Super R-Type

Super R-Type was a launch title for the European and American SNES back in 1991, and also a peculiar case within the series – it isn't a direct port of R-Type II, but a reworking of it made specifically for Nintendo's console. Irem took the basic skeleton of the second game – the R-9 fighter craft, the detachable Force orb that acts as both shield and firepower booster, and the fight against the biomechanical enemy Bydo – and rearranged the levels and bosses, renamed them, and in many cases replaced them with entirely new sequences that never appeared in the arcade game at all. New weapons for the Force orb were also added, along with adjusted boss attack patterns that require different strategies than their arcade counterparts. The result is a game that controls and plays similarly to R-Type II, but goes through a different sequence of scenes and battles, so it can't be treated as a simple port of the arcade original to a home console, but rather as a parallel version tailor-made for the new hardware.

The graphics make full use of the SNES's capabilities – layered background scrolling via the Mode 7 effect adds a sense of depth and spatial curvature in some passages that Irem's arcade hardware couldn't afford at the time, while the console's sound chip delivered richer, fuller tracks than the chips of contemporary home computers and older consoles. The price for this graphical showcase was notoriously high difficulty and noticeable frame rate slowdown whenever there were more enemies and projectiles on screen at once – something period reviews criticized for hurting playability, but which also became part of the game's reputation as one of the hardest titles in the SNES's early library.

Why play: For SNES owners and series fans who want the R-Type II experience with a different arrangement of levels and Mode 7 graphical effects that no other platform could afford at the time – even at the cost of tougher difficulty and occasional frame rate slowdown compared to the arcade version.