R-Type - Blast Off & Strike the Evil Bydo Empire - on PC Engine!
0I hope you are all happy, safe & healthy whatever challenges you are facing right now. Apologies for the delays in uploads - life has been hectic!
Fans of my channel will know that I'm a huge Sega fan but I also loved other consoles as it is all about the games. Part of this was their strong arcade heritage. The arcades were a source of wonder at this & one such enticing title was Irem's shoot-em-up R-Type.
The PC Engine was one such machine. This diminutive little box was packed with power. Despite an 8 bit processor it boasted a powerful 16 bit graphics chip (hence being branded the Turbo-Grafx-16 in the US). It always had an air of mystique & the screenshots of its games in C&VG & Mean Machines were the stuff of legend. HuCARDs might be my favourite medium and lent themselves to the awesome PC Engine GT/Express. There were many amazing titles but I got mine back in the early 90's for R-Type and the many great Sega ports. Then picked up the CD Rom unit for the utterly amazing Dracula X. My machine has a hardwired RGB Scart mod but these days there are ore elegant modern solutions.
This is the port of Irem's masterpiece - R-Type. The Japanese HuCARD which I play here is actually only the first half of the game with the second half being released as a separate HuCARD called R-Type 2. In the US the full game (i.e. the content of the two Japanese HuCARDs) came on a single HuCard & the game was also ported to CD Rom as R-Type COmplete along with cut scenes & redbook audio tracks.
Despite this though it truly was one of the games to make NEC's PC Engine a true must have console. Its an amazing port & up until the PlayStation R-Types compilation & then more recent ports was the definitive way to play this game in the home (before MAME anyway!)
The slightly remixed chip tunes are brililant, graphically it is top notch (albeit with some sprite flicker) but the H R Geiger inspired graphics & design truly shine here. It is all about the use of the Force Pod although I barely use it here.
I play the first level here. Hopefully it gives you an idea of the game & the quality of the port. The port was handled by PC Engine stalwart HudsonSoft and they did a stellar job. I also have the Master System version which itself was a brilliant port - with its own exclusive secret level - I'll do a video soon.
My original PC Engine 2 button pad has a weird issue where in-game it suddenly stops registering certain direction on the Direction Pad (although this freeze seems to "unlock" when you press one of the button 1 or button 2 action buttons but not always the same one. Its very odd. I'll dig out my 6 button Avenue 6 pad for the next time I capture PC Engine titles as this happened on several of the games while I was capturing - then again the system and pad are both over 30 years old and other than that it is still performing like a champion!
Want to see more PC Engine games? I have a few decent ones on both HuCARD & on CD.
This is my original Japanese copy - - from back in the day played (at 60Hz) on my RGB modded PC Engine through a Retrotink 5X for ease of capture - although my capture card didn't want to play nicely for some reason.
I'll be uploading more PC Engine games in the future :-) as well as more GameBoy Multicarts, mobile phone games, Saturn, Dreamcast, SNES, Master System, Megadrive & more. Let me know what you'd like to see!
As always if you enjoy this video let me know. As always this is running on original hardware. Also let me know if there are particular games or systems you'd like to see.
As always this is uploaded under the Fair Use Policy - no money is being made from this video.
Stay strong, stay safe and stay healthy - Grey Fox
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