R-Type III: The Third Lightning (Super NES, 1994)

 

This was the first really difficult game that I ever beat. They totally cranked that difficulty meter from the previous games and made this an ahead-of-its-time murderfest akin to Super Meat Boy. The good news is that rather than repeating the levels on death like all previous games in the series, this one gives you actual checkpoints and lots of them. Also infinite lives. So the incredibly tough levels can be tackled one segment at a time. There are no difficulty levels, but the difficulty is just right, and they pretty much got it perfect here. Though be prepared that this game does take a while to get through if played fully legit, and every stage is a fierce battle.

The biggest thing this game is remembered for is that unlike the other games, here you have three choices for Force Pods rather than just being stuck with the basic one. As timeless as this one is, both of the new ones add a LOT to the replayability here. Round Force here gets the usual reflective laser, ring laser, and fire chain. Not sure why it says "for ace pilot use" while putting it up front. Maybe it means people with experience playing these games, who'd be used to this one?

Also... My God. They finally did it. They added build variety to the R-Type series!

Next up is Shadow Force, which was developed over seven years after the Round Force, and is the latest Earth-people weapon against the Bydo. This one has a few advantages: The pod travels out and returns much faster than the others, so you're unprotected less often. Also it's got a couple of invincible gun-pods that move around it and fire in whatever direction you're shifting away from, which allows you to pelt shots in all kinds of unusual directions. All in all this is probably the best pod. As for special weapons, it has a laser that fires backwards (or forwards if you put the Force on the back of the ship), and other lasers that offer coverage on the sides of the ship which is super-useful in this game.

Cyclone Force is the one I used pretty exclusively as a kid. This one's a new prototype made out of stolen Bydo technology. The main strength of this one is that the force itself is more powerful and emits a ring that gives it more area coverage. It's also more mobile than the others and can be manipulated more while it flies independently. For special weapons it's got a spread beam, a forward-arrow beam that goes through walls, and delayed beams that stay onscreen for a bit and can be dropped as you move around. I generally stick to the spread beam for this one.

This has my favorite hyper-charge shot in the series. Instead of a cluster-beam, it's just one big energy blast that completely obliterates everything in its path. Takes a while to charge up, but it's worth it. This is super good against bosses with weak points that are only available intermittently.

Shadow Force in action. One of its weapons looks like the double Plasma Beam from Super Metroid, and we can also see how the SF's independent guns emulate your weapon fire. They went out of their way to make all three of these forces distinct and interesting.

Round Force is the classic, and I still prefer the reflective lasers over the other weapons. Even with how classic it is, this is probably the hardest force pod to finish the game with. It's kind of outdated at this point and the two new ones both outgun it in various ways. Your mileage may vary though, that's the beauty of this game. All 3 choices have their strengths.

Going with the Cyclone Force for this run, as it's the one I remember using all the time as a kid and the one I'm nostalgic for. The one time I ever beat the game was with it, as well. Favorite Cyclone Force weapon is this spread laser that rapid-fires and just trucks everything in sight. However, the Cyclone Force's main advantage...

...is the massive coverage it gives you when deployed, which more than makes up for it not firing regular bullets independently like the others. All of that said, I think I might have shortchanged myself playing this as a kid because I'm pretty sure Shadow Force would have been an easier run than the other two.

First stage is the only easy thing this game throws at you, and that continues to the very basic first boss. Flies around firing missiles, would be a slightly above-average difficulty boss at the most in any game in the series. After this first level, the game goes into Blistering Difficulty for the remaining five levels. Good thing it has so many checkpoints.

Stage 2 is creepy and gooey, and the first real roadblock in the game. As a kid I had more trouble with this stage than any other, except Stage 4 (which is probably the worst overall). Stage 2 isn't nearly as bad, but it's such a difficulty spike compared to Stage 1.

Halfway through the stage, you meet this horrifying boss. My God!

...then it turns out to just be a wall, and it moves out of your way. That was an amazing fake-out. The devs thought outside the box for this game.

I remember this part well. You've got acid raining down from above (getting rid of the ceiling so you can get out of this tunnel, at least) while a bunch of foes follow you from behind. Without any rear-firing weapon, you're in trouble.

The environments in this game are imaginative, and some of the best in the genre at the time outside of Axelay.

Second stage boss is this wall of eyes. Weaving between the constant eyeballs being fired at you is not only super-disturbing, it's also fast and furious. Meanwhile you have to return fire at the boss eye in the wall as it moves up and down. It has a LOT of health, so this fight goes on for a while even if you're slinging fully-charged shots (which is a good idea here due to the boss' vulnerability windows).

Stage 3 is almost a respite, and the easiest the game gets outside of Stage 1. It's very vertical, though, so that might throw some players for a loop.

Next boss is a giant crab whose main weak point is on the side you can't reach, and going over there is a bad, bad idea.

The answer here is to throw the Force Pod to the other side and let it completely wreck the boss's HP.

Stage 4 (the Bydo Factory) is the hardest in the game, and makes that pretty clear when it starts with this Metal Shark Player style full-screen crush. At least it shows you where the safe spot will be beforehand.

Things quickly go from bad to worse with these molten steel torrents that pour from the ceiling with only momentary lapses to fly through.

And then the stage reaches its final form, and the reason it's the hardest part of the game: Molten steel that cascades through the maze, usually faster than you can react. So basically you need to memorize the right path through here. If the game wasn't so generous with checkpoints, this stage would be practically impossible on real hardware.

It even has a fake-out boss...that's harder than most real bosses. This wall is supported by fast-moving, nearly indestructible gun pods.

After that fast and furious battle... the stage continues. By going backwards. Yes, you now have to go BACKWARDS through this hellish level and it's even worse in reverse.

This really is a matter of dying your way through it until you learn the maze. Truly a hellscape. I only beat this stage once as a kid, and once I accomplished that, I wasn't turning the game off until I finished the last two stages. Yeah, it was one of those times.

The real stage 4 boss is this fast and furious geometry test where the boss moves around the edges and fires lasers at straight angles. Also gotta watch out for the ball-things moving around on the tracks. Basically gotta be really "on" for this fight, which one should be after that stage.

Stage 5 is short, and full of blocks that turn into high-HP enemies that stalk you. However the main thrust of this level is the boss, which is basically like half the stage's runtime.

Said boss is this giant transforming cell-thing that takes the form of other bosses from the series, essentially turning this into a boss rush.

First up is the most iconic boss in the series, which goes the way it usually goes. None of these bosses have a lot of HP, since they're all basically just forms of a longer fight.

Next is this wall-boss from Super R-Type. Another cool thing is that for this entire boss rush it plays the boss theme from Super R-Type (which is a remix of the classic boss theme from the first two).

Gomba from R-Type is the final foe, and looks pretty awesome in full color. This was an easy fight in the first game, and it's easy now.

However, Cyclone Force is a bit of a problem here, as due to the mechanics of this particular pod, it doesn't stay on the boss' weak spot for too long before moving around.

Onward to the final sta-

Wait, there's ANOTHER form to this boss, and it's the most obnoxious thing ever. It's that ring of guns from the first level of the first game, which is...random. I lucked out in having the spread laser here, which made quick work of it.

Stage 6 is just bizarre. It consists of a lot of illusory walls that disappear right as they're about to crush you, as well as a portal to the Bydo Dimension that follows you through the level, spitting out foes to deal with.

Lots...and lots of foes.

Sometimes you have to get right on the portal to pass through a wall and not be crushed, then immediately move off of it after you're clear, because the game doesn't give you any real time before the enemies start appearing again. This stage is really well-structured, regardless.

Except for this last part, which is total ass! You basically have to know beforehand to be on the right side of the screen before these walls materialize. It's something Gradius would do. I guess the idea here is that you should stay near the portal, while also repelling the foes that emerge from it, which makes this a balancing act.

One final trip through a wall, and the portal takes over the whole screen (I think the idea is that you've now flown into it) for the final boss.

This is the Bydo Emperor (or whatever) and he's the one that's been sending all these foes through the portal. He also grows out of a wall and throws Spirit Bombs. Wonder if this is the grown-up form of the much-smaller final bosses of the first two games, or something else entirely. Either way it looked AWESOME in the pages of Nintendo Power and is probably the reason I got the game.

This is also one of the most memorable fights on the entire SNES. It isn't the hardest boss here, but it goes on and on and on, a real epic clash. After blasting him enough, he loses his head and starts spamming delayed mega-lasers.

Defeat him, and after the game lets you think you've won, his severed arms fly back onto the screen and start chasing you all over the place. Basically just gotta dodge them at this point.

And finally, your ship escapes through the portal while what's left of the boss tries to climb out of it and pursue. This is also accompanied by a massive fusillade of energy blasts that goes on and ON. At this point winning is a matter of firing the Force Pod directly into it from the front, which knocks him back through the portal. Took me a while to realize this so I was dodging his blasts like a madman and firing back ineffectually to the point that I was wondering what the hell the deal was.

After that total nightmare, the game is finished. Whew. This is one of the greats, and one you can be proud of beating. The difficulty always feels fair (well, 95% of the time anyway) and it never reaches "impossible unless perfect" territory like a lot of shooters do, especially bullet-hell ones. You usually have time to plan your next move here. It's a damn fine game.

Instead of an ending, it deposits you right back at the beginning to "try hard mode" which basically IS a bullet-hell. I immediately die to the first enemies. Lol.

So final thoughts on this one? All in all I'd put this game almost on the same S-Tier that I put Axelay and Space Megaforce, but not quite. It's my favorite R-Type game and holds up today. It's also the last game in the series that I really paid attention to. It's so "1996 SNES" that it hurts, and has a very Mega Man X3 soundtrack. Much like the second game, we almost didn't even get this one in the 'states, as Irem had stopped publishing by then and it fell on Jaleco to pick this one up. Glad they did.

One more particularly memorable thing about this for me is that it's the first game in the series that I had Nintendo Power hype me up on beforehand (unless you count the guide, for the first one). And it definitely did hype me up. Check out this rad coverage in the March 1994 (Wario Land) issue, which was also in the middle of the Super Metroid hype train so I was pretty much interested in everything in it.

Their rundown of the pods is the kind of thing that got me interested in the game. Could have probably put this up top instead of writing three paragraphs about them. Cyclone Force is the one with all the nostalgia for me, which is funny because the Round Force was actually in other games. Probably should have gone Shadow Force this time to get the fully-rounded (hyuck) experience.

This game got the poster for this month, which is always a bit of an accolade. One might scoff at having maps of straight lines, but here's the thing: This game was so tough, and all about just pushing the checkpoints forward, that the maps actually help a lot for showing you how far you are from the end of a level, what's next, and giving you a bit of impetus to keep playing.

They did a really good job with this, and focused on the bosses, which was a good way to get my attention. In practice, the stages are generally much harder than the bosses are.

Stage 5 boss is a legit cool thing to throw into the game for us folks that played the others. It's a bit like Mega Man 3 having MM2 Doc Robots. Yeah they're difficult and can murder you, but also you're getting to use your knowledge of boss patterns from the previous games. Course the thing that made me decide to get the game was that shot of the final boss.

I mean, damn, look at this thing. The screen presence and the art here is punching way above its weight for your average SNES game.

In short, great game and a good way to end the R-Type series/trilogy as it were. Other games came along later that were either remakes, remixes, or attempts at new ones (sometimes in 3D or 2.5D which I'm not really into), but there was never an "R-Type 4" and never one that caught my attention the way these did. Nowadays they've got "R-Type Final" which is its own series rather than a final game and I think they're up to R-Type Final III which is hilarious. Good series and these first 3 (four including Super) have a lot of nostalgia for me.