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Back in 1988 there appeared a coin-op shoot-'em-up conversion that took the world - well, quite a few people, anyway - by storm. That magnificent game was R-Type, and now, long overdue, here's the follow-up.

There's little change in the plot from the first version - er, what plot there was. Having defeated the evil Bydo empire at the end of that game, you must now - well, defeat it again, actually, by flying through five horizontally scrolling levels and shooting five shades of sugar out of the Bydos.

Along the way you encounter small droids which, when shot, leave behind crystal tokens. These you eventually come to recognise as extra weapons. It may be the small shiplet you can affix to the front or back of your craft, providing extra firepower as well as protection; or enemy-seeking missiles; or the bounce laser that scythes through the enemies like a hot poker through slightly congealed fat. Combine two or three of these and you're virtually unstoppable - at least until you get killed (I said "virtually", remember), whereupon you revert to your normal puny self.

99.5% of the world's population - that is, everyone who's played R-Type - should find the graphics familiar. Your R-9 fighter is exactly the same and so are all the bits you can bolt onto it, though of course the new weapons demand some new graphics. In play, the scrolling seems a little slower, but the increased difficulty level warrants this. Other graphics - ships, aliens, guns - are nicely detailed and colourful, but they don't move particularly smoothly. Missing, too, is that believably "organic" feel that left you not quite knowing whether the walls and background were actually alive or not. And those tunes are back - the ones you can bear hearing once or maybe even twice, but any more and you wake up in the middle of the night with them running through your head. Then you know it's time to turn them off in favour of the spot effects.

As enjoyable as R-Type 2 is, it doesn't quite reach the heights or the original. The graphics have lost that weirdly effective organic quality but offer nothing startingly new. The original was such a superbly addictive blast that it seems a shame to follow it up with what amounts to basically the same thing. As a game in its own right, R-Type 2 is passable but nothing special - a straight-forward blaster that may appeal to those who haven't experienced its prequel. Those who have, approach with caution.