This game is simply sorcery for an 8-bit port! You get pretty much the whole arcade game + awesome Hülsbeck -renditions of the music. The graphics don't look extremely hot in a high definition youtube-video, but when the game's running in front of you on a proper CRT, it looks bloody incredible.
On my C64C with a scart cable connected to a 32" HD screen, it looks *alot* . -Most emulators doesn't show the graphics decent enough, so that's why I'm still using original hardware.. BTW: As I *hate* scanlines/CRT screens, mine doesn't have them, and the graphics still looks *quite* alot better than this.
2019 and the music is still wicked good. And crazy that this game is "only" 24 minutes long, as a teenager it was quite hard to finish and felt like hours...
Considering this port was done in such a short time - it is a masterpiece. Uses the same technology that KATAKIS used before (was created by the same guys).
You mean as a dance version to say the ports audio is superior to Irem's arcade game is disrespectful to Irem that game had an FM sound chip the SID was just a 3 channel sound chip good audio on the game for the C64 though
Just being played through a more advanced audio chip doesn't automatically make music better. The music in the arcade version is great with its creepy vibe, but I'll take Mr. Hülsbeck's SID-arrangement any day. It gets you pumped for the hectic action in the game like no other version. Especially the level 2 theme! I really don't see how having such opinion could be taken as disrespect towards Irem.
The C64 was so much better than the other 8-bit computers for gaming (i had an MSX1). The scrolling is so smooth, no slowdowns with a lot of stuff on screen and the music is on another level. Amazing.
WTF hasn't anyone fixed the multi load or made it to a cartridge image?! Apart from the loading this is an absolutely fantastic version of R-Type! Best horizontal shooter Trenz ever made.
$45? Zimbabwean dollars or something? I don't remember a tape ever costing more than £14! And that was for the fancy new releases - most games you could get for £5...
Holy crap - I did not know this version existed. I can't believe they achieved all this on c64. I had the sega SMS version, but I also had a c64. What an amazing port - the music sounds like FM audio, which the c64 did not have!
Wow this is impressive. I was definitely playing C64 games as a kid in the 80s and I never saw anything like this. Mostly I played Montezumas revenge lol.
Great music for c64 standards. The thing that surprises me is the fact that c64 used so many sprites on screen. I thought the max was 32 sprites at once. Clearly this game shows more!
C64 can do 8 12x21x3 color/24x21x1 color sprites per scanline. Each sprite can either be multicolor or high resolution, and one sprite of each can be overlayed one on the other for high resolution with multicolor. Obviously, if you reuse a sprite before the 21 scanlines are used, then the previous sprite ends up less than 21 scanlines tall. You could get 72 full height sprites on screen at once.
They worked their arses off to make this feel like R-Type. I still *love* this game but you know as the years pass, it looks more and more like a bodged reskin of Katakis. They just weren't given the time to polish this port as much though. Still has the most glorious soundtrack of ANY of the home computer ports (I include the Amiga version in that ;) ).
Yeah after putting so much work into Katakis, I felt like this was completely rushed by Rainbow Arts. Chris did a a great job with the music though, as always. Curiously, the Amiga version was very close to the original, while the Amiga version of Katakis was just a half-assed attempt as well.
+thedddemon amazing isn't it? and now people take 4 years and people complain they get it wrong with graphics and bugs etc, we used to be so happy as gamers in the 80s now people nip pick about anything
Great conversion for the hardware. Although there's some bits from the arcade missing, the essence of the arcade game is here. I believe this had to be developed very quickly as the original attempt was never completed?
Oh I've certainly played them; just not done longplays of them :) I probably will get round to them at some point, but there are tons of videos of Turrican on RU-vid. I tend to pick one's that haven't been done before, or the existing videos are low quality so I can do a play-through in HD with decent cropping :)
The game was produced at the end of the Commodore 64's commercial adventure. The way i got games to my C 64 was me just copying blank cassettes on my double Pioneer tape recorder. It worked quite OK. 1 hour and you had 200 new games= completely impossible today. In reality nobody bought new games to their c 64, everybody was pirating. (My experience, be free to disagree)
Yes most people pirated some games, cos it was so easy to do with just a double tape deck. But most pirates did also buy some games, usually because their friends didn't have that title yet or they were impatient. And games for these machines were very cheap thanks to labels like Hit Squad, often under $5 USD.
Piracy was definitely rampant in Australia. Having said that I bought some cassettes, mostly budget titles or titles reduced to clear. The asking price for premium titles was very high compared to the US/UK, from memory.
Yep cool Story behind this. After irem saw katakis on c64 which is a clear clone of rtype , they first wanted to sue them but they asked them instead to make the official c64 Port of rtype. But they Had to make also Changes to katakis. Later the changed katakis was named denaris.
I thought I dreamed owning this on the C64?? When you look at 90% of space shooters on the 64, they were absolutely nowhere near this level. This is Creatures/Mayhem in Monsterland levels of programming, surely.
Katakis is near this (same programmer--made previous to this and this is based on that code, at least to some degree). And the Turricans are no slouches. The one that gets me the most is LuftrauserZ. Technically, Sonic the Hedgehog is impressive, if not my cup of tea.
You can tell its a reskin of Katikis, the bosses are played nothing like the arcade, the music is awesome so there is a saving grace. The fact is it was NOT done in 7 weeks, it was done in over 8 months with a hastily put out port in 7 weeks. Want to see a good 8bit R-type ? Look at the master system or ZX Spectrum
Must admit this was an entertaining game for something I didn't think I'd like. I think whoever made the music was listening to lots of Frank Zappa at the time.
The C64 was pretty old when R-Type the arcade game came along in 1987 and wasn't so special anymore good port though considering a better 8 bit port is the Sega Master System version with the FM sound chip for enhanced audio
@@fordprefect80Yes but The Sega Master System had a Yamaha FM sound chip upgrade which is more advanced than the C64 SID chip with the upgrade R-Type sounds almost identical to the actual Irem arcade R-Type game well beyond the SID chip's capabilities Cheers
50 bucks. But trust me, this Video Looks easy but IT wasnt. A beginner will need time to complete this also remember If its Game over you have to start all over again.
I bought it for £2.99. C64 games weren't very expensive. And it's actually a pretty tough. Twelve year-old me spent quite a lot of hours on it and never got past stage 4!
***** it does suck when the rip off is considered better than the original. But I'm sure a professional team like irem took that maturely. And sued them.
The developers of this version took over the project from the original programmer who spent a year on his version (you can get the original version off the .net and compare it to this version via emulator). This version was written from scratch and took 6 weeks to complete. This is some achievement even if there are bugs.
***** Irem? Irem was in Japan, busy with arcade machines. I think it would make more sense with Electric Dreams (aka Activision), the license holder for western home computers.
I always thought The Commodore 64 was supposed to be closer to the Sega Master System in quality. At points this looks kind of like what would happen if you stick the Game Boy version into the SNES or Game Boy Advance
@@AL82RetrogamingLongplays I recall more than 2 games that you wouldn't expect the NES to do as well. Let's not act like the first Sega console was the Turbo Graphix 16, either. A comparison of their versions of R-Type can disprove that.
Now this is weird, and it was always a mystery to me. But I recall playing an "early demo" of this game on tape and it was totally different from this version. If anything the graphics were SPOT ON from the arcade. While this version is more complete (of course) and has superb sound. I really wish to track down the OTHER version. I am not sure if ACTIVISION was doing the other version. But I bet it was one of those games that never saw the light of day :( Where is the OTHER version?? Anyone???
You're absolutely right. The graphics were much nearer the arcade standard in the demo! There was another team (hired by the same company) developing R-Type but were taking a bit too long... You can read up here: www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/rtype-v1/
AlcatrazLives You can read about the whole thing here : bizzley.com/ even though it is focusing on the spectrum version. But Bob Pape worked closely with the other guys that were supposed to do the ST and C64 version. They didn't meet the deadline and the project was assigned to Rainbow Arts. So R-Type for C64 is actually a modified Katakis, which was a R-type clone. Which is ironic because Activision sued Rainbow Arts after they released Katakis, because it was too similar to R-Type(excluding the first level). Same here, I wish that the Activision(eletric dreams, designmake etc) version would've made it.
Original c64 version got binned because activision didn't think it would be finished in time,so gave the task to Rainbow arts .This version was inferior to the other one but got released all the same .Very poor version where was the rotating snake from the first level,even the speccy pulled that off.
Non mais purée, commodore nous a lâché de vrai bombes, les muscs du commodore 64 me laisse de marbre, même aujourd’hui, je me pose des questions? et commodore à fait faillite, pour laisser place à microsoft.m
its not about the framerate or huge black squares (which are really nonexistant in speccy version).. its the overall feel of the game.. speccy version is beyond playable.. unreal playability.. this c64 version is a horrendous unplayable (although it looks much better than spectrum version) piece of shit
Under the circumstances of its development it was impressive, but yeah, very unpolished overall. Worst is Stage 6, which is clearly unfinished, they must've run out of time to create the stage enemies and their attack patterns, and instead ended up just dumping generic enemies flying in straight lines in it. Other than that the First stage wheel isn't moving, the Dobkeratops can be killed by just sitting stationary and charge-shotting (in fact the implementation of the Force Pod in general seems to be completely screwed up, making it largely worthless for anything but as a shield). The Outslay segments don't take damage, just disappear (while it keeps moving like they're still attached), and Gomander doesn't seem to explode, the scene just jarringly cuts suddenly. Level 5 boss absent (you're supposed to reveal the boss by shooting away the clouds, but in this the clouds actually are the boss). And even in this version there are sections masked off all over the place, black squares are around every corner pretty much. Best things are the music and the parallax. Gameplay is okay but makeshift and is missing a lot of the elements that made R-Type famous in the first place. Spectrum version may only be running at 19fps but its still more authentic and polished than this, and its pushing the hardware much better.
![R-Type Longplay (C64) [50 FPS]](/img/logo.svg){kind=logo}
