/vr/ - Retro Games

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3AkX3I41TOY

I've been playing Super R-Type recently and my opinion of it has changed.

I initially started it up and found myself dying a lot to random shit out of nowhere and I found the lack of checkpoints excruciating. It was my first R-Type, and luckily I played the original on MAME before I hastily wrote the series off.

I returned to it recently and I've found myself enjoying it a ton. I even prefer it to R-Type 2 and it's still better than Final.

Regrading the checkpoints, I actually found myself appreciating them a lot. Checkpoints in the first two games are bloody difficult to recover from, just because of how underpowered you are. I'm looking at stage 4 of the original here, and that's the least of it. In Super, upon death you return to the beginning of the stage, but this gives you a great fighting chance as the enemies start off slow rather than you being dumped in the middle of it. It also feels good to re-try something you had an idea for, like kill something more efficiently with the pod or charge shot. Yeah it takes longer, but I don't mind, the stages are typically short.

I also find the new weapons pretty damn fun, the slow spread weapons and closed ranged explosive take some strategy to use, and work well with the memorisation the level requires.

Also the music is excellent for it's composition and length of the tracks, there is a refreshing lack of gimmickry in the level design and I don't care about the slowdown, it's not Gradius 3 bad.

This game seriously gets a shitty rap. I got it a while ago and thought it was a piece of crap, with the lack of checkpoints and shitton of slowdown.

However, I've been playing it recently, and I've been singing a different tune. It's not bad at all. I've actually come to like the start of level checkpoints - due to the fact you go through all the level, you get a chance to do it all over, and that's refreshing, to practice a different, potentially higher scoring path or try a thing that you got an idea for after you went past it. It also helps that the game doesn't feel cheap. Bosses have the obligatory splatty lasers but if you stay away from their suspicious orifices as you approach them you'll usually be able to safely see their entire spectrum of attacks and timing for when they reveal their juicy vulnerable cores.

Not to mention, it's much easier to power back up, whereas in R-Types 1 and 2, unless you've memorised the checkpoints very well after the first few stages, you'll be chundering credits into the machine.

I also really like some of the new weapons, the powerful spread shot and spread bomb force weapons. While massively powerful they're so slow you have to plan how to use them.

The game is still far from the best in the series, but I prefer the music, graphics and new weapons over 2's. And it's nowhere near as shit as Final.

As for slowdown, fuck it, it's no different from any other SNES shooter.