Last night I played the demo of the fan/doujin port of R-Type on the Megadrive that shmuppers were deprived of back in the day! The Master System and PC Engine got ports of R-Type, but not the Megadrive… until now! It’s actually not a “port” per se, as it is being built ground-up by an Italian family guy living in China who goes by “TheRoboz” on YouTube. The MD-generated music is fantastic! I paid for the demo rom and gave it a shot. You go from stage 1 to stages I’ve never gotten to before. The game isn’t complete and it seems to be a bit too liberal with the 1UPs for some reason. You can play as the standard R-9 Arrowhead, but also the “Leo Prototype.” Don’t get too excited about the Leo though… it doesn’t have the dual force orbs that R-Type Leo has, but rather no force orb and each powerup gives you the instant special weapons. You can shoot the powerups to change their color, like a Cotton game does. It’s definitely the Leo though, as you can tell by the sprites that it’s a rendering of the ship from R-Type Leo, but on the Megadrive. Neat gimmick, but I think I prefer having the force orb.
I used SimpleScreenRecorder in Linux to record playing as both ships. I did better the first try, but then I realized that it was recording audio from my webcam’s mic and not the actual game. So I re-did the video all over again and I ended up not doing as well. That’s what you see here. Stick around to the end… the music for the ranking screen is a fantastic MD chiptune!
(Gosh, it is a pain in the ass to embed Odysee links in WordPress!)
The site to buy and download the rom: https://theroboz.itch.io/mega-r-type
The creator’s YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@theroboz