R-Type

In 1987, when T'Pau's frizzy haired lead singer Carol Decker was the height of cool and Margaret Thatcher was on the verge of bankrupting half of the country, computer games were sold on cassettes, which you could even buy from random corner shops for just £1.99 a pop.

As game magazines were yet to really take off, choosing a new game was pretty much based on the cover art and, more often than not, whether any of your mates already had it so you could copy it off them instead.

Not that we ever did such a thing, obviously.

But if we had, the one game we would never have considered taping over with something new would be R-Type.

Still regarded by most to be the big daddy of arcade scrolling shooters (even above the likes of Gradius and Salamander), the home conversions of R-Type were some of the very first games that had many of us snapping our joysticks in sheer frustration.

This is because R-Type is hard, and brutally so.

When presented with it all over again on mobile, our first reaction was of one of ecstasy at Gyrox's ability to create a perfect reproduction of the classic 2D side-scrolling shoot-'em-up. Other than the neon glow status bar at the bottom of the screen, there's little to tell this version apart from the later revisions of the game that arrived on consoles like the Super Nintendo.

If you were born in the CD era, however, a little background may be in order so let's go over the R-Type basics. The game consists of you, the player, moving your ship up and down to avoid incoming attacks from a seemingly endless horde of space-nasties, while returning fire to rack up as high a score as possible. Like most games of its time, surviving long enough to notch up a high-score is the ultimate aim of the game. Well, you know, things were simpler back then.

Eventually, if you're good enough, brave enough and just plain lucky enough, you reach an end-of-level boss. And that's when you discover the true meaning of 'difficult'.

Yet, what makes R-Type so compellingly addictive (and keeps you playing through the pain of endless dying), are the weapon pick-ups that you find as you progress. Shooting what looks like a space-hopper with a windscreen leaves a glowing orb of goodness floating in space, waiting to be absorbed by your ship.

And you'll want to absorb them because they transform your standard, pithy little pea-shooter of a weapon into twin blazing lasers, homing missiles or a number of similarly crazy, gorgeous light shows that fill the screen and help you blast your way to (and hopefully through) the next boss.

That's it, really. There's really little else to say about R-Type that hasn't already been said, seeing as this a version of a game that's been about for donkey's years.

And given that knowledge, it's not surprising to find the game is a little too hard to be accessible enough for short bursts of mobile phone gaming. Trying to control the ship with anything but the very best phone thumbstick or keypad will definitely have most gamers chewing their fists in frustration.

However, if you're brave (or foolish) enough to try it, R-Type certainly has a lot to offer. The ride may be ridiculously hard and unforgiving, but both determined newcomers to the series and the seasoned, nostalgic player can enter the experience knowing their dedication will be thoroughly rewarded.