The Creation of R-Type: Developer Interview

R-Type is a side scrolling shoot-em-up arcade game produced by Irem in 1987. It spawned a long series of sequels and spinoffs for Nintendo systems that are still being released today.

In this interview, the small team of developers for the original title discuss the issues they encountered while making the game. They also drop a few pieces of interesting trivia. Here are some examples:

• The look of ship with its attached Force power up got its inspiration from dung beetles

• The programmers were very aware of the existence of another space shooter, Konami's Gradius

• Developers worked hard to come up with outlandish and interesting designs for weapons

• The "R" in R-Type stands for ray, because there are many types of ray weapons in the game