-eBay prices for the game skyrocket to the moon because no news of a retail copy was in the pipeline).

To hide the fact that LRG orchestrated this intentional delay, they publish the retail version of the game in Europe, under one of their subsidiary companies called Clear River Games, so people not as familiar with LRG’s association with them would think that this is just some European-specific publisher that got the rights to release retail copies over there. They’ve helped publish games for other publishers in the past, so to a layman Clear River Games might just be some rando European publisher that needed extra resources that LRG had to distribute the game over there.

I don’t have a problem with strictly limited games owning another company (ININ) that’s specifically for releasing games they have publishing rights for, because they use that company to publish retail versions of them and are way more transparent about what they’re doing than what LRG does, though it is interesting they’re starting to use them now for mass-production limited runs like trouble witches final!

I do have beef with a company that consistently does these types of shenanigans of intentionally creating toxic scarcity for certain games they publish because they know they can get away with it because certain individuals will pay top dollar to enable them to do so.

I’m not too sure what they’re planning with R-Type delta, but I do know that LRG’s catalog for shmups is focused on keystone developers (Treasure, G.Rev, Konami, some Cave). This seems to be another attempt to grab another historic IP and keep in it their control since SLG has an iron grip on taito and success’ catalogs. I do know that they published under defeat using their clear river games label for the online preorder store on LRG, so my guess is they’re trying to, uh, do something in the European market at the expense of the USA one.

[kid aphex]

Fuck LRG entirely.

[dai jou bu]

Correction: clear River games is not owned by LRG.

Both companies were bought out by the Embracer Group, and from what it looks like, Embracer is leveraging LRG’s publishing expertise to other companies under its umbrella to release games in different regions.

But this is still all retarded because this lack of transparency of when games come out from embracer’s publishers just adds to the FOMO that I mentioned earlier. LRG could simply say, “hey, sorry you missed out on Radiant Silvergun. We won’t be releasing any retail copies in the United States, but check out our partners at clear River games since they seem to have something cooking on that side.” On their website or somewhere on social media, but nope.