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.

Reviewed on Feb 12, 2024


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