R-Type Delta HD Boosted is a good update of a classic game, but it might be missing some Quality of Life features that we’ve come to expect of remasters.
This version of R-Type is a remaster of a classic PlayStation game. It’s one of the better R-Type games, and sort of a mainstay on the PS1 platform. It is hard as hell, but in a good way. Heck, it’s hard even for a non-bullet hell SHMUP.
There are some nice little additions to this release. We can play it in widescreen or an enhanced widescreen or its normal full frame. It’s got a new soundtrack by folks that have performed historically R-Type music. And that’s kind of it.
We expect when you get a package for a release like this for it to have something very specific. It’s missing two of the most what I kind of consider critical things that we expect from these sort of remasters, and when we realize a feature is not there we definitely miss it. And those are scan-lines and rewinding. They may not seem critical, but when they’re not there then we might as well just play a directly ported release on a service like PlayStation Plus. The HD visual bumps are fine, but without those two QoL standards then this update sort of becomes moot. In fact, I’ve played most of it with the modern touches turned off, just as an original PlayStation game. That’s not even really bringing up some of the timing and control issues — some things just feel a tiny bit off in response. It may not be a dealbreaker for us regular gamers, but for R-Type fanatics it may be much more noticeable.
It’s a good game, and it’s nice to have from a historical aspect, but there are enough little issues like these that essentially have me wondering if I want to just play one of the other R-Type games in various collections instead.
This review is based on a Steam code sent to SideQuesting by the publisher. This video originally appeared in The SideQuest LIVE for December 02, 2025.
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