R-Type III is one of those games that was a bugbear of mine for many years. As a kid, I didn’t have the patience at all for shmups (also called “shoot-em-ups”), but as I got older I began to grow an appreciation for this tough-as-nails and punishing genre. R-Type III: The Third Lightning is one of those older titles that took dozens of attempts across several years before I finally cleared it for the first time back in the day. Afterwards, it was like a weight was lifted from my shoulders: I removed the game from my SNES, put that little plastic cover back on the bottom of it, and promptly lost it in a cross-county move without ever trying to play it again since.
Thankfully, this means that I basically don’t remember anything about R-Type III: The Third Lightning that I beat as a kid, so I can go into its brand-new remastered version titled R-Type Dimensions III with fresh eyes! The new version is available on the Nintendo Switch 2, where we reviewed it, and also for the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, and for the PC through the Steam platform.
Plot Ahoy!
There isn’t a lot of time spent on the story of R-Type in Dimensions III, but for a quick synopsis: The Bydo, biological weapons created by humanity, turned against their creators and were banished to another dimension. These H.R. Giger nightmares have been at war with humanity, creeping closer and closer to Earth after somehow returning from their banishment, and the only thing that stands between the utter destruction of humanity and the alien menace is the R-90 Ragnarok, one of the most powerful R-Crafts that the Space Corps could create. It’s going to take a lot of knowledge, skill, and a hell of a lot of firepower to blow up anything and everything that stands in your way.
Review Notes
The main gimmick of R-Type Dimensions III is that you can instantly switch from 3D graphics to 16-bit visuals in real-time, as well as a third off-kilter angle specifically when in 3D visuals mode. I actually preferred to stick to the 16-bit visuals view as the 3D graphics are nice, but I needed higher visual clarity for actually fighting in R-Type III since I haven’t played it in decades. Some things the original game was known for, like making extensive use of the SNES’s Mode 7 chip, are rote and commonplace nowadays, but this is a shmup where the environment may just start spinning and you’ll need to either perfectly center yourself on the screen or stay on the move with quick judgment and tighter movement to avoid spontaneous explosions on your part.
R-Type is known for being particularly challenging, requiring players to try again and again to figure out enemy patterns, navigating claustrophobic stage design while destroying enemies, and avoiding obstacles. The original version of III for the SNES was known for having more frequent checkpoints after tougher sections compared to other shmups back in the early 90s, which definitely helped a considerable number of players beat the game back in the day (though it was still tough as nails). Even now, though, you likely shouldn’t expect to be able to sit down and clear R-Type Dimensions III immediately unless you’re extremely good at shmups, particularly due to the fact that this is still a pretty tough title that demands you learn and apply your pattern recognition skills.
Of course, you have plenty of firepower at your disposal. In fact, the ship you control in R-Type III is widely considered to be one of the most powerful in the series due to how much you get access to in order to challenge this game’s difficulty. You have three different Forces you can choose from, which is something you can either have floating unattached to your ship, or you can have it attached to the front or rear. Finding colored crystals will change the nature of the shots your Force produces, allowing you to produce lasers that bounce off walls or that pierces through foes directly ahead. You can also charge up the R-90’s powerful Beam and Hyper Cannons to dispatch exceptionally tough foes and bosses by using it at the right times. There are other power ups, as well, like the Bit units that can block enemy projectiles, homing missiles, and even a speed-up boost, but it’s worth mentioning that you lose basically your entire arsenal should you clip a wall or an enemy bullet!
New players may have the most success using the Cyclone Force, as it can create a bubble that absorbs enemy bullets, but your mileage may vary. There’s a good, healthy amount of experimentation that you can do with figuring out which Force works best with how you like to play. But R-Type Dimensions III is one of those games where even though it has a more generous checkpoint system compared to its peers, it can set you back considerably without your weaponry after a death. This death spiral problem is likely why the developers of this remake included the new Infinite mode, which allows you to respawn wherever you died and brings you back with your basic Force unit without any of your other power ups. Infinite mode is incredibly forgiving, so that’s more for people who just want to beat the title, as it’s considerably more rewarding to play and learn it the proper way that everyone had to back in 1993, which is partially preserved in its Classic mode.
The Classic mode isn’t without flaws, however, and a lot of it stems from the game improperly adjusting the hitbox of the ship in strange ways, causing the ship to explode when you visibly aren’t even touching an enemy bullet or surface. Enemies and objects also have larger collision boxes that extend off their bodies or surfaces too, which when combined with the larger box of your ship spells disaster during hectic parts of the game where you have only pixels of room to maneuver. There’s also some strange differences where using your Beam Cannons against bosses can result in annihilating them in one or two hits, especially ones like the eyeball wall alien in the second stage (which apparently it didn’t always shoot eyeballs and that was some classic 90s NA censorship; I had no idea until Dimensions that the projectiles the boss shoots at you were so… sperm-looking).
In exchange for a slightly more inaccurate port, however, you get shiny new visuals with the 3D mode, as well as a new viewing angle to the game that makes it considerably harder by forcing the perspective off kilter, and a couple of difficulty modes. A major addition to this remake is that the developer included simultaneous multiplayer for the first time (the original forced two players to take turns, like in Super Mario and others), which can be quite a lot of fun if you can manage to get two players who know R-Type Dimensions III inside and out together to see how quickly they can run through it. It also stands to reason that when combined with Infinite mode, the multiplayer component makes a good way for a parent to introduce R-Type to a kid since you can play together and experience it with very few setbacks as you really only lose your power ups when you die in that mode.
TLDR
R-Type Dimensions III is a flawed remake when it comes to the gameplay aspect of things. It’s definitely frustrating to die to an enemy you can clearly see you weren’t even touching (thanks to the Nintendo Switch recording feature), but this is also a remake that’s just passable enough with its beautiful 3D visuals that a lot of players likely won’t notice outside of the occasional inopportune death. The good news, however, is that the publisher of R-Type Dimensions III has stated that they’ve heard the complaints from the shmup community and will be trying to make fixes, which hopefully the collision problems and the inability to block specific projectiles from enemies with your Force or Bits are high on the priority list.
The bones of R-Type Dimensions III is good because R-Type III is good. With a little bit of testing and updates, this could be an excellent remake for a classic shoot-em-up just like R-Type Dimensions. As it stands, though, R-Type Dimensions III is a game for those curious about shmups and that are casually interested in experiencing a tough-as-nails title with all the attitude of the early 90s, but hardcore fans of the SNES original may wind up more frustrated than satisfied. At least, that’s until the developers perform a little bit of patch TLC to this entry to fix errant collision and hit boxes.
