The former SNES exclusive R-Type III: The Third Lightning has been reborn anew. But can Lighting strike twice?
If you have ever evangelised enthusiastically about the shmup genre only to be met with a blank look, you might have resorted to namechecking some classics of the form. Perhaps Raiden or Gradius. And almost certainly R-Type. Marking a visual and mechanical leap forward for 2D shooters when the series debuted in 1987, R-Type is undoubtedly one of the most recognisable, defining examples of its genre.
And yet all these decades on it stands out as relatively distinct. Today the legacy of works by Toaplan and CAVE – from Batsugan to DoDonPachi – have made bullet hell the new normal. If you’re looking for overwhelming swarms of vibrant bullets, bewilderingly elaborate scoring systems, and diminutive hitboxes, you may want to look elsewhere.
R-Type Dimensions III is a devoutly traditional shooter. In fact, you may already know it well. Created by the team at KRITZELKRATZ 3000, it serves up a high-definition remake of the 1993 SNES exclusive R-Type III: The Third Lightning. Well received at launch, The Third Lightning has been the subject of very limited porting to date. R-Type fans have been waiting a long time.
Lay down your £30 on R-Type Dimensions III and you are greeted with a fairly straightforward offering. You get the main game, playable in its original pixel-art form, or with entirely new high-definition visuals. There are a scattering of extras we’ll explore below, but nothing like profoundly rearranged modes or new stages.
Undoubtedly, however, R-Type III: The Third Lightning is an enticing work. Taking to the skies once more to fend off the persistent bio-mechanical alien menace that is the Bydo Empire, you’ll find a game that eagerly leans into the facets that made the original R-Type so distinct. There’s the horizontally scrolling, bullet dodging action you’d expect, but being an R-type game, to play is an exercise in persistence and claustrophobia.
This is an arcade-informed shooter where the scenery is as much of a threat to your mission as any enemy. Clip a ledge or dangling organic tentacle, and you’ll instantly lose a life. Most stages take the form of tightly packed, maze-like landscapes, often with scenery elements that move around you, boxing you in, or blocking off opportunities to escape clusters of Bydo foes. The result is tense, dramatic play that insists you unearth and memorise an ideal route through the game. In shmup parlance, the term ‘memoriser’ carries a little insinuation. While many adore such games, that term also suggests a limitation on individual player style and approach. But if you do like shmups that play that way, the sado-masochistic process of finding out how the hell to stay alive can be deeply rewarding.
What gives you a fighting chance is a fairly elaborate system of shields, different weapon types, and most significantly, ‘options’; the likes of floating pods or familiars found across the genre that follow your ship, unleashing additional firepower or blocking enemy ordnance. In R-Type Dimensions III, you can pick one of three ‘Forces’; large options that can be attached to the front or rear of your ship, shooting either way. Those Forces also function as a shield, and can be fired off to smash through scenery or point blank enemies. Each also comes with three different weapons of its own, from spreadshots scenery penetrating lasers.
There’s also various shield pods that hover around your craft, homing missiles, and other pick-ups that together provide a wildly varied set of offensive and defensive abilities. To play the, is a dance with your options, perhaps flinging out a Force at a larger enemy behind you while deliberately using those shield pods to crash into enemies too tucked away to be dispatched with your standard shots. The result is a deeply strategic, methodical, slowly paced shmup where you won’t spend a moment pondering milking scoring from elaborate multiplier systems.
Credit where it’s due; in R-Type Dimensions III you’ll be forced to use every tool at your disposal to survive, encouraging you to adopt and explore a good variety of strategies and playstyles.
Unfortunately, R-Type III: The Third Lightning hasn’t aged perfectly. In an era dominated by nimble, lively bullet hell games, R-Type Dimensions III does feel a little sluggish and grinding by comparison. If you’re a series fan, of course, that won’t put you off one bit.
With the base game covered, what have KRITZELKRATZ 3000 brought to the table to thrust Irem’s original into 2026? Most notably, the graphical overhaul is significant, and on the whole impressive. R-Type III: The Third Lightning was already a notably atmospheric game, both visually and sonically. Made from a tangle of grotesque organic forms, brutalist concrete structures, and futuristic flashes of steel and laser, the game served up a very distinct, tangible-felling sense of being somewhere distant, alien, and other. Rather than simply polish things, KRITZELKRATZ 3000 have rebuilt every stage, presenting a gleaming, detailed world of eerie monstrosity. There’s even a hint of alien body horror to the new presentation, and it fits perfectly. This is how we imagined R-Type III might look when we imagined its future back in 1993.
With a press of a button, at any point in the game, you can hop between the new 3D visuals, and the original graphics. And at point you might need to. In both modes, bullet visibility can fall a little short – and there is nothing more frustrating than a good run falling apart because of a shot that blends in with the background. But what is hard to see in the original visuals might be made clearer with a switch to the reworked presentation – and vice versa.
The musical score has also been significantly rewritten – and again, you can hop between the new and original audio backdrops. The music here is very good; atmospheric, knowingly unsettling, and authentic to its source material. Unfortunately, some tracks appear to stall on rare occasions, while the audio mix of music and sound effects feels a little clumsy and inconsistent. Some weapons feel a little quiet, while other audio elements rasp through with excessive presence.
As for much else new, it’s hard not to long for more. A decade ago, R-Type Dimensions III’s offering might have been enough. Today, however, we have been spoiled by new standards set by shmup release series like M2’s ShotTriGgers. There classics like Ketsui and DoDonPachi DaiOuJou get much more than a visual and sonic update. M2 introduce new difficulty settings, original modes with reworked scoring and enemy placement, archive materials, near excessively elaborate display settings, and in the case of their Aleste compilation, an entirely new sequel.
And then there’s R-Type Dimensions III, where you get a jukebox mode, and generally rudimentary display settings when it comes to the original visuals. You can tune the new visuals in some interesting ways, with filters like the ‘Retro 2.0’ setting applying a soft pixelated style to those HD visuals.
All that said, the new ‘Infinite’ mode deserves a hat tip for addressing the R-Type III: The Third Lightning’s brutal difficulty. Switch to Infinite, and beyond getting infinite lives, the punishing checkpoints of the original are gone. Take a hit, and you can carry on from that moment, with any force you were carrying returning with your ship. Lose a life in R-Type III: The Third Lightning, and you are sent a way back to a checkpoint, with all your extra firepower and options stripped away – often triggering a cascade of further deaths as you try to battle your way back to greatness with something of a peashooter weapon. Infinite mode offers less experienced players a manageable way to see the whole game through, and feels like a true modernisation. At the same time, having endless lives somewhat undermines a sense of overcoming the odds, which is a key appeal of the genre. Being able to adjust Infinite mode – perhaps setting the number of lives – would have been a grand improvement.
Credit to the new two-player mode, which introduces simultaneous co-op to the game for the first time – though as the difficulty ramps up, meaningful collaborative play becomes a rather messy affair.
There really isn’t anything wrong with R-Type Dimensions III’s quality-of-life modernisations; there could just be a little deal more ambition on that front. It would have been a dream to see an M2 style reimagining, with new enemy and bullet placement. That’s a big ask, but one shmup fans have become used to being answered.
More generally, there’s a little lack of polish to the whole package. UI elements overlap text in the ‘How to Play’ guide. Control rebinding is very limited, which might irk arcade stick users. In-game damage to larger enemies is in occasional cases hard to detect visually, making it tricky to tell if you are doing anything successful in boss battles. The stage two boss in particular feels like it goes down far too easily with a charged shot. Hitboxes can be hard to read and understand. And there’s that occasionally jarring audio mixing and cutting.
The ambition and intent of the team feels clear. This is a heartfelt attempt to revitalise The Third Lightning. But things feel a patch or two away from being where they should. With those issues resolved, it would be utterly reasonable to add a point or two to the score.
Again, the base game is a solid one, even if it feels a little dated when considered through the genre’s evolution. Infinite mode provides a fairly considerate means to welcome newer players. And the new visuals and score really are great, aside from the odd performance issue. But for that £30 price tag on Steam, there are a few too many bugs, and modernisations are relatively limited.
The mainline R-Type series was supposed to be concluded definitively by 2003’s R-Type Final. Then, to delight and amusement, R-Type Final 2 arrived in 2021, before it was rebuilt as R-Type Final 3 EX two years following.R-Type doesn’t seem quite committed to concluding its series.
After throwing plenty of credits through R-Type-Dimensions III, it is hard not to long for a truly new, modern addition to the series. In the meantime, KRITZELKRATZ 3000’s latest might get you through, particularly if you’re feeling nostalgic, and willing to accept those shortcomings.
