R-Type Delta
Mega Cruel Game #7
Type of Game
An experimental tool for measuring superhuman reflexes and resistance to psychological trauma of all kinds.
Release date on our machines
May 1999, a few months before the terrible storm of ’99, which caused so much damage, but also created the perfect atmosphere for playing with dark stuff.
Developer
Irem Software Engineering, Inc., once a trailblazer in the video game industry, before shifting its focus to the manufacture of slot machines.
Publisher
Sony Computer Entertainment Europe Ltd. is really pampering its beloved console—what a surprise!
R-Type Delta : available on Steam, on the PS Store, on Switch and Xbox Series. Not the original, mind you—the remastered version. But still, it's awesome.
I was already familiar with the famous R-Type franchise by the time I was five or six. On the rare occasions I set foot in an arcade, it was impossible to miss a Street Fighter II or After Burner machine, but R-Type and its heavily armed ships were never far behind. My cousin Walter also owned one of the Super NES cartridges, simply called Super R-Type, but I had never bought my own version before. When my dad let me pick out a game at a Fnac store in Brest one day in late 1999, I finally had the chance to make up for that oversight. So I turned on the console, and—oh, surprise! The ugly PS1 polygons had replaced the pretty sprites of its predecessors. I finally took my first step into the franchise, only to be stuck with the title that pioneered the grimy 3D of the nineties! Luckily, back then, we thought it was magnificent. Was I right to leave out Resident Evil 2, Crash Bandicoot, Breath of Fire 3, or Bloody Roar 2? Many years later, I raise my fist and shout: well, yes! What else would this site be for, anyway?
Right by your side, since forever
That’s the kind of choice I can live with, unlike many others that involve real life. It hasn’t stopped me from taking some massive beatings, but they’ve always been less brutal than the ones in our very real world.
R-Type does what… I don’t
Did I mention I was glad I picked this game? Well… yes, but also no. As everyone knows, shooters like this are just insanely tough—super mega hard, practically impossible to finish, basically. If you need a workout, twenty minutes of R-Type Delta will burn 1,500 calories! And eventually, you’ll be able to carry sandbags using just your thumbs. No matter how hard I persevered for days on end whenever I was spending vacation at my dad’s, I never made it past the fourth level. When, by some miracle, I finally faced the boss, I’d get blown to bits by his three-quarter-circle negative positron blasts. And there were three more stages right behind him? Interstellar misery! That didn’t stop me from enjoying the fast-paced gameplay and solid replayability thanks to the different types of weapons and ships. It doesn’t hold a candle to U.N. Squadron in terms of progression and customization, but there are still some nice little treats to sink your teeth into, like collecting those ever-present “capsules” that upgrade your ship. Well, they upgrade the “Force”—that energy sphere that attaches to the front or back of your ship, acting as both a shield and an enemy-destroying weapon.
You can also hurl it at your targets to take them down even faster. The Force then wanders wherever it pleases before returning to the ship. And if it builds up enough power—100%, to be exact—an ultra-powerful attack becomes available, called the Delta Weapon, which isn’t exactly a surprise. A massive bomb that vaporizes the entire screen, except for the big bosses—though they still take a serious beating. And after a few seconds of invincibility, the Force gauge drops back to zero. Personally, I almost never used this thing. First, because I preferred to keep the Force at 100%, which made it bigger and more powerful. Basically, it provides better protection and… well, it takes out more enemies in the long run. Second, by the time I remembered it existed, I’d already blown up a long time ago. The “Bit Devices,” on the other hand, take the form of small protective spheres located above and below our flying babe.
They stop most projectiles, except for the totally overpowered stuff, like lasers wider than the thighs of yout… oops, sorry, a joke from 1999 almost slipped into this text. Anyway, the automatic missiles are back in action too—a nearly negligible source of damage, but it’s free, so whatever, we’ll keep it. For the first time in the series, we get to choose between three different types of ships, each of which can be equipped with three different types of ammo (the red, yellow, or blue pills you grab from bonus capsules), offering gameplay variations that are sometimes subtle but more than enough to quench our thirst for destruction. I loved the homing electric arc energetic beam (try repeating that sentence ten times in a row) from the black ship, the one called Cerberus, or R-13A, or both.
I’ve never unlocked the fourth secret ship—that bogus thing that holds the bonus capsules. No surprise there; you have to beat the game at least once, or play it a hundred times, whichever you prefer. I haven’t done either, personally. If I’d known the code to make myself invincible, I might have been able to talk about that hidden ship with some authority. But no, I have to settle for checking it out on YouTube. Man, that thing is a blast! True to the reputation of its predecessors, R-Type Delta takes just as much pleasure in plunging us into ruined cities, caves infested with demonic parasites, or graveyards filled with evil machines. Pure bliss, as long as you fall into the category of manic-depressives with a penchant for chronic self-harm. The numerous enemies—whether mechanical or organic, or sometimes a fusion of the two to varying degrees—take malicious pleasure in circling our little ship and firing at it at the worst possible moment.
Some of them make us scream in terror because they're so freaky, while others are three times the size of the TV screen (and one doesn't preclude the other, by the way). In short, we’re exploring a world where life seems pretty sweet. Thankfully, the lighting effects bring a bit of cheer to it all, even if it’s often thanks to a nuclear bomb or a fifty-meter-wide laser. Special mention goes to the level bosses, which escalate in creepiness and horror. Yeah, I had to watch videos to see what the last ones looked like—I’m not going to repeat in every paragraph that this game has blown my mind like never before, oh! I’m still a huge fan of the massive mechanical quadruped in stage 3, though—a behemoth bigger than Texas, with firepower more destructive than an NRA rally.
Divine Fire
Climb into a fighter jet, gain some altitude, and turn on the game’s soundtrack; within twenty seconds, you’ll feel like you’re under attack by armored flying hydras spitting negative energy spheres in your face. And before you know it, you’ll have fired all your missiles at a maternity hospital. Oops, sorry, brats! Well, unless you work in the military, you should be fine. Mind you, you can believe it even from your couch, the soundtrack does such a great job. Some tracks aren’t meant to be listened to too often. Let’s say, no more than once every three years, or else you’ll end up pulling out your old PlayStation, popping in the R-Type CD, and throwing the whole thing off a cliff. That’s exactly the effect the music accompanying the mechanical bosses has on me. Pure anxiety, but not necessarily in a good way. And it took four composers to evoke that feeling in people? Well, well! Okay, I’ll tone it down a bit. To be honest, the issue only applies to this particular track; the other songs actually offer some truly magnificent moments—in their ability to overwhelm the listener, that is. Still, here, the ordeal begins rather quietly, with a track that could almost be described as cheerful and catchy. The pilot of our ship doesn’t yet know that he’ll end his life exhausted, to the sound of tortured melodies in every direction. Seriously, I’m grateful I was so terrible at this game and never got to hear the final tracks—they would’ve surely traumatized me for life. No, really, I can’t get enough of this darkness. Keep going! Torture me AGAAAIIIIN!
Biomechanical swan song
This game marked the end of the PlayStation 1 era, at least at my father's house; at my mother's and my friends' places, the famous gray console still had plenty of life left in it. My dad and I seemed to instinctively know that we'd never again sit side by side for a little gaming session. Dad just didn’t get into what I played on it after that, from Tekken 3 to Final Fantasy VIII. Yet he’d tag along to internet cafes for chaotic Counter-Strike sessions, so why not trade a few shots between Gun Jack and Ling Xiaoyu? For this final adventure as a duo, we fell back on our old habits from the days when my dad first introduced me to the Master System, with the Psycho Fox cartridge firmly in place. We followed the universal rule: as soon as one of us lost a life, we’d hand the controller over to the other. And that could quickly swap, with R-Type Delta. What were you guys doing during the big storm of ’99? I was desperately trying to get past that damn Level 4.
While outside, trees were crashing into houses (and on people) in the most violent gusts of wind I’ve ever seen. Despite everything, I sometimes thought I’d be almost better off outside, so furious did I get every time a tiny pixel of a tiny missile slipped past my gaze and blew up my magnificent RX-10 Albatross. In the end, my dad and I ended up playing together again a few years later on Link’s Crossbow Training. It’s a shooter too, but way less frustrating than R-Type Delta. So obviously less stylish as well, right? There it goes—my Stockholm syndrome is kicking in again. To make matters worse, R-Type Delta HD Boosted came out in late 2025. Well, it feels like playing on a nice PS1 emulator or a PS2, rather than a PS5, but it’s still a respectable project. I really shouldn’t get sucked back in, huh. No, no, definitely not.
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