Remember this? It used to be called the infinity beam. It's back, but there are better weapons

The PlayStation doesn't really have a surfeit of shoot 'em ups, unlike the current crowded driving scene. Future Gamer looks at a game to change all that...
Ben Vost

Those among you who go way back with videogames will remember pumping 10ps into your local arcade's R-Type machine for the pleasure of blasting the evil Bydo empire. While it was nice to be able to choose your power-ups in other games, nothing came close to the indestructible glory of the R9's powerball, which could be attached to the front or back of your ship or even left to roam free and help you wipe out the bad guys in its semi-autonomous way.

Above all, it was a hard game to play, and we mean hard like pre-stressed concrete. You had to have nerves of steel, an almost preternatural avoidance of enemy bullets, based not on a visual cue, but an almost 'force'-like sense of where they would be, and a photographic memory to remember exactly where the next fish-faced fiend would surface.

It's nice to be able to say that R-Type Delta on the PlayStation retains ALL these things, but has the possible added benefits of a pseudo-3D playing area and bad guys. To be honest, it doesn't really make an awful lot of difference since you are concentrating so hard on not being killed that the graphics could be ZX81 standard and you wouldn't care. Irem have, however, given you absolutely glorious-looking enemies to pump full of lead - each one imaginative, new and organic-looking, from killer fish and giant robots to pulsating mounds of pustulence.