[I ♥ The PC Engine] R-Type II

R-Type II

Maker: Hudson
Release Date: 6/3/88
Price: 4500 yen
Media: HuCard (2 Mbit)
Genre: Shooting
PC Engine FAN Score: 22.60 / 30.00
Kōgien: “The sequel to R-Type I on the PC Engine. Input the password given at the end of I to bring your power-ups over from the previous game. Not a port of the R-Type II arcade game.”

The second half of R-Type, which received a two-part release on the PC Engine due to technical or economic reasons. This should naturally not be confused with R-Type II, the “real” sequel Irem released in 1989.

As discussed in the R-Type I entry, this card contains only Stages 5 through 8 of the original arcade R-Type. Once you finished the four stages included with R-Type I, you received a password that you could type into R-Type II in order to begin Stage 5 with your Force and all power-ups intact as they existed at the end of Stage 4. You were free to begin at Stage 5 without entering a password, of course, if you didn’t mind starting with zero power-ups whatsoever. (Would you like to start at Stage 5 of any 1980s shooting game without any power-ups?)

I’m repeating myself at this point, but R-Type was the first “killer app” the PC Engine enjoyed, one whose arcade-perfect qualities attracted a lot of attention from gamers nationwide and no doubt helped the system establish a fairly large user base. Having your system-selling game come out five months after the system itself was released would be seen as an unbelievable marketplace blunder in the modern game biz, but having the second part of it come out another two months after that? Gamers back then were extremely patient, I suppose.

Considering that this is the second half of a full game, it goes without saying that R-Type II is a ridiculously difficult shooter. The final page of the R-Type I manual tells players to “polish up your skills and watch out” for R-Type II, and it is not clowning around when it says that, either. Back in the day I could get to Stage 5 about half the time and never made it farther than the opening of Stage 6, which means that I’ve technically never played more than half of this HuCard without cheating. (snif) R-Type II plays running demos of Stages 5, 6 and 7 if you don’t start a game, but the Stage 7 demo looks pretty much like a TAS to my eyes. Never in a million years would I be able to copy the moves shown off during it.

It still goes without saying that R-Type demonstrates a sort of raw power that you really just don’t see among the rest of the PCE’s library at this point. Those giant centipedal things that occupy Stage 5, for example, are still impressive, to say nothing of the impact they must’ve had on the Famicom generation of the era. It was a great port, and it set the stage for the shooter/action arcade ports that would form the “HuCard golden age” for the PCE’s next couple years.

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In case you missed it last time, here is a TAS of the full PCE R-Type, including the password interstitial in between HuCards.

If you already saw that, however, how about another diversion? Here’s a comparative overview of the Stage 1 tune from all manner of R-Type ports:

• Arcade original
• PC Engine port, which I consider a fuller, deeper improvement on the original
• Commodore 64 port, which does its own thing and I respect that
• Game Boy port, which is hard, metallic and Game Boy-like
• Sega Master System port, which proves that although the 8-bit technical wizards at Compile accomplished a great many things in their time, they completely failed to make the AY-3-8910 sound any good