R-Type


A million memories pass through my head when I played this just a few minutes before writing this interview. And a million things to write!

Let me begin by saying that this was one of the first games I played on the ST, back in July 1990. (yes, it was an STE but that's beside the point I think). And while there were some really good games in the pack of games I got with it (the Power pack, to be precise), this was one of them that really stood out. And still does I think.

The original arcade game needs praising as well though:

• Big sprites, nicely drawn, moving fluently across the screen.
  
• Very innovative level themes, for example third level in its entity being a spaceship that scrolls past you.
  
• Great enemy waves, even in the boss fights (the huge two-headed metal snake on level 2 that hunts you in half of the level and then defends the end of level boss).
  
• Memorable end-of-level bosses that aren't near impossible to kill and require a bit of strategy and careful positioning.
  
• Amazing powerups scheme: first you get a puny shield which then you can upgrade by grabbing another powerup which depending on the colour it can be reflective lasers, a horizontal death ray or 2 edge tracing traces. The shield is even detachable, and you can mount it either in front of the ship or on its back.
  
• While the game is really addictive, there's one simple rule to finishing the game: "Don't lose"! Starting a level without even a plain shield is really suicidal, so you must make sure you don't lose, or well, lose when you're at a checkpoint which can give you a powerup pronto. So I can rephrase the above rule to: "Learn where to lose"!

Now then, for the ST port. It manages to to retain all of the above features. In addition, the in-game soundtrack is really cool and you end up playing it in your head. Sure, it's not running at arcade speeds and has a couple of bugs here and there, like when some times you seem to collide with the starfield and die, or in general a bit dodgy collision detection, or in level 4 where there are some invisible enemies which you just learn their positions and either avoid or shoot (to be honest, I never really figured out if my copy was bugged and there are enemies in other versions, or it was intended). All these are forgivable simply because everything works in this game. I remember finishing it after a long time trying gave me a real feeling of achievement, even if what I did was sit on a chair, waggling the joystick and mash the buttons around!

And for those that have to say something about the amiga version being better: Guess where Factor 5 got the source code for the game logic :).