R-Type III: The Third Lightning

R-Type III speaks sweetly to the sadist shooter fan's ego. It dares the best of the best to conquer its seemingly insurmountable heights of hardness, but the unlimited continues and well-spaced checkpoints encourage you to keep at it until the inimitably satisfying conclusion. The ending itself isn't much, but you've got to beat the ugliest, dirtiest end boss I've seen to reach it - and that's reward enough in itself. R-Type III is quite possibly the hardest game you'll ever play with a smile. Brilliant.

Smart to look at, easy to play and a good challenge. A worthy successor to the R-Type legend and well worth a shufty.

Graphics will make you sweat. A real outer-space feeling. You're going to wish that you were really inside that little spacecraft. (Well, until it blows up.)

Mit nur einem Spiel machte sich die kleine japanische Firma Irem vor einigen Jahren einen Namen bei allen Videogame-Freaks: R-Type. Der Automat bot erstklassige Grafik, Non-Stop-Action und Supersound. Die verschiedenen Konsolenumsetzungen und Nachfolger reichten von phantastisch (PC Engine) bis zu "des war nix" (R-Type II auf Super Nintendo). Nachdem gute Shoot'em Ups im letzten Jahr eher die Ausnahme waren, durfte man auf R-Type III besonders gespannt sein.

Next to the sterling Thunder Force 4, this is the best side-scrolling shooter I've played in a long time. What happened to this great genre? I hope 32-bit brings the side-scrolling shooter back. It sure felt good to fly again, good call Jaleco.

If you've been pinning for all the lost shooters, you're in for a treat. Sure, the action is as tedious as you remember, and yes, you want to pull your hair out after fighting through the same area over and over for an hour, but the game is liberally dotted with continue points, which make it as painless as it can get. And hey, this ain't exactly brain surgery, you know? Lighten up and fire away!

So how does it all translate? The game is a hell of a lot of fun. Even 14 years after its initial release, one can still appreciate the game for what it is – a challenging beast that you’ll keep wanting to slay again and again. R-Type III is definitely one of the best games available on the Virtual Console at the moment, and most assuredly worth the 800 points. So hop on the shopping channel and start downloading.

R-Type fans will most likely have already played this game, but to those of you who have enjoyed the excellent Turbografx version which is also available on the Virtual Console this is the next logical step.

”Tod durch R-Type” war zu meiner Zeit die häufigste Diagnose, wann immer ein Joypad seinen Meister in der Wohnzimmerwand gefunden hatte. R-Type 3 ist die Sorte Spiel, die ihr Opfer mit flammender Leidenschaft zum Verzweifeln bringt – das allerdings ohne jemals unfair zu sein oder den Spieler zu übervorteilen. Wer sich die Eigenarten der Level und Endgegner diszipliniert einprägt und dementsprechend spielt, sieht den Abspann zweifelsfrei eher früher als später. Unbarmherzig, aber gut! Vermutlich bin ich einfach nicht l33t genug. Die Tatsache, dass ich jede Minute der horizontalen Shooter-Folter genossen habe, spricht allerdings überdeutlich für Irems attraktives SNES-only Werk.

Här är den: utvecklingens krona inom shoot'em-up-spelen. Det som började med asteroids har nu nått sin fulländning.

The less unforgiving of the R-Type III's, the GBA port does away with a two player mode and unlimited contines and replaces them with pure malice. Hate it right back for the best results!

This is definitely one game you won't master in one sitting! Fans of the earlier installments in the R-Type saga will want to check this one out. Huge levels, excellent bosses (and a rather high difficulty) make this the shooter to get. The two-player is a nice option and thank goodness for the unlimited continues! Nice purchase, Jaleco!

Wenngleich R-Type III des öfteren unübersehbare Ähnlichkeiten zu seinem Vorgänger und dem Spielhallen-Original zeigt – da wäre beispielsweise der wohl weltweit bekannteste Endgegner: Die Ameise, die, wie auch ein paar Musikstücke, nur geringfügig modifiziert wurde , bietet Irems Ballerspiel dennoch genügend Neues und darf sich trotz einiger Macken (unfaire Stellen, Spritegeflacker) zu den guten Programmen des Genres zählen. Der ganz große „Wow-Effekt“ bleibt zwar aus, dies aber dürfte vor allem alte R-Type-Freaks kaum stören.

There's a reason the R-Types are still flying after all these years, and it won't take you long to discover what it is. For decent space shootin' blast off with R-Type III.

If you've got a burning desire to throw your GBA through a wall in frustration, R-Type III should satisfy it; otherwise you're well advised to stick to games that won't make your head explode.

R-Type is a name synonymous with "side-scrolling" shooter, popularized in the arcade nearly two decades ago by Irem. The series extended into many sequels in the arcade and the console, and even saw a decent port to the Game Boy when Nintendo left the world of grey-scale and into the realm of full color in R-Type DX.. R-Type Final recently shipped on the PlayStation 2, and hot on its heels is the extremely long-in-waiting Super NES port of R-Type III for the Game Boy Advance. This conversion is decent on a technical level, but in terms of gameplay this design needed to spend a lot more time in the cooker.

Sur Game Boy Color nous avions eu le droit à R-Type DX, sur GBA nous avons directement R-Type 3. Connu des joueurs SNES (The Third Lighting, excellente version au passage...), nous étions en droit d’attendre beaucoup de cette adaptation. Et nous avons été très déçus !

L'impression finale est davantage amère que sucrée. En commetant une faute grave dans son portage, c'est-à-dire ce fichu masque de collision incertain, Raylight a pas mal bousillé son joujou. Le plaisir en est contenu, pourquoi tolérer à R-Type une plaie que l'on n'autorise chez aucun autre schmup ? Dommage tout de même, car derrière la fêlure, reste, toujours aussi sublime, ce jeu tiroirs où le puzzle-game s'invite au royaume du scrolling multidirectionnel et des modules de force. De fait, cette adaptation bâclée nous laisse le désagréable sentiment de ne pas être à sa place.

You'd think that since R-Type III was originally a Super NES game that a developer would have no trouble converting it to the Game Boy Advance. After all, companies like Nintendo and Capcom sure haven't had any problems bringing games like Super Mario World, Final Fight, or Breath of Fire to the GBA--and usually with more features than the games had in the first place. The GBA version of R-Type III looks like its Super NES counterpart and generally plays the same, but its audio has been butchered, and the only things that have been added are a password save feature and a bunch of bugs that shouldn't have made their way into a retail product.

The original game was a pleasant diversion, but nothing more, and this stripped-down version just brings with it a feeling of emptiness. There are no difficulty settings. In fact, there are no real options to speak of at all. The development team decided to add a password feature as well. Let me tell you that even a remake like Super Ghouls and Ghosts has a battery-based save feature, so this only serves to make manifest the low production values and programmer apathy that this title has been accorded.