Reviews

Smooth scrolling horizontal shoot-em-up that stands head and shoulders above any other space-based arcade conversion for the Spectrum.
A bewildering plethora of power ups means that your space craft eventually goes into battle more souped up than a Ford Capri with go faster stripes and a spoiler and you will feel invincible and untouchable as you cream into the alien swarm.

Seminal spaceship shooter, across all platforms. The Spectrum conversion went above and beyond the necessary, bringing the game in colour, with colour attribute clashes virtually eliminated. The gameplay was also smoothly and faithfully reproduced. This was released at a time when similar coin-op conversions were simply monochromed for the Spectrum due to the old colour map situation.
In my opinion, the effort put into converting this game helped the humble Speccy continue to be seen as a viable gaming machine, in an era becoming dominated by 16 bit machines.

A very colourful shoot em'up which is as close to the arcade version as you could wish for.

Very highly recommended and fun too.

One of - if not the - horizontal shooter reference for the ZX Spectrum.

Excellent use of colour. Minimizing movements to character squares elimnates colour clash and frees CPU time for control of an armada of enemies, shots and smoothly scrolling scenery in the background.

As close to the arcade machine as you could hope for on the ZX Spectrum.

Niggling one might find two weak points:
1. Collision detection is character based.
Thus smoothly scrolling backgrounds may be nearer than you think or rather see.
2. No sound upgrade for the ZX Spectrum 128.

But still - brilliant game! Can be completed but the final guardian on level 8 is hard to beat indeed.
I still play this frequently on an emulator during train journeys (and, of course, at home on the real hardware, too).

I wish there was a single load version for 128k. But, even though you have to fiddle with the tape to find the level position, this game is still avesome.

Graphics are detailed and big. Whole game is reimagined for zx spectrum, and it works wonderful.

Beeper is used in a proper way to produce sound effects and even music, but best of all game has great playability while being challenging.

R-type is a very important game for zx spectrum, and it is very successful being important.

1988 - Electric Dreams Software (UK)
by Bob Pape, Mark Jones and Robert Hylands

Fighting the Bydo Empire was never my cup of tea, really cant tell why,
maybe because those days I was giving priority to programming rather than playing,
still a rather good game with brilliant movements and great graphics although a bit too difficult.

R-Type is a different class shoot-them-up.

Not being a lover of the genre myself I must admit that this game is a superb conversion of a superb idea that came out in the right moment proving that the Zx was a machine able of better things than just reproducing lame software.

Attractive from every angle , this game stands alone as a reference in the spaceships genre and in the whole Spectrum era.


Thumbs-up for R-Type !!

pd - how is this taking over manic miner ?? I don´t understand . :(

This conversation of Irem's arcade classic is very faithful to the original, and just as difficult!

The graphics are among the best on the Spectrum, they are very colourful and highly detailed and is easily the most distinguished feature in the game, and rightly so. And the gameplay is superb too, it's all you need in a highly intense shmup.

But as I say it's as difficult as the original which makes this a very accurate conversion. It was too tough for me to really get into it compared to other people and other horizontal shmups on the Spectrum such as Zynaps which I really enjoy, but R-Type is still without question one of the finest arcade conversions to ever exist on the ZX Spectrum.

Arcade conversions on the spectrum tended to be a bit hit and miss. Luckily fans of R-Type had very little to complain about.
I've never been a huge fan of the game but this is a very good version of the coin op classic.

I honestly had a hard time liking this one, the game's difficulty is too demanding that makes this tough to enjoy all the time. Apart from that this has among the best graphics on any Spectrum game. To be honest if it weren't for the graphics I may have given this a lower score. It's considered one of the best by many, but for me it's not quite there.

Looks like it deserves all the praise.