Oh, I'm not going to let September roll by without giving a mention towards a shoot'em up. It's a genre that's as classic as an arcade cabinet, and for me, it still holds up. Time to bring back #SHMUPtember for 2024, and throw another nod towards one of my all-time favorite space shooter series. 

I originally reviewed the original R-Type for the TurboGrafx-16 in 2020, but Super R-Type was my introduction to the series. Developed and published for the SNES by IREM in 1991, we used to rent this big, bad mofo almost every weekend before eventually owning it. Until this point, I was only familiar with the NES Konami space shooters Life Force and Gradius, and the Kyukyoku Tiger series from Taito, known in the US as Twin Cobra.

Gradius III ranks as an all-time classic for me, mostly for nostalgia, Super R-Type is the closest SNES SHMUP that challenges it for my favorite on the console. It's a very solid experience, but is crippled by some technical shortcomings. This version is actually a bit of a port of R-Type II, with enemies and stages while introducing its own unique ones. Kinda makes me think of the SNES port of Castlevania Dracula X and its relation to the original Rondo of Blood game. 

Like most Super Nintendo games, Super R-Type endures a ton of slowdown when the action picks up. In this instance, I like to use it to get a read and react to situations when the screen becomes swarmed with not only enemies, but your own weapons. In the age before true Bullethell, R-Type may have been one of the originators of the style. The graphics, when the slowdown isn't bogging everything down to a chunky mess, looks great, serving as an adequate showcase for the then-new SNES. The Bydo, R-Type's signature antagonists, have always been cool creature designs, opting for menacing incest-like creatures and cyborgs to serve as imposing barriers.

If there is a major knock I have on Super R-Type, there aren't any check points. So when you die, you go back to the beginning, adding to the game's daunting difficulty. The silver lining to this (at least in my eyes), contrast to Gradius III, you have a chance to replenish your inventory and defenses. The greatest downside, it gets incredibly tedious, especially in a controlled scrolling game genre, to look at the same portion of stage over and over again. 

Super R-Type has some pretty wicked boss battles, accompanied by some pretty sick OST. IREM really nails it with the series' musical scores, and while some tracks coming out of the SNES can be a little bit farty-sounding (like Earthworm Jim, where the Genesis version sounds better to me), Super R-Type sports some fairly memorable tracks that offer a good deal of variety. They balance between some nifty guitar riffs and electronic keyboard scores that are on par with the Darius games. 

As far as games in the R-Type franchise goes, Super has aged the worst. made even more limited with the SNES's architecture not quite handling the SHMUP genre with the fluidity of other platforms like the TG-16 and the Genny. The game is certainly still playable enough, the controls are solid, but the game can feel like it's going to break down when the sprites clutter the screen. If you're a fan of the genre, it's worth a visit.