I worked with Bob Pape who created the ZX Spectrum version of R-Type, great guy, very clever, we used to discuss all sorts of memory saving techniques back when you had such limited memory.
If it's ture, I guess I have to thank you and your buddy for good childhood memories. I really liked R-Type when I was like 6-8 y.o. The first boss scared shit out of me. The game is hard as hell.
I work in the industry today, but I remember the ZX port. I had an amiga too back in the day (still have it though) and the limitations you guys were up against back then was nuts.
The ZX port was coding genius. But also it had hardware on its side. The Spectrum couldn't do sound or many colours, but it could refresh the screen way faster then the C64 and other 8-bit micros and with more resolution. With a talented coder it could do really respectable arcade ports. Chase HQ instantly springs to mind.
The Master System version is superbly realized when you know the power of the console. There are some sprite flashes but this is due to the limit of the console's memory. And special mention for R-Type Dimension EX, the remake is damn good and being able to switch from 3D to 2D on the fly is a very good idea.
It's not the memory, the flickering happens when you have more than 8 sprites in a scanline. But you're still correct, it's an amazing conversion and had they tried to do it on the NES, they would have required a MMC chip and a lot of design concessions to make it work. Sharopolis did a fine video explaining the capabilities of the system and R-Type is mentioned right off the bat. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-H4Ze11Z8ffU.html
@@Holammer , I call bullshit on that claim, let alone on that entire video, and the R-Type I and R-Type II game for the Game Boy/Game Boy Color perfectly disproves his claim. Also, a lot of aftermarket trickery on a homebrew NES/FDD/FDS cartridge/diskette could easily overcome those obstacles as well. Finally, though not a one for one port, this one homebrew sort-of attempt at the game proves that it is theoretically possible to make an R-Type game for the NES/FDD/FDS. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-dFRJ9syAyIc.html&feature=emb_logo I await your moves, you smug, arrogant, and prideful assholes.
Thanks for the comparison! Used to play the PC-Engine versions back in the early '90s. That brings back some memories for sure. And I realized the PC-Engine version is the closest to the Arcade, just have this little vertical scrolling due to the lower resolution in height.
@@barryhercules6486 Does the existence of one great video game composer somehow negate any appreciation of another great video game composer to you? Of course, they are both two of the greatest ... Among several others (no need to list them all here, out of context). I simply acknowledged the person who contributed directly towards the game music featured in this video. Which version of 'R-Type' was Tim Follin the composer for? ... Hrm?
I wish the modern Amstrad CPC version was the original that got released. definitely shows how good the hardware was back then if you pushed it enough.
Nice to see the R-Type remakes on the CPC and ST being put in the video. Very impressive work that bring back justice to a honestly poor ports back in the days.
Nice! I hope you enjoyed it. There’s a third Kickstarter for R-type final 2 right now for a month www.kickstarter.com/projects/granzella/r-type-final-2-aiming-for-a-brand-new-the-best-shmup-ever
13:19 lovely background change effect. With such a small amount of memory they seem to have sacrificed the rotation of the enemy at 13:31, but it's nice to have the background change, something that even some of the 16 bit versions lack.
Great work retrosutra - thanks for the upload - brilliant job putting them all together. One of the best shmups ever created - didn't realise it came on so many formats. Never heard of the J2ME before, or the CPC and Atari ST remake. I thought I knew a lot about the game. 😅
Looking back, I'm often surprised how poor the visuals and sound for the Atari ST were considering it was 16bit. And it was supposed to be a rival the Amiga.
@@barryhercules6486 The Atari ST got some great ports and original games, but it was really known for being a music machine. Electronic musicians loved the Atari ST. That said, if you want to see what some better games for it look like, check out how its ports of _Parasol Stars_ and _The New Zealand Story_ turned out.
@@barryhercules6486 A reply to me elsewhere on this video said that i'm "bias" for saying that the Atari ST version is put to shame by systems that are way lower spec, as is the Atari ST port of the turtles arcade game. I think its possible to make a smooth action game on Atari ST but it appears like lots of people just didn't bother. I would not ever want to play a shooter or a beat 'em up at
Seriously, if Tonka had simply hired someone that knew what the hell they were doing, R-Type would have been a killer app for the system. The NES still had less than a dozen really good games by the beginning of 1988, the SMS could have been competitive even then with the right marketing and distribution.
The SMS version is still great imo. SMS was very popular in S.America and in Europe. Did ok here on the states. Problem was Nintendo had a contract with 3rd party companies that kept alot of those games at least time exclusive to the NES. Sega couldn't do anything about it. SMS to me was still better than NES.
@@scarosone14 Sega shot themselves in the foot a bit also. They spurned 3rd party publishers early on, wanting only their own games to be on their consoles. They often rushed game production in a vain effort to simply have a similar size library of games to the NES, leading to games that were more technically sophisticated than Nintendo's, but often inferior to the level design and gameplay of the better NES offerings due to a lack of time to mature all the details during development. And they never risked as much as Nintendo did in pushing marketing and distribution of their console in the United States. Granted, Nintendo had a larger profit margin to play with thanks to the huge success of the Famicom in Japan, but they really invested heavily in having the NES advertised and available in as much of the U.S. market as possible; whereas Sega only pushed in a limited number of larger metropolitan markets.
@@sottoletna Indeed. Nintendo and Irem had a fairly good relationship in the mid '80s, so it's a bit odd that _R-Type_ made it onto the Master System instead of the NES. Irem developed _Kung Fu_ and _10-Yard Fight_ which both made their way into the early NES library published by Nintendo, which makes it a little surprising then that Nintendo didn't get both the arcade and console licences for this one.
@@sottoletna , or someone could just have the balls to do a straight up completely original homebrew port of the game. I mean, even the Game Boy/Game Boy Color has not just R-Type I, but also R-Type II on the same damn Game Boy/Game Boy Color cartridge, and it is essentially almost like an NES/FDD/FDS in every regard, so making ports of R-Type I and R-Type II for the NES/FDD/FDS, let alone also doing so for the SNES/NSFC, is not only a no-brainer, but that it is also inevitable, as well as perfectly doable for both of those systems. Finally, I wish that someone would make an expanded port of Gradius III, as well as port Gradius I AND Gradius II to the SNES/NSFC as well, as in perfect arcade ports of each game.
The Bonus Atari ST R-Type Deluxe 2015 is not for the ST, but the STE which was the upgraded later released (late 1989) system. From what I can find the game was never actually finished which is a pity. It definitely needed a bit more polish, as when the action is supposed to be getting frantic is when it goes slo-mo. The Amstrad CPC R-Type Reloaded look really good compared to the original.
So it is especially for ste? I was already wondering how 2015 version could be so much better. Nice that there are some games that use ste's strengths. Old st version did not look good. I actually liked even c64 version better. You could get nice screenshots of the old st version but gameplay looked too jerky.
GB monochrome w/ contrast dial, hands down!! The controls & sound where fluid and beheld a more indepth interactivity. I also feel it was graphically scaled more intelligently.
It shows that the Game Boy was designed as a performant game machine from the ground up (hardware sprites, OAM with DMA, wrap-around tile-cell display with smooth scrolling in X and Y, help from the CPU instruction set for doing BCD addition (i.e. for scores) and saving power for longer battery life with the HLT instruction). For a few of the other machines where ports are shown for in the video it feels more like their gaming capability was an afterthought and they are missing some important features to make it a well-rounded experience.
On pure playability, the ZX Spectrum version is one of the best and most fun R-Type games I've played. It beats other versions from technically superior machines.
A big mistake was not putting Snes' Super R-Type, that first stage there and the second stage, but many who have never played or know it. The first phase and a new phase and the second and exactly this is the first phase of the Arcade, in the Snes version there are several new phases, it is certain that the Snes and as if it were really an R-Type 2, because then comes the R -Type 3 of Snes too, but I should have played a little to get to know and see that this phase there and the second phase. And I could put a bonus against the classic Boss of the first phase in his version of the R-Type 3 kkkkkk
While X68000 and PC-88VA are the best computer versions, the Amiga's version does hold up nicely (if only more of the Amiga's arcade ports could've been this good). Sega should've brought the FM Sound Unit into other markets. C64's soundtrack is a good remix IMO.
It is unfortunate that Atari's name was still strong enough in the mid to late 80's that many arcade ports were written for the ST first and then ported over to Amiga (and both were subject to tight deadlines too - in some cases programmers only had 6-8 weeks to dump the graphics from the arcade board and write and test the game). Robocop is another one that suffered ST to Amiga cloneship, but ultimately was still better than the Atari version because they did add a handful of Amiga-specific tweaks.
There were other arcade ports that good (or better in the case of Ghosts and Goblins) on the Amiga. Toki, Pang, New Zealand story, Rainbow islands, Silkworm (for many people better than the arcade), Double dragon 3 (awful game in the arcades to begin with, but still a faithful and smoother scrolling version on the Amiga), just to name a few.
Well, the quality of the Amiga version is down to the team working on it. Rainbow Arts (and later Factor 5) consisted of people who were really eager to show their skills and the capabilities of the system they tackled.
I've yet to hear a single example of the SMS FM chip actually sounding any good, people are fascinated by it for scarcity reasons I guess. As far as I understand it's mostly presets, it's nothing like the Mega Drive/Genesis equivalent. Meanwhile the SN76489 is a fine, fine chip.
@@infantiltinferno I once heard an SMS remix of Metal Squad from Thunder Force 4. It sounded just as badass as the Genesis version, if a bit harsh. It's capable of mostly the same sound, but you have to know how to use it.
Good compilation, very comprehensive. I did not know about the remake on Steam. Most of the versions turned out quite good, even Spectrum version has decent use of color. Original Amstrad and ST ones are the worst, even they got remakes though.
It should be noted that the remakes are fan remakes rather than official ones. FWIW, I think the Game Boy and MSX versions are the worst. I was also really underwhelmed by the Sharp version given how powerful that platform was.
So glad I got a ZX Spectrum back in the day, not an Amstrad CPC, a C64 or even an MSX. There's also a remade R-Type for the ZX Spectrum with in-game music that you could've included as a bonus. For some reason the Mega Drive never got a port of R-Type, until now. It looks and sounds awesome. Go check it out.
That's thanks to Christopher Hulesbeck who composes the Intro in collaboration with Ramiro Vaca. If you wanna hear more music like this you should check out the Turrican series which Huelsbeck also worked on and it rules
The music more than made up for the otherwise poor port. The original unfinished port for the C64 that never saw the light of day because of deadlines was much better and showed the C64 was very capable of doing this game. Still, I grew up on the C64 version having ploughed all my pocket money into the arcade version after school and still couldn't satisfy my R-Type fix!
Holy shit, that's the first thing I thought of after going through them all. The C64 soundtrack stood out as the best one to me. It's the awesome retro samples, perfect!!
Another one that might have been interesting to include as a bonus version would have been Pulstar on the Neo Geo, which is very heavily influenced by R-Type (created by the same Irem developers after they moved to SNK).
The pc-88, pc-cd -and Ps1 version’s intros are so cool although I wish I knew what they were saying in the first 2.Also, you can tell they sacrificed a lot to get the original CPC one running as it should, but it’s still impressive to see it run a non-homebrew game so smoothly, although the ‘reloaded’ homebrew version is better. Speccie and especially C64 versions are also very good for the systems, and even the Java version looks pretty fun
What a great video! I love R-Type, obviously the arcade version rocks, but I cut my teeth on the Zx Spectrum, Amstrad and Amiga efforts. Loved every minute of this vid.
@@nejiniisan1265 the master system has such a recognisable sound chip, some don't like it yet I always think it sounds like a happy machine. Has to be my favourite 8bit gaming console.
@@mattsmedley.onehandedgamin9029 yeah, I had one when I was a kid, miss it, playing R-Type, Alex Kidd, Shinobi and Kenseiden. The sound chip is awesome.
@@nejiniisan1265 I recently finished off my master system collection with this cartridge which pretty much contains EVERYTHING, all on one cart. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-PFZsKXxnFps.html
My all time fave shooter, owned it on spectrum, master system, game boy, pc engine and ps4. Master system (I'm not counting mame) was the only console I completed it on, but pc engine was my fave even though it was released as 2 separate games with 4 levels on each
The PCE/TG version is so nice, especially R-Type Complete. Also the C64 and Amiga ports are pretty damned decent, the first game I've seen for X68000 that wasn't such a great port, which is a shame.
I can add a bit more information about the deluxe ST version. As at least one other person observed, this was made for the later model Atari STE. A preliminary version was released at the ST News Computer Coding Convention (STNICCC) in Gouda, NL in 2015. I was at that party. Even more pertinently, I shared a hotel bedroom with the programmer, Steven Jones. To put it mildly, he was a somewhat dysfunctional alcoholic. He resolved to clean up his act and finish the project, but sadly deceased the following year. So this will remain unfinished and in need of a few extra Mhz.
There is also an unfinished early C64 version which surfaced on the net in the early 2010's and was being worked on in the UK by the same developer behind the ZX, Amstrad and ST versions. A 1 level preview demo was featured in a C+VG covertape (the UK magazine). That version was canned and replaced by the one made in Germany that eventually came out. The two versions apparently don't share any code. This early version (known a R-Type V1) is kind of playable, but each level has to be played separately, and later levels are very incomplete.
Would have surprised me if those versions had shared any code since the German devs got the job after making the R-Type clone Katakis which was so similar that they got in trouble with Irem for it (so instead they got hired to port it...) and this really looks like it's based on the same code and even shares some assets. The devs previously got into trouble with Nintendo for making the Mario clone Giana Sisters... After that they were more careful, shuffling more influences together so it's not a clone of a single game and made Turrican.
C64 music wins it all ..... flawless victory. I played a lot of R-Type ports ,but only one that i revisit is c64 port .One of the best example for "graphic is not everything".
Gracias máquina por el trabajo tan inmenso que haces, tan solo mencionar, por qué razón no incluiste la version de SNES? Super r-type, si bien es verdad q el primer nivel es inventado, el segundo ya se asemeja bastante al original con ligeras pinceladas de novedad en supernes. Me llamó la atención simplemente no encontrar esta version. Quizás lo explicas en otros comentarios, pero no los he visto. Tambien indicar que desconocía por completo los remix de amstrad y atari, q la verdad, son autenticos lavados de cara muy recomendables. Un abrazo crack.
Gracias por tus palabras Luison. En este vídeo solo queríamos centrarnos en ports directos del Arcade y por eso no incluimos esa versión aunque quizás hubiera estado bien añadirla al final como extra al final del vídeo.
1) Arcade / PlayStation (they're essentially the same) 2) PC Engine (specifically the HuCard release) 3) Amiga ...With an honourable mention to the C64 version, which will always hold a special place in my heart. 🥰
@@sjake8308 At the time I bought it, it was definitely Japan only. The EU release was nearly a year later later, and NA was the following year, according to Wikipedia. I'm glad they formally got released in those regions!
Yeah, the ST seems like an overly ambitious port--as usual. The decent 8 bit console versions (like Master System and PC Engine) chose the right compromise: they had the star field and the main background as a single layer to keep the speed/frame rate up and employed a few extra sprites as stars moving at a different speeds to give the parallax effect. The ST opted for a true parallax background that basically cripples the game to running in single digit fps. There were a surprising number of games that followed the formula of looking much better while playing much worse than its "inferior" 8-bit competetors on the ST.
@@Claudius_Nero Possibly many games looked good and played much worse, because at the time, in video game magazines, screenshots were much more attractive to innocent buyers.
@@MrJorgalan I understand what you're saying but don't think it applies in this case. Parallax isn't shown by a still screenshot or box art, only in motion and if you see the Atari ST version in motion, it's terrible. Somehow worse than most 8-bit versions of the game. This is just another case of terrible baseline decisions made in porting a game to the ST.
Good evening. Very interesting video as usual. Thank you for thinking of adding the Amstrad CPC remakes. I discovered the Atari ST remake of 2015. The only problem with the video is that we are always cut by advertising. This is unbearable.
The PC Engine version was first released in March 1988 not 89. It was the very first console game where people realised the Arcade had finally come home.
ZX Spectrum remains the best version of them all knowing the graphics capabilities of the machine and the worst version remains Amstrad CPC, a crappy ZX Spectrum port knowing the graphics capabilities of the machine. It was redone twenty years later, excellent version, what R-Type for Amstrad CPC should have been back in the day.
I disagree with this because although R-Type on Speccy is technically very good - it just doesn't play that much like the original. Get the PC Engine or Amiga versions
Android port is nice one, i had so much fun with Xperia Play's physical control buttons. But C64's version is on top because of SID music and nostalgia :-)
I'm going to guess the best ports in descending order are the Sharp X68000, Amiga, TurboGrafx 16/PC Engine, Master System, Game Boy, and ZX Spectrum ports. You could also likely emulate the arcade original via MAME.
Depends on your taste. I loved the GB version which made me discover this amazing game and the SMS version. PS1 and Dimension are great non retro feel ones
The Amstrad CPC original vs remake really shows the difference between craptastic shovelware and someone who actually cares about their product. The CPC got shafted so many times by other inferior machines it was utterly shameful.
I'm glad I'm not the only one who thought the ordering was weird! Like splitting up the Game Boy versions, not showing the Amiga and ST versions after one another and similarly the C64, Spectrum and Amstrad versions.
