What else can you say about the grandaddy of all shooters. R-Type is widely considered one of, if not the greatest shooters every created. But kick off any conversation with a shooter fan about R-Type and you're likely to get a 10 minute rant on how excruciatingly difficult the game is. Over the years, shooters have come and gone. Some have been good and some have been bad, but in the end R-Type is still the shooter by which all other shooters are judged. And one play through of the game will make it quite apparent as to just why that is.

Very few shooters have as simple a control scheme as R-Type. You basically use the control pad to move around and two buttons to control your ship's firepower. One button fires your ship's cannon and the other seperates the pod from your ship. That's right, there's no smart bombs to be found in R-Type, but after a few minutes of playing the game you'll be wishing there was. Pressing the fire button repeatedly fires your space cannon at a rapid rate, but you can also hold down the fire button in order to charge up your cannon and fire a power shot. This comes in quite handy when tackling some of the game's stronger enemies and bosses. As you destroy robots in the game, they'll occasionally drop a power-up for you. These add everything from more powerful types of cannon fire, to a large pod that you can attach to the front or rear end of your ship for added protection. You can also detach this pod and it will strike out on its own all the while firing at enemies all by itself.  You'll also come across smaller pods that will attach themselves to the right and left sides of your ship and add a little more range to the firepower on your ship. Given the lack of any type of screen-clearing smart bombs, these pods are going to prove invaluable to you as you progress to later levels in the game.

R-Type has a very smooth and responsive control system that makes the pinpoint navigation throughout the many levels of the game bearable. You'll generally want to try to upgrade your firepower as quickly as possible as things can get very crowded and intense on-screen in a hurry. Not only do you have to worry about enemies and their gunfire, but you'll also spend a lot of time navigating around obstacles strung throughout each level. Running into any of these walls and obstacles will spell a quick death to your ship. At the end of each level you'll face off with a huge boss. Most of the bosses have very specific patterns that you'll have to memorize in order to  defeat them. The bosses in the game aren't what make the game so difficult, it's getting through each of the levels to reach the boss that's going to prove the most demanding part of your task. So while R-Type might be one tough challenge, the game has at least given you the tight and responsive play control needed to make it through the game in one piece. Of course that's if you've got what it takes.

The arcade version of R-Type was a work of art at the time of its release and not many home consoles were capable of producing an arcade-perfect port of it. Hudson somehow managed to bring the game home on the Turbografx-16 system with all of the visual integrity found in the arcade version. In fact, playing the two side-by-side, it's actually very difficult to tell the two apart, and that's really saying something given the year that this game was released. Even the bosses share all of the detail and animation of their arcade counter-parts with surprisingly very little slowdown at all. This feat alone is impressive given that most shooters released on consoles around this same time period were plagued with large amounts of processor slowdown. Maybe this is why the Turbografx-16 went on to become such a shooter-friendly console. If you're looking for an arcade perfect port of R-Type, this is it.

As great as the visuals are in R-Type, it's the soundtrack that set new standards for music in arcade games at the time of its release and the game's music still ranks high on the list of all-time greats. The sound chip of the Turbografx-16 had already produced some great tunes for various games and recreating the music from the R-Type arcade game proved to be no problem at all for it. All of the music and sound effects are here, and much like the visuals, are nearly indistinguishable between the arcade and Turbografx-16 versions of the game. Over the years, shooter soundtracks have moved over to CD-quality audio but there's still something to be said for this classic soundtrack that was clearly way ahead of its time.

No shooter fan's collection would be complete without at least one version of the classic R-Type game. And given that this is clearly the best port of the original arcade game, you just can't go wrong having this game in your Virtual Console collection. But be warned, this game isn't for the faint of heart and has made quick work of even the most seasoned shooter fans over the years. It would be fun to know just how many controllers have been busted in frustration over the years just from playing this game. I bet it would give even Ghosts & Goblins a run for its money. R-Type might be a very difficult shooter in its own right, but you'd be hard-pressed to find one that's more fun to play, even two decades later. A true classic!