R-Type Delta HD Boosted, let's take off again and destroy the Bydo Empire!

It was 1987, and Irem had released this wonderful arcade shooter. R-Type was one of the first titles I played in my life, the game that laid the cornerstone for the future and is still an essential benchmark today. Almost forty years have passed, but one of the most iconic episodes is about to return to our screens. I am obviously talking about R-Type Delta, which with this new HD Boosted version will give younger players a seminal title, whose impact on industry professionals’ view of how to design a game level meant to entertain and stimulate without excessively frustrating the player was nothing short of remarkable.

With its worldwide release on November 20, 2025, on all major next-gen consoles and PC, R-Type Delta HD Boosted, as the name itself suggests, is ready to take off with a refreshed look, boasting high definition and dusting off the legendary gameplay that made it beloved by its audience.  The game’s story is, as often happens with this kind of game, merely an excuse to jump into the fray and go all out with laser bullets, homing missiles, and sci-fi upgrades that will let us customize R-9, the name of the sophisticated flying war machine we will pilot, all the way to the highest levels. The Bydo alien empire wants to subjugate humanity, and the cutting-edge space fighter we will command will be the last desperate resource of the interplanetary resistance: the Delta backgrounds are spectacular, as is customary for the saga, with their incredible details and the sensation they convey at every level of not being inside massive metal structures and cold alien bases, but rather inside a sentient living organism that breathes, watches… and gives orders to kill us in the most varied ways possible.

Originally released in 1998, it brings back the distinctive elements that made it a success: the Force drone returns to help us, expanding our firepower in multiple directions and in different ways depending on the upgrade capsule we choose to pick up in the endless space; moreover, the Beam Ray will also make a grand return. By holding down the fire button long enough to “charge” the shot, when we release it we will generate a deadly beam against our enemies: in 1998 the effect was extraordinary, but the new boosted version will decorate televisions with a triumph of colors and stunning graphical details.

The obstacles along our path will be many and very, very punishing: crossfire positions, jagged rocks and increasingly narrow flight corridors, levels with sudden verticality and labyrinthine rooms dominated by biomechanical serpents, armored mechs and even rotating steel parallelepipeds: all this while keeping in mind that at the slightest contact with an enemy bullet or the enemy itself, we will lose one of the three lives available to complete the main story.

Now that I’ve stopped jumping behind backs to watch other people’s games, I can thank with a smile the older boys I used to want to emulate. And I’ll do it by playing, that’s always the best way, and by sweeping away a whole lot of alien scum from around the Earth.

E.T. don't take it amiss.