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Back in 1987, Irem released the now world famous horizontally scrolling shoot-'em-up, and conversion rights to the plethora of home computers systems in the west was soon snapped up by Activision using their Electric Dreams label.

As anyone who knows anything at all about gaming, R-Type was a massive hit and huge step for the genre. One of the biggest improvements over games from the past was the introduction of 'the Force', an indestructible orb that sits out the front of the R-9 fighter (or indeed, guarding its rear as was needed later in the game).

The real story begins in 1988 when a new small company by the name of Factor 5 was formed and quickly developed a game clearly inspired by R-Type. Katakis was released by Rainbows Arts across Europe (via US Gold in the UK) on both the C64 and the Amiga...and they were very quickly withdrawn with litigation threatened by Irem/Activision as the game was a little too close to the R-Type arcade experience.

No one really gave a monkeys about the Amiga version as the C64 was the cash generator at the time, and given the amount of work that had already gone into the project, Katakis was altered, and re-released as Denaris (at least in the UK), and indeed distributed with the original name in other places. However, though the C64 version was seriously de-R-Typed the Amiga version only had a veneer of alteration. However it was clear that both had impressed Irem and Activision as Factor 5 was hired to convert the 'real' R-Type to both formats!

Factor 5 had three months on the Amiga version (and, I believe, a similar amount of time on the C64 version), but let's face it, the major work had been done and the results were arguably the best 8-bit and by far the best 16-bit conversion of the arcade title (bar the arcade-perfect PC Engine version obviously).

Bizarrely though it's not really the brilliant game conversion or indeed the fairly accurate graphics on both formats (bearing in mind the graphical limitations of the machines, which were successfully blown away as the formats matured!) that stick in the mind for me.

You see, Chris Huelsbeck was involved with Factor 5 for the first time, and spent a great deal of those three months on the music for both versions.

The music in the original arcade machine was rather, well... basic. It was very chiptune like, and Chris managed to enhance the soundtrack immensely, including better versions of the background music for the levels, but also new title tunes - very different for the C64 and Amiga versions. It's these themes that seem to well and truly stick in people's memories (though to be fair, it's the C64 version that has been remixed to the point of near stupidity!)

If you are interested however a visit to Amigaremix brings a remix of the music from level 7, while C64 remix has remixes of the main theme. If you are running Amiga Forever or legally running a UAE permutation, you may want to check out the free downloads from Factor 5 which include ADF Amiga versions of R-Type and Katakis.

I love this game!

Official R-Type page:
www.irem.co.jp/e/game/r/rtype/index.html

Factor 5 downloads:
www.factor5.com/downloads.shtml

Amiga Remix:
www.amigaremix.com

C64 Remix:
www.c64remix.com

First Level Remix:
www.maxalbums.com/mp3/149455/J%20Lof-r-type%20Circles/R-type%20Circles/