Inspired by sgronblo I’ve finally found the groove to work on R-Type, which is something I’ve wanted to do since I finished Delta and I’ve had a clear of the game on my list of gaming goals to achieve for a while. I was actually making some nice progress on Last Resort before this, but then I got sidetracked into Borderlands for ~40 hours. No doubt I’ll be returning to Last Resort though, I made it to Stage 4 (out of 5) on a credit and after checking out Stage 5 with creditfeeding it looked pretty damn crazy awesome fun. And hard.

But R-Type. Even though it’s a fairly short game, it’s still annoying to practice the later stages when the tactics change completely depending on if you’re properly powered up or recovering from death on a checkpoint. Solution, emulation. But the game doesn’t support savestates in mame, using them actually crashed my computer. Luckily, the R-Types collection for PS1 works far better in this and I’ve been using a PS1 emulator to practice the stages with savestates. Both R-Types and the Dimensions port have actual stage select modes, but since they just start you at the beginning of the stage without any power-ups whatsoever they’re a bit useless, especially since I’m aiming to no-miss the game. Scoring via checkpoint abuse in Stage 7 be damned.

And so, I’ve now cleared every stage individually and have started doing full runs. I’m actually going to clear the game on the Dimensions port, at least for starters. If I feel like taking on the second loop I can always just play my R-Types. The early stages are a no-brainer, though Stage 4 boss still sometimes catches me by surprise. Stage 5 is probably the easiest stage of all as long as the ship’s properly equipped. Stage 6 sort of feels harder than Stage 7…it’s not as hectic, but in many places you’re confined to very small spaces where it’s easy to accidentally manuever into a wall.

Stage 7 is the one I spent the most time practicing. I had already gotten good enough to clear the first six stages just from normal play but Stage 7 had eluded me and it was the biggest reason I felt the need to practice with savestates. Not a terribly hard stage as such, but many little things that can go wrong…like getting caught by a blast of steam from a wall, which ended my latest no-miss full run. sgronblo prefers Blue weapon there, but I’ve found Yellow to suit me best. And Yellow allows me to abuse a safespot right in front of the boss which I couldn’t get to work with Blue. Here’s hoping the Dimensions port doesn’t differ here. If it doesn’t, I should have the clear soon-ish.