R-Type, the iconic horizontal shooter is Irem’s most famous game series. What made the games memorable was their “Force” function: a detachable drone bonded with the player’s ship… and their brutal difficulty! But gamers haven’t heard much from either party lately: Irem has scaled back on game production significantly and intentionally retired the R-Type series with the appropriately titled R-Type Final for the PlayStation 2 way back in 2003. It looked like that was going to be the final new installment of the series and future releases would be nothing more than re-releases, ports, compilations and the like.
North American package art for R-Type Final.
Much like the Neverending Story or Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter: Irem has defied our expectations and rescinded their vow to cap off their series. This year, they have announced that a new R-Type game will be succeeding R-Type Final: R-Type Final 2. The game has been in development by Granzella (which mostly consists of former Irem staff). Goro Matsuo, the producer of the game has personally previously worked on R-Type Delta and R-Type Final. The game has been partially financed by crowdfunding.
With a ballpark release date of 2020, no month or day of the week has been specified nor has an MSRP. What is currently known is that the game will be available for all modern consoles: PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC (Via Steam.)
Stay tuned to GameTyrant as more information develops.
