R-Type II is the arcade sequel to the groundbreaking space shooter R-Type from 1987, and Irem mainly refined here what had made the first game famous. The player again controls the R-9 fighter craft, to which the destructible Force orb can be attached, serving as both a shield and a firepower amplifier, and must shoot their way through a series of segmented stages occupied by the organic alien enemy called Bydo, whose biomechanical shapes remain to this day among the series' most distinctive visual elements. The pace is ruthlessly slow and deliberate – the game rewards patient memorization of enemy and trap placement more than reflexes, which was an unusual approach for arcade shooters of the time and became a hallmark of the entire series, including its later sequels on home consoles and computers around the world.
Compared to the first game, new weapon types were added for the Force orb, which can now be launched forward or backward as a separate attacking projectile, along with more elaborate graphics with layered, parallax-scrolling backgrounds, and more demanding, longer levels full of organic scenery resembling living tissue and organs that better utilize the hardware of arcade machines from the turn of the eighties and nineties. The game was first released in arcades on the Irem M92 arcade board and only later ported to home computers and consoles, as was customary for Japanese arcade titles of the time – the primary and most authentic experience thus remains the coin-op machine itself, on which the game was designed and tuned down to the last pixel of difficulty and the precise timing of the boss attacks, which rank among the most memorable in the entire shoot 'em up genre.
Why play it: For fans of old-school shoot 'em ups who appreciate a slow, deliberate pace based on memorizing the map rather than pure reflexes, and who want to experience R-Type exactly as it looked and played on the original 1989 arcade cabinet, unmodified and unadapted for home platforms.
Game 194 of 258 for Arcade
