The R-Type series has long had a vibe among the shooter crowd. It always leaned into a dark and desperate fight against an enemy that looks impossible to defeat. With the advent of competent hardware like the PlayStation, Irem was finally able to convey just how grim the vibe actually was.
It isn’t just the gameplay that made R-Type Delta a landmark in shoot-em-ups: If you stopped for a moment and actually processed what you’ve just seen, a very grim narrative unfolded before you.
Here is the story summary from the publisher.
The year is 2163, and the badly damaged R9 Arrowhead fighter has just returned to Earth after its mission to destroy the Bydo Empire. The vessel is rescued by the battlecruiser Croque-Monsieur and transported to an orbital space station. One year later, astronomers in Central Asia observe mysterious objects falling from the sky, and moments later, control is lost over the orbiting annihilation platform Moritz-G. This high-tech machine, capable of destroying the entire planet, descends over a city and levels it to the ground. Although its planet-destroying weapons have not yet been activated, its advanced defence systems make Moritz-G virtually impossible to approach. A desperate military operation is launched, and the prototype ship R9aII Delta is deployed to resolve the situation.
Sounds like your typical 90s sci-fi/horror trope, right? But that is just a veneer that hides a much, much darker undertone, which, once you realize it, changes your entire outlook on the series. That was entirely the point back in 1998 when this game was originally released. I’ll leave it to you to experience it for yourself, as those moments of discovery are always the best.
R-Type Delta HD Boosted is an HD Remaster of the 1998 PlayStation original. The developers have added some quality-of-life improvements, such as a Practice Mode, which, for a game as pattern memorization-heavy as R-Type is, is a great addition. As you advance through the game, your progress will be tracked, and new areas in Practice Mode’s menu will become available. You won’t be able to practice stages you haven’t seen yet, but you will be able to keep trying those sections that give you trouble. You’ll then, after having mastered them, have to put that knowledge to work in the actual game and get through it.
Since R-Type Delta HD Boosted is the fourth game in the series, the gameplay is pure R-Type, refined to perfection up to that point. Some might say that Delta is the peak of R-Type’s gameplay, and it’s hard to argue, though the 2003 R-Type Final is a toss-up for me.
You select from three ships: The R-9AII “Delta,” R-13 “Cerberus,” and the R-X “Albatross.” The R-9AII “Delta,” with its classic Force Pod and classic R-Type weaponry, is the default choice and feels most like what you may be familiar with if you’ve played R-Type games before. The R-13 “Cerberus” changes up the gameplay, as when you have the Force pod detached, you can whip it around to attack enemies. This ship is both the most difficult to master but is also the most powerful once you do. The Anchor Force pod, once detached, can be moved around, allowing you to deal huge amounts of damage and fill your DOSE gauge very quickly. Finally, the R-X “Albatross” is a ship with a semi-autonomous Force pod that hunts enemies when detached. So long as you can avoid bullets and hazards, the pod will do most of the work for you. It effectively serves as a way to make the game easier.
Each ship also has its own unique charge attack and super that you can activate once your Dose gauge is full. If you’re always keeping your pod attached, charging this gauge is difficult, since your pod must absorb damage. Knowing when to have it out becomes another thing to have to memorize.
That’s the biggest thing about the gameplay in this game. It is unapologetic about what it wants you to do. The stages are brutally tough. One hit and you’re dead: You lose your pod and start again at the last checkpoint with nothing. Even on the Easy setting, R-Type Delta HD Boosted is still harder than most shooters you’ll ever play.
The enemy formations will challenge you, but so will the claustrophobic stages, with tight sections to navigate and hazards to avoid. The Bydo wants to kill you, and they want to do it yesterday. It ties into the narrative in that way. Even as it is doing this, those hazards and stages are all telling a story. The further you get, the darker and more horrifying it becomes.
Later games in the series double and triple down on the grim horror, but this is where it really began. R-Type Delta was the game that took the gruesome constructs and concepts from the previous games and added context to them.
This feels like a good time to write a bit about accessibility, as I often do. If you are looking for modern accessibility functions, you won’t find them here. The practice mode and difficulty settings is all you get. While the Practice mode does serve its purpose in helping you get better, it would have been nice if they had taken a page out of M2’s playbook and included a straight-up invincibility mode that just counts mistakes instead of the one-hit deaths that the game uses. That would allow more people to experience the absolute terror that the last few stages of Delta are. As far as visibility goes, though, the game is designed to be very contrast-heavy, so I had little issue there.
The game features Nvidia Reflex Low Latency support on the PC, to make the game feel more responsive, though I tested with this mode on and off, and for me, there wasn’t much difference. On a variable refresh-rate monitor at 165Hz, the game just felt tight and responsive regardless of the Reflex setting I used.
Along with Reflex, you get a selection of Windowed Resolutions, and a Borderless FullScreen mode. This is an area that they may wish to revisit for the PC port, because you can’t run the game fullscreen at a lower resolution. The game also has three aspect ratio settings: a Normal 4:3, an Expanded viewport that fills more of the screen and is the game’s default setting, and a Full mode, which stretches to the width of the monitor. Please don’t use the Full mode.
The PC version has no way of exiting the game aside from the keyboard Esc key. That’s a bit annoying, but not a huge deal. I also ran into some weirdness where the death explosion sound wouldn’t play at times. Despite the technical quirks, I never ran into a crash or performance issue with the game.
The Remastered presentation is fine, and does make the game look cleaner than the original did. It’s still a polygonal shooter from 1998 at its core, though, so don’t expect miracles. There is a new Arranged soundtrack by Masahiko Ishida and Chris Hülsbeck, which is solid, but I feel changes the vibe of the game a bit too much. This might be why the Arrange mode is not the default setting. It’s good both ways, but I’d recommend the original soundtrack for your first playthrough, and then switch to the Arrange for the next.
R-Type Delta HD Boosted is a great game. It’s still the same brutal, unapologetic, and dark-as-hell shooter that came out back in the day. But now it’s here to torment you on your modern systems. It’s a landmark in the genre, and one that really does need to be experienced by anyone with a passing interest in shooters.
R-Type Delta HD Boosted is a great game. It’s still the same brutal, unapologetic, and dark-as-hell shooter that came out back in the day. But now it’s here to torment you on your modern systems.
The R-Type series has long had a vibe among the shooter crowd. It always leaned into a dark and desperate fight against an enemy that looks impossible to defeat. With the advent of competent hardware like the PlayStation, Irem was finally able to convey just how grim the vibe actually was.
It isn’t just the gameplay that made R-Type Delta a landmark in shoot-em-ups: If you stopped for a moment and actually processed what you’ve just seen, a very grim narrative unfolded before you.
Here is the story summary from the publisher.
The year is 2163, and the badly damaged R9 Arrowhead fighter has just returned to Earth after its mission to destroy the Bydo Empire. The vessel is rescued by the battlecruiser Croque-Monsieur and transported to an orbital space station. One year later, astronomers in Central Asia observe mysterious objects falling from the sky, and moments later, control is lost over the orbiting annihilation platform Moritz-G. This high-tech machine, capable of destroying the entire planet, descends over a city and levels it to the ground. Although its planet-destroying weapons have not yet been activated, its advanced defence systems make Moritz-G virtually impossible to approach. A desperate military operation is launched, and the prototype ship R9aII Delta is deployed to resolve the situation.
Sounds like your typical 90s sci-fi/horror trope, right? But that is just a veneer that hides a much, much darker undertone, which, once you realize it, changes your entire outlook on the series. That was entirely the point back in 1998 when this game was originally released. I’ll leave it to you to experience it for yourself, as those moments of discovery are always the best.
R-Type Delta HD Boosted is an HD Remaster of the 1998 PlayStation original. The developers have added some quality-of-life improvements, such as a Practice Mode, which, for a game as pattern memorization-heavy as R-Type is, is a great addition. As you advance through the game, your progress will be tracked, and new areas in Practice Mode’s menu will become available. You won’t be able to practice stages you haven’t seen yet, but you will be able to keep trying those sections that give you trouble. You’ll then, after having mastered them, have to put that knowledge to work in the actual game and get through it.
Since R-Type Delta HD Boosted is the fourth game in the series, the gameplay is pure R-Type, refined to perfection up to that point. Some might say that Delta is the peak of R-Type’s gameplay, and it’s hard to argue, though the 2003 R-Type Final is a toss-up for me.
You select from three ships: The R-9AII “Delta,” R-13 “Cerberus,” and the R-X “Albatross.” The R-9AII “Delta,” with its classic Force Pod and classic R-Type weaponry, is the default choice and feels most like what you may be familiar with if you’ve played R-Type games before. The R-13 “Cerberus” changes up the gameplay, as when you have the Force pod detached, you can whip it around to attack enemies. This ship is both the most difficult to master but is also the most powerful once you do. The Anchor Force pod, once detached, can be moved around, allowing you to deal huge amounts of damage and fill your DOSE gauge very quickly. Finally, the R-X “Albatross” is a ship with a semi-autonomous Force pod that hunts enemies when detached. So long as you can avoid bullets and hazards, the pod will do most of the work for you. It effectively serves as a way to make the game easier.
Each ship also has its own unique charge attack and super that you can activate once your Dose gauge is full. If you’re always keeping your pod attached, charging this gauge is difficult, since your pod must absorb damage. Knowing when to have it out becomes another thing to have to memorize.
That’s the biggest thing about the gameplay in this game. It is unapologetic about what it wants you to do. The stages are brutally tough. One hit and you’re dead: You lose your pod and start again at the last checkpoint with nothing. Even on the Easy setting, R-Type Delta HD Boosted is still harder than most shooters you’ll ever play.
The enemy formations will challenge you, but so will the claustrophobic stages, with tight sections to navigate and hazards to avoid. The Bydo wants to kill you, and they want to do it yesterday. It ties into the narrative in that way. Even as it is doing this, those hazards and stages are all telling a story. The further you get, the darker and more horrifying it becomes.
Later games in the series double and triple down on the grim horror, but this is where it really began. R-Type Delta was the game that took the gruesome constructs and concepts from the previous games and added context to them.
This feels like a good time to write a bit about accessibility, as I often do. If you are looking for modern accessibility functions, you won’t find them here. The practice mode and difficulty settings is all you get. While the Practice mode does serve its purpose in helping you get better, it would have been nice if they had taken a page out of M2’s playbook and included a straight-up invincibility mode that just counts mistakes instead of the one-hit deaths that the game uses. That would allow more people to experience the absolute terror that the last few stages of Delta are. As far as visibility goes, though, the game is designed to be very contrast-heavy, so I had little issue there.
The game features Nvidia Reflex Low Latency support on the PC, to make the game feel more responsive, though I tested with this mode on and off, and for me, there wasn’t much difference. On a variable refresh-rate monitor at 165Hz, the game just felt tight and responsive regardless of the Reflex setting I used.
Along with Reflex, you get a selection of Windowed Resolutions, and a Borderless FullScreen mode. This is an area that they may wish to revisit for the PC port, because you can’t run the game fullscreen at a lower resolution. The game also has three aspect ratio settings: a Normal 4:3, an Expanded viewport that fills more of the screen and is the game’s default setting, and a Full mode, which stretches to the width of the monitor. Please don’t use the Full mode.
The PC version has no way of exiting the game aside from the keyboard Esc key. That’s a bit annoying, but not a huge deal. I also ran into some weirdness where the death explosion sound wouldn’t play at times. Despite the technical quirks, I never ran into a crash or performance issue with the game.
The Remastered presentation is fine, and does make the game look cleaner than the original did. It’s still a polygonal shooter from 1998 at its core, though, so don’t expect miracles. There is a new Arranged soundtrack by Masahiko Ishida and Chris Hülsbeck, which is solid, but I feel changes the vibe of the game a bit too much. This might be why the Arrange mode is not the default setting. It’s good both ways, but I’d recommend the original soundtrack for your first playthrough, and then switch to the Arrange for the next.
R-Type Delta HD Boosted is a great game. It’s still the same brutal, unapologetic, and dark-as-hell shooter that came out back in the day. But now it’s here to torment you on your modern systems. It’s a landmark in the genre, and one that really does need to be experienced by anyone with a passing interest in shooters.
by Filippo Dinolfo
