Anyone here played this series? For those who don't know, R-Type was a series of side-scrolling shooters developed by Irem. Notable for their challenge and for "the Force" (not related at all to the Star Wars force) which was a pod that could be attached to the front or back of the ship for extra firepower, or allowed to float around on its own, killing enemies for you.
I discovered this series when I saw R-Type and R-Type III available on the Wii's Virtual Console (original for TurboGrafx, the latter for SNES). Those two games hooked me in a way few games ever have. I even hunted down a copy of the last game in the series, R-Type Final, for the PS2, and am currently attempting to beat it (so far unsuccessfully, as these games are hard).
Anyway, the series was apparently extremely popular back in the day, and I was wondering if anyone who'd played them is here on the site?