R-Type Dimensions III

[Udderdude]

Claims they're going to patch it. We'll see. https://x.com/iningames_jp/status/2057455941839110411

The development team is fully aware of the current issues and is working diligently to fix and improve them. In particular, we are prioritizing the crashing issues occurring on the Xbox version. We are currently reviewing each known issue individually and are preparing to release an update as soon as possible.

[TransatlanticFoe]

In English and away from Muskcorp:

https://iningames.com/blogs/news/r-type ... inin-games

Re-using the generic "thank you for your patience" style response they've been rolling out for Strictly Limited Games. PR clearly not their strong point - maybe don't launch the game in a total fucking state, yeah?

[Klatrymadon]

"This concludes the paid beta test. Return to your stations."

[Jonpachi]

Seems like with all the effort they put into generating all these new assets they could/should have just made a brand-new R-Type game with more success.

[SeafoamGaming]

It took them eons to fix Irem Collection 1, and they never fixed the Jajamaru RPG collection.

IMO, I get the feeling these dudes are nearly broke and are letting their company bet it all on r type and shenmue III.

Good frigging luck; spoiler alert since I am reviewing this, this is a 2/10 quality travesty. This shouldnt have been launched in this state and any reviewer giving it a 7+ or calling it great are doing a disservice to their readers.

[To Far Away Times]

Welp. Regular R-Type III is one of the most mixed games I've ever played. Equal parts brilliant and stupid (And sometimes so stupid it's brilliant [i.e. See the Stage 4 lava maze that you have to do twice]), seems like this port is of similar quality to it's source material.

[Steven]

I know I asked about this prior to release, but was it ever announced how this was made or did anyone figure out what it is? Besides bad, obviously.

The general badness of this makes me wonder if it's a remake done by simply and carelessly eyeballing it and with the option to paste the original graphics on top.

Also lol 9% positive on Steam. Wouldn't be surprised if that makes it one of the lowest-rated things on there. That itself is quite an achievement because there is A LOT of junk on Steam.

[BrianC]

Seems like with all the effort they put into generating all these new assets they could/should have just made a brand-new R-Type game with more success.

I disagree. I don't think more Success would help considering how the new Sonic Wings game turned out.

[Steven]

But Success is owned by CAVE! That means every Success game is also a CAVE game, and that automatically makes them all the best games in the genre... right???

[SeafoamGaming]

I know I asked about this prior to release, but was it ever announced how this was made or did anyone figure out what it is? Besides bad, obviously.

The general badness of this makes me wonder if it's a remake done by simply and carelessly eyeballing it and with the option to paste the original graphics on top.

Also lol 9% positive on Steam. Wouldn't be surprised if that makes it one of the lowest-rated things on there. That itself is quite an achievement because there is A LOT of junk on Steam.

it almost certainly is eyeballed recreated, it's so fucking bad the GBA version is a masterpiece. A mod that replaced the GBA ver's music with this ver's music would make that version way better than this.

And of course the SNES beats em all. Played my cart to make sure I wasn't crazy; no, they really did mess a lot up in this remake.

Anyhow the dev is one named KRITZELKRATZ 3000. ININ's used them a couple times. Nobody from the Tozai Dimensions team is back here, it's a brand new, outsourced dev, and it shows.

[lastemperorjubei]

I know I asked about this prior to release, but was it ever announced how this was made or did anyone figure out what it is? Besides bad, obviously.

The general badness of this makes me wonder if it's a remake done by simply and carelessly eyeballing it and with the option to paste the original graphics on top.

Also lol 9% positive on Steam. Wouldn't be surprised if that makes it one of the lowest-rated things on there. That itself is quite an achievement because there is A LOT of junk on Steam.

it almost certainly is eyeballed recreated, it's so fucking bad the GBA version is a masterpiece. A mod that replaced the GBA ver's music with this ver's music would make that version way better than this.

And of course the SNES beats em all. Played my cart to make sure I wasn't crazy; no, they really did mess a lot up in this remake.

Anyhow the dev is one named KRITZELKRATZ 3000. ININ's used them a couple times. Nobody from the Tozai Dimensions team is back here, it's a brand new, outsourced dev, and it shows.

I never heard of them before, first time reading their name was on reddit by another German. So I googled their webpage and according to it they were also involved with Rainbow Cotton (the new release) and X-Out Resurfaced.

[MJR]

I know I asked about this prior to release, but was it ever announced how this was made or did anyone figure out what it is? Besides bad, obviously.

The general badness of this makes me wonder if it's a remake done by simply and carelessly eyeballing it and with the option to paste the original graphics on top.

Also lol 9% positive on Steam. Wouldn't be surprised if that makes it one of the lowest-rated things on there. That itself is quite an achievement because there is A LOT of junk on Steam.

I am fairly confident that what was happened was that the developers were probably given ridiculously tight deadline and then told to "fix it later in patch". Or, they may have been hurting for money and in desperation got themselves a raw deal.

[SeafoamGaming]

I know I asked about this prior to release, but was it ever announced how this was made or did anyone figure out what it is? Besides bad, obviously.

The general badness of this makes me wonder if it's a remake done by simply and carelessly eyeballing it and with the option to paste the original graphics on top.

Also lol 9% positive on Steam. Wouldn't be surprised if that makes it one of the lowest-rated things on there. That itself is quite an achievement because there is A LOT of junk on Steam.

I am fairly confident that what was happened was that the developers were probably given ridiculously tight deadline and then told to "fix it later in patch". Or, they may have been hurting for money and in desperation got themselves a raw deal.

ININ/SLG being under the same parent company, I cant help but cynically wonder if this was turbocharged into development, pitched as a complete on cart Switch 2 game and promoted heavily as such for the sake of the limprint collector people who want gaming to be 1996 forever, then it was sped out the door to try and join mio as one of the first 16gb switch 2 cart games, since its pretty apparent SLG is bleeding money.

Except the physical got delayed right before launch, making me ponder if they even bothered placing an order at all. Oops.

[Slinky]

Physical Production Postponed Until Improvements Are Complete
https://iningames.com/blogs/news/r-type ... inin-games

Physical Production Postponed Until Improvements Are Complete

Following discussions with the community, we have also reviewed the production schedule for the physical editions of R-Type Dimensions III.

We can confirm that physical production will not begin until the identified issues have been addressed to our satisfaction. We believe this is the right decision for players and collectors alike, and it reflects our commitment to delivering the best possible version of the game on cartridge and disc.

We know how important physical preservation is to the R-Type community, and we want the physical release to represent the strongest version of the game available. Given the considerable effort invested in bringing the title to physical formats (including the upcoming Nintendo Switch 2 cartridge release) we believe taking additional time now is the best path forward for everyone involved.

[Jonpachi]

Physical Production Postponed Until Improvements Are Complete
https://iningames.com/blogs/news/r-type ... inin-games

Physical Production Postponed Until Improvements Are Complete

Following discussions with the community, we have also reviewed the production schedule for the physical editions of R-Type Dimensions III.

We can confirm that physical production will not begin until the identified issues have been addressed to our satisfaction. We believe this is the right decision for players and collectors alike, and it reflects our commitment to delivering the best possible version of the game on cartridge and disc.

We know how important physical preservation is to the R-Type community, and we want the physical release to represent the strongest version of the game available. Given the considerable effort invested in bringing the title to physical formats (including the upcoming Nintendo Switch 2 cartridge release) we believe taking additional time now is the best path forward for everyone involved.

This is NEVER coming out.

[hamfighterx]

This shouldnt have been launched in this state and any reviewer giving it a 7+ or calling it great are doing a disservice to their readers.

I actually find these reviews somewhat useful, since they are a reliable way of telling me that I should not trust that reviewer's STG reviews. I don't really think it's malicious, just people who don't appreciate things like the importance of port accuracy for this genre. But that's not too unusual for the genre if you look at any mainstream reviews. Just have to figure out "does this person understand shmups?", and the answer is often no (and is often surfaced by stuff like not being able to clock these kinds of big problems), but sometimes I'll get surprised and see from context that the reviewer does know what they're talking about.

And sometimes you'll get someone who really knows their stuff, and that you already know understands the genre. That's the info I actually pay attention to. Like when I see Tom Massey's name on a review, such as his R-Type Dimensions III one on Nintendolife.com

This is NEVER coming out.

But they're damn sure gonna hold onto that preorder money. Grifters gonna grift. It's the Strictly Limited Games way!

[SavagePencil]

This shouldnt have been launched in this state and any reviewer giving it a 7+ or calling it great are doing a disservice to their readers.

I actually find these reviews somewhat useful, since they are a reliable way of telling me that I should not trust that reviewer's STG reviews. I don't really think it's malicious, just people who don't appreciate things like the importance of port accuracy for this genre. But that's not too unusual for the genre if you look at any mainstream reviews. Just have to figure out "does this person understand shmups?", and the answer is often no (and is often surfaced by stuff like not being able to clock these kinds of big problems), but sometimes I'll get surprised and see from context that the reviewer does know what they're talking about.

And sometimes you'll get someone who really knows their stuff, and that you already know understands the genre. That's the info I actually pay attention to. Like when I see Tom Massey's name on a review, such as his R-Type Dimensions III one on Nintendolife.com

This is NEVER coming out.

But they're damn sure gonna hold onto that preorder money. Grifters gonna grift. It's the Strictly Limited Games way!

Even a 5 out of 10 feels overly generous in its current state.

[hamfighterx]

Even a 5 out of 10 feels overly generous in its current state.

That's fair I guess, maybe even that middling score is generous for this game. But I'm not here to debate precise review scores, just to point out that it's plainly obvious from reading Tom's review that he has a very good understanding of the genre, and he absolutely calls out serious issues very clearly and gives them appropriate attention in the review. To the point where people like most of us here will understand exactly what he's talking about and know to be wary of this game.

Honestly, also not the worst second opinion comment (by the review editor, Ollie Reynolds) in that review either, calling out that more casual players might have more fun with this release, but "purists who are intimately familiar with the original, however, should absolutely take heed of Tom's concerns". Strikes me as a pretty responsible and transparent way to call out the concerns that definitely will matter to genre enthusiasts, but that might not be that big of a deal to casuals who might remember R-Type with hazy nostalgia from the 90s.

But yeah, in contrast, I also saw some stuff like Seafoam mentioned with other reviews (can't recall which off the top of my head) being totally oblivious to the massive problems on display here. It was striking, and made me take notice if only to remind myself "well, guess I can't trust what this person says about shmups".

[TransatlanticFoe]

I'm not sure how casual players are going to be okay with completely knackered collision detection. It's not a purist thing, it's a "wait why did that kill me" thing.

[Shatterhand]

KRITZELKRATZ 3000

I just checked the Rainbow Cotton credits, it seems this studio is headed by people who are in the industry for 35+ years. The project lead and one of their programmers worked in a couple of Amiga games, with the lead being the main guy behind the shmup Tubular Worlds, which is one of the finest ones I played coming from Europe in the 90s. (The best ones were usually from Germany).

And curiously their name isn't anywhere *in* the game, it's just on the Steam page, it seems?

[hamfighterx]

I'm not sure how casual players are going to be okay with completely knackered collision detection. It's not a purist thing, it's a "wait why did that kill me" thing.

Oh. I didn't realize quite how bad it was, because I did heed the warnings and have (thankfully) yet to play this obvious disaster.

And here's this, from Kengo Miyata:

@ININ_Games

As the original director of R-TYPE III, I would like to share my thoughts regarding the current situation.
I am deeply concerned about the state in which the product was released.

While I welcome the fact that corrections are now being made, this product has already been released and sold as a paid product.
At this stage, effectively conducting another QA process with the help of paying customers seems inappropriate. Releasing a version containing so many issues and then relying on purchasers to identify and verify fixes does not feel like a sincere response from a company responsible for the release.

Would it not be more appropriate to suspend sales, offer refunds to existing customers, and continue QA for as long as necessary until the major issues have been resolved? The product could then be re-released once it reaches an acceptable level of quality.
I believe such an approach would be a more honest and respectful way to treat the fans who have supported this title.
#RType #RD3
11:38 PM · Jun 2, 2026

[Steven]

A mod that replaced the GBA ver's music with this ver's music would make that version way better than this.

What's that thing on the SD2SNES or whatever it's called now that lets you put in high-quality music? I don't remember, but whatever that thing is called would be even better. I forgot that this has new music and haven't heard it, but I'm assuming that it's pretty decent. Can't be worse than what they did to the PC Engine CD version of R-Type 1 at any rate.

I am fairly confident that what was happened was that the developers were probably given ridiculously tight deadline and then told to "fix it later in patch". Or, they may have been hurting for money and in desperation got themselves a raw deal.

Yeah, the former is definitely known to happen, and I imagine the latter happens sometimes too. There are enough problems with this release from what I have seen to make me wonder what happened the the development of this in general, but some of them are the type that make me wonder how those specific issues managed to occur at all, like how the charge shot apparently does not go through (some? All? Not sure) zako. Having not played this remake, I'm not sure what the exact situation is, but that's been a primary function of the charge shot since the first game in the series, so its absence here is concerning and telling.

This whole "release first, maybe fix later, maybe fix never" thing that has gripped the entire games industry has become... very tiring. I really like Jurassic World Evolution 1/2/3, with 2 being one of my most played games ever, but they are all very, VERY glitchy, and there are still legacy bugs from the first game, which released in 2018, that are still present in 3, which released about 8 months ago, because they seem to just copy/paste the source code from the most recent game and then work on it from there and call it a sequel. Like come on now, it's been 8 years, I think it's time to patch dinosaurs sometimes getting stuck on nothing while standing in the middle of a giant lake and still somehow managing to die of dehydration. Well... yeah. It's frustrating.

KRITZELKRATZ 3000

I just checked the Rainbow Cotton credits, it seems this studio is headed by people who are in the industry for 35+ years. The project lead and one of their programmers worked in a couple of Amiga games, with the lead being the main guy behind the shmup Tubular Worlds, which is one of the finest ones I played coming from Europe in the 90s. (The best ones were usually from Germany).

And curiously their name isn't anywhere *in* the game, it's just on the Steam page, it seems?

Now this is interesting information; I don't think it's really possible to stick around as a professional game dev for 35+ years unless either you know what you are doing or someone else does it for you and you get the credit for it anyway somehow, like Criminal Mastermind and Convicted Felon™ Yuji Naka, who turned out to not be a great game dev at all and continues to take or at least get credit for what was actually Yasuhara's genius ever since they were working on Sonic together.

Anyway, it does make a convincing case for this being a no time/no budget/no source code rush job. I hope that bad games are mostly bad because of problems like these and not developer incompetence. As for which this case falls under, we'll see, but in the meantime, hopefully they can fix it, but assuming that they don't have the original game's source code, which I think is certainly the case, I expect this will never match the original game.

It is possible to have a very accurate nearly 1:1 remake with no source code; the Sonic CD remake from 2011 is such a case. It isn't a port, and it isn't emulated, it's a straight-up remake in a completely new engine that was created specifically for this remake without the original source code, and it's excellent. It's not perfect, as anyone with sufficient knowledge of the original will tell you, and there are some questionable changes, but most people won't notice any of these things, and those that do (that means me) are probably still going to play this version anyway instead of the original game for various reasons. This is an outlier for sure, but it's nice to consider that it is indeed possible.

This shouldnt have been launched in this state and any reviewer giving it a 7+ or calling it great are doing a disservice to their readers.

I actually find these reviews somewhat useful, since they are a reliable way of telling me that I should not trust that reviewer's STG reviews. I don't really think it's malicious, just people who don't appreciate things like the importance of port accuracy for this genre. But that's not too unusual for the genre if you look at any mainstream reviews. Just have to figure out "does this person understand shmups?", and the answer is often no (and is often surfaced by stuff like not being able to clock these kinds of big problems), but sometimes I'll get surprised and see from context that the reviewer does know what they're talking about.

It's not really something I want to think about, or even dredge up, and I think you'll automatically know what this reminds me of without me even saying it, but...

yeah this was me regarding the Bitwave Toaplan Disasters™ lol

I don't even want to think about these, but it's frustrating to see a billion reviews praising these things for their "accuracy" and only one or two people who are correctly saying "actually, no, these are a complete travesty".

Eh.............................................. I don't know what to think anymore. I was going to write a thing about how I feel that humanity quite disturbingly seems to increasingly become allergic to quality in favour of convenience, but 1. I'm too lazy to write it because it would be massive and 2. this isn't the time or place anyway.

[Firehawke]

You can say a lot of things about Yuji Naka-- he's extremely racist, he's an ass to even his Japanese coworkers, he's a convicted felon..

..but the one thing you cannot say about him is that he isn't a damn good programmer. For all his MANY faults, you do have to acknowledge that when it comes to pushing 68000 code, he was very good. That doesn't make up for everything else, mind you-- I only want to set the record straight that he didn't steal ALL of the accolades. That one thing he definitely did earn.

[Steven]

He's a genius programmer for sure. Sonic 3 & Knuckles in particular would never have happened without him and his skills.

[qmish]

You know you screwed up when even Forbes writes about fiasco:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/olliebarde ... tro-games/

[Shatterhand]

Now this is interesting information; I don't think it's really possible to stick around as a professional game dev for 35+ years unless either you know what you are doing or someone else does it for you and you get the credit for it anyway somehow, like Criminal Mastermind and Convicted Felon™ Yuji Naka, who turned out to not be a great game dev at all and continues to take or at least get credit for what was actually Yasuhara's genius ever since they were working on Sonic together.

Anyway, it does make a convincing case for this being a no time/no budget/no source code rush job. I hope that bad games are mostly bad because of problems like these and not developer incompetence. As for which this case falls under, we'll see, but in the meantime, hopefully they can fix it, but assuming that they don't have the original game's source code, which I think is certainly the case, I expect this will never match the original game.

It is possible to have a very accurate nearly 1:1 remake with no source code; the Sonic CD remake from 2011 is such a case. It isn't a port, and it isn't emulated, it's a straight-up remake in a completely new engine that was created specifically for this remake without the original source code, and it's excellent. It's not perfect, as anyone with sufficient knowledge of the original will tell you, and there are some questionable changes, but most people won't notice any of these things, and those that do (that means me) are probably still going to play this version anyway instead of the original game for various reasons. This is an outlier for sure, but it's nice to consider that it is indeed possible.

I haven't heard anything but praise for the Rainbow Cotton port (the criticisms are usually aimed at the original game), and I read they also didn't have the original source code/assets, which, if its true, would make this even harder to port than R-Type 3.

Some of the bugs I've seen on R-Type Dimensions 3 are very typical of wonky hit detection on Unity, which would be pretty easy to miss if you didn't have the time/budget to test things properly.

I hope that bad games are mostly bad because of problems like these and not developer incompetence.

Most of the time, it is. Back from Amiga days (even the Speccy days) you had very competent coders/artists delivering some bad stuff because they had no proper time/budget/resources to make things and they tried their best with what they had... you hear their stories nowadays and you understand why stuff from, say, US Gold, were so terrible back in the day. Programmers working like 16 hours per day to deliver a game on insane deadlines and that barely worked (and I am pretty sure working 16 hours a day for weeks on and getting your game crushed on reviews most be absolutely disheartening - and sometimes they didn't even get paid correctly). And 100% it still happens today.

Also, it's like I said on the Cave topic... shmups make near to no money, I can only guess established companies work with low budgets to try to make some profit, unlike indie devs which most of the times see the extra money as a bonus, not a goal (Or does anyone believe the guys who worked on ZeroRanger for 12 years expected to make 144 months worth of wages with it?). I am not trying to make excuses for them, and we're just speculating here with absolutely NO IDEA of what really happened during development, but sometimes it makes me wonder why some of them invest on shmups if they need to be profitable.

[lastemperorjubei]

The Japanese physical release on Amazon Japan by Tozai Games is still dated July 2nd.

[JBC]

I got it on XSX but can't really play until they put a 4:3 mode in like Dimensions EX has. Everything is all stretched and fugly.