It may have a lot of slow down, but it is also a lot of fun.

Of course I wouldn't have beaten it already if it wasn't for save states, I'm terrible at shooters.

Great music, too. Overall, a good time.

It kind of calls into question if an improvement hack is actually an "improvement" if it ends up making the game even more difficult.

Over the years I've always lamented about the slowdown in Super R-Type, how it would slow to a complete crawl during the fourth stage with the giant battleship and the hoard of relentless crabs and construction lobsters in the final act. It turns out someone (Vitor Vilela) went through the trouble of making a version that utilizes the Super Accelerator 1 chip, eliminating pretty much every instance of noticeable framerate dips. My eyes lit up like they had just spotted the cutest baby penguin they had ever seen, I couldn't even wait to apply it to my personal dumped rom on my everdrive and went straight to mednafen to try it out.

Well, it worked. A bit too well I'm afraid. It turns out when you remove a flaw that you had been used to for the last 30 years it completely bamboozles your entire mindlink you had with your very first shmup experience. It's funny when you're used to the music getting to a certain point in stages before it's time for the boss fight, then once the slowdown is eliminated the music now barely gets time to finish one loop and it feels completely off.

All of this obviously wouldn't matter to someone new, but that's when we get to the massive problem that is when an already sadistic and punishing game becomes downright demonic and ever hate-filled towards your entire existence. Without that slowdown every swarm suddenly is now lightning quick and boss attacks will annihilate you in an instant without warning. Special mention needs to go out to the stage five boss, because that scrolling shithead will absolutely make you rue the day you ever had a passing interest in shmups on the SNES.

Needless to say, yes I did cheat with save states. If I had to guess my death count was probably around 20, and that's with having the stages basically imprinted into my mind. It's a shame I have such mixed feelings on this improvement, but I suppose that just exposes how screwed up Super R-Type really is. Gonna go ahead and pray for a checkpoint hack, maybe that will come true eventually...

I highly suggest using Vitor Vilela's SA-1 patch which removes slowdown.
Even without the slowdown issues, it's just kind of an okay game. Interesting mechanics, but it just feels slow, and it's really frustrating because much of the difficulty comes from the game giving you no time to react. It punishes you for getting hit so harshly that missing on one of the later stages might as well mean restarting the run, which becomes extra frustrating because the beginning stages have minute long segments where you do nothing but shoot forwards. I dunno man, I want to like this game but it so quickly stopped being fun.

While I liked it a little more this time, it's unfortunately still not quite there upon revisiting. Having played R-Type II first this time, this port comparatively feels massively compromised in ways that don't really benefit it. The bosses are worse, the slowdown frequently brings it to a crawl far worse than maybe any other SNES shmups, and even without the slowdown in mind the overall scrolling and pacing is just far more lethargic than the arcade original. I do appreciate the intended difficulty being a bit more sober this time, but it's brought to a similar level purely by technical issues, which is really not good at all. It seems like most of my friends prefer this version of II to the arcade version, but I can't say I agree.

There's also still no checkpoints, by the way. This fact unfortunately hasn't magically changed between my playthroughs. I feel like you can't bring up Super R-Type without bringing that up, it's just such a weird choice to make.

About a week or two ago I was gonna stop doing reviews (mostly because they are not good) but I already kind of miss doing them so now they're back and since I saw some people playing this game, I wanted to have a go at it, after all I did play and enjoy the original R-Type this year so it didn't hurt to try.

Honestly this game isn't too bad for me personally but it does has some of that early Super Famicom jank that probably could have been ironed out if it wasn't an early release for the console. I knew going in the slow down was going to be a problem but personally I don't like how it sometimes goes back to normal for a second which leads me to death because I'm not anticipating it.

While the levels themselves can be enjoyable there are some bad ones. There was one stage that kind of just felt like a boring hallway, I think it was the second to last stage. There's a level similar to my least favorite level in the Arcade game and also screw you game for that last trap you had with the wall at the end that made me mad. But the biggest issue is that the levels don't have checkpoints, I don't even like when games did checkpoints anyway but having you do the whole level is even worse.

The bosses are actually quite fun outside of maybe the last one and the game can be fun with weapons though I personally liked to use the one that's like the helixe shape thingy. The game also looks good enough for me but the music I don't really care for though maybe I'm the minority on that side.

Overall it's fine, it's decent. I'm not a fan of it only letting you get the ending and credits if you beat it on the secret pro ending though. It's got it's issues and honestly It's probably not even worth trying today but you could do much worse and there's even a hack that removes the slowdown though IDK how much it improves the game. Nowadays there are better shmups to play, even on the Super Famicom like Super Aleste so it's best to leave this one on the shelf even if it's not bad.

This is the console port of R-Type II, featuring a new level at the start, tons of slowdown (though not as bad as Steel Empire or Thunder Force IV), and no checkpoints OR instant respawn. If you die, even at the boss, you're back at the start of the level. It's really absurd, and doesn't have much of a cool factor propping it up like its sequel does. Wouldn't recommend.

Shoutout to these penis crabs in the final stage as well. I hope you like it, because they swarm you constantly until you reach the end boss.

Is better to take things slow in this game, plus a lot of trial and error, which can and will be frustrating due to the fact that this game only has a single checkpoint per level at the very beggining, even if you reach the level's boss.
The slow down is very persistent, but it can actually help with the difficulty since you are in essence playing in slow motion when there's a lot of stuff on the screen, still there's a patch that fixes that on emulators.
I really liked the sound and level design, the soundtrack and enemy design, I am aware of R-Type's constant theme of biomechanical monsters and biomes, and I'm a fan of those, so is a win for me.

Playing this game gets you ready for life. Why do I say that? Because it was the first shmup I ever played.

This baby has no stage checkpoints whatsoever. Die at the stage boss after a grueling time? Tough shit, go back and do it all again. At least there's infinite continues.

This is also a very early title for the console, so anytime a decent amount of sprites are on screen it starts chugging. It's really bad on stage 7 in particular where you're getting mosh pitted by flying crabs and construction lobsters constantly. One could say the slowdown helps you get through areas, but what happens when the game suddenly goes back to normal speed? You potentially fuck up due to it probably.

I could be a lot harder on this game due to it's unfairness, but I have a love/hate relationship with it due to nostalgia and the bopping soundtrack. It's a shame, because I feel like if it came out a bit later and fixed the slowdown and maybe designed the stages with a mid-checkpoint in mind it could've been a classic.