R-Type

It’s been twenty-odd years since R-Type first graced your local arcade, and while those coin-op pleasure houses may have faced extinction at the hands of home consoles, DotEmu is here to ensure R-Type lives on.

On iPhone, the resurrection of R-Type resulted in a faithful adaption with some added speed thanks to the touch controls. The Xperia Play’s physical controls, meanwhile, bring it even closer to the hardcore shmup everyone remembers.

In terms of game design, levels, enemies, bosses, and weapons, DotEmu is not messing with the formula at all. R-Type on Xperia Play is a perfectly preserved relic, transferred from one platform to another like a fossil between museums encased in protective plaster.

The same eight levels offer the same side-scrolling challenge with the same enemies weaving around and the same deadly boss fights at the end.

To some, this will seem staid. To others, it’s the proto-bullet-hell action they'll love just as they remember it. Unlocking further levels becomes a matter of stacking up dozens of 'Game Overs' until you finally break through the difficulty barrier.

However, there are some features to give you a fighting chance: an auto-fire option is set as default, and there is a checkpoint system in place in Normal mode. The one flaw with this is that there’s no way to tell when you've passed a checkpoint. It’s only when you die and reappear that you discover where they are.

Bullet points

It’s the method of control, though, that really helps the game retain its old skool vibe on the Xperia Play. You can still employ the touch controls if you like, using the left hand side of the screen to move and a button on the right to fire.

On the one hand, this latter approach means you can move your ship around a lot faster than normal, but, on the other, it means your thumbs obscure some of the view – a dangerous thing in a game where every millimetre of vision matters.

Using the D-pad to move and X button to fire or charge your beam means you move at the speed the game was originally designed for. This might feel a bit slow compared to the touch controls, but ultimately it’s ten times more authentic, and, more importantly, it means your own pesky digits won’t get in the way.

Either way, the game hasn’t lost its central appeal: it’s unrelenting difficulty. The Unlimited Lives mode has been scrapped, but there is a system that rewards you with an extra life for reaching certain scores, e.g. hitting 50,000 points. Even with this additional life, it takes a lot of effort to beat the very first level.

Nothing has really changed at all with R-Type in its transition to Xperia Play. With other games, perhaps, this would be a complaint, but here DotEmu sets out to port the Irem original as faithfully as possible – a task it has undoubtedly achieved.