R-Type Comes to iPhone

Instabuy! One of my favourite games of all time and a solid-gold classic, R-Type, is coming to iPhone:

It was last November when we first heard that DotEmu was at work porting Irem’s classic 1987 arcade shmup R-Type to iPhone. Yesterday, EA Mobile made it official: it’ll be publishing the game on the App Store “this summer,” but couldn’t get more specific due to the unpredictable nature of Apple’s app approval process.

We had a chance to get our hands on the game at EA yesterday and we’ve got to say, the port has turned out great, with three control schemes (touch to move and shoot, tilt to move / touch to shoot or an overlaid d-pad and buttons) plus options such as autofire and the ability to switch between full-screen and the original coin-op aspect ratio. Cleverly, DotEmu has created separate on-screen buttons for charged shots and launching the “Force” pod away from the player’s R9 fighter.

R-Type on iPhone

I’m glad they are looking again at the controls.  I purchased the iPhone version of Golden Axe the other day and though I could complete this on Master System without loosing a single life (but when I was a yoof) I struggled with the controls on the iPhone version 😦

(Or is it just that I’m getting old and my reaction time has slipped???)