How R-Type Delta sums up my failed Air Force career
R-Type Delta (1999)
R-Type Delta (1999)
One day at work, megabored, I decided to investigate the possibility of a career change. Naturally I started my search by researching the requirements to become a jet fighter pilot and bloody hell, the list was as long as your arm. It makes one wonder, do they want an air force or not?!
I mean it. Make the barrier for entry too high, and you’ll end up with nobody up there. The battle for air supremacy will be lost if you keep being picky. I’ve got more runner-up medals and participation trophies than you can imagine, so clearly I’m a pretty qualified guy. But these Air Force heavies, all they wanna do is exclude you.
First of all, you need to hold a Bachelor’s degree. Can you believe it, I actually meet that first requirement. I was pretty chuffed with that. I noticed a wee footnote after that, which mentioned something about it having to be a “competitive” grade, with “engineering or aeronautical disciplines preferred”. So I’ll perhaps have to do a bit of degree doctoring there, but that’s no issue.
Next, the physical requirements. OK, for the US Air Force, and since I’m not a US citizen I’d be ineligible anyway but let’s just pretend, then the height range I can fall into is 5’4 to 6’3, and I’m smack-bang in the middle of that. That’s the second hurdle, easily jumped. Does Commander Burkey sound good to you yet?
But then they had to go and spoil it all by including an eyesight requirement. Contrary to popular belief, you don’t have to have perfect sight, merely near-perfect. Did you know that 20/20 isn’t perfect vision? Did you know that I never see 20s, not even in my bank account?
Yes, unfortunately I even need glasses to drive. Still, I usually don’t bother driving with them, particularly at night-time when nobody can see anything anyway. After all, it wasn’t vision, but clairvoyance, and a roadgoing sixth-sense, that got me through all those frosty mornings, when the windscreen would be fully frozen and I’d be driving through rush hour traffic looking through a small, melted circle in the middle of the ice. An ability like that has to count for something in the Air Force, right?
And I keep mentioning the Air Force in particular because if you fancy flying jets for the Navy, then you need to do water survival training, including getting into a terrifying contraption called a Helo Dunker. This thing simulates a downed chopper filling up with water. The point is to train you to save lives at sea. Sounds noble, but it’d probably be at this sticky point that I’d have to come clean to my commanding officer:
“Look mate, ah, commandant. Hate to cause a fuss or anything, but I can’t exactly swim, sir.” A look of incredulity, followed by a pucening of the face, and then...
“Whaaaat? The war is starting in three days! Didn’t you see that memo from the North Koreans?”
“Yeah, yeah, I know... like I say, hate to be a pain, but I don’t fancy water much.”
“You’re a dickhead, Burke.”
“Yes sir, you’re absolutely right sir.”
I’d be lucky to even get a dishonourable discharge. They’d probably just throw me into the water and have the burial-at-sea there and then. Get Jack Nicholson in to testify all kinds of lies about what happened. Which wouldn’t matter anyway, because Tom Cruise wouldn’t even bother defending my honour. I bet he’s great at the Helo Dunker too - he was a Top Gun, you know.
I keep mentioning the US military in particular as well, because the planes we have in the Irish Air Corps are Pilatus PC-9s and PC-12s, both of which you really need to see for yourself - they look like they could be outmaneuvered by the Wright brothers, and they ain’t exactly gonna look good coming in to land on an aircraft carrier.
Speaking of which, part of your flight training for the US Navy will indeed involve landing on a carrier. Sounds horribly frightening, but I can do it with no issue on Top Gun NES so what’s the trouble? I bet Tom Cruise is great at that too.
Still, I best not mention my Nintendo prowess to the austere commander, if I’m lucky enough to still have one by that stage. Quote or make reference to Top Gun once in Navy Flight School and you get fined. Do it three times and you’ll most likely become subject to a blanket party, Gomer Pyle style, and made to disappear.
Well, the upshot of all this is that I’m DQ’ed from active service. That’s before we get anywhere near the rest of the physical exams, where nul points on the beep test won’t do me much good anyway. That’s to say nothing of actually flying those beasts, and coping with G-forces - I can barely cope with driving down a hill too fast. As a result, I’m resigned to a life of merely pretending to be a fighter pilot instead of looking at spreadsheets.
Still, at least that opens up the R-Type games to me. Now here’s what you’d call a proper simulation: one hit and you are brown bread, and it doesn’t matter what supplementary training you’ve had. I wouldn’t call that a return on investment, would you? Years of training someone, and they die in one second?
Anyway, 2D games in the PlayStation and Nintendo era were quickly becoming gauche, in favour or polygons and textures that made you feel like your eyes are melting out of your sockets. R-Type Delta on PlayStation 1 went for a 2.5D approach, which works well - it is still functionally the same 2D-planed shooter, where it’s you and your super fragile spaceship against the aliens, and nobody is going to help you.
Where the Super Nintendo’s R-Type III gave you three different Force Devices (three differently coloured, detachable spaceguns with different lasers, essentially), Delta pushes the barrel out by giving you three different ships altogether, plus an unlockable one, giving you many different ways to play. There’s adjustable difficulty levels as well, not that Easy means Easy.
No, here “Easy” means “Earth has no chance” and “Hard” means “You’re dead, Earth is destroyed, your friends are toast and we’ve skinned your dog, too”. That said, the opening level is one of the best in gaming, in my opinion. Certainly in the shooting genre it stands out, even above R-Type III’s opener. It’s got great music, bundles of action and explosions galore.
That’s all well and good, but Stage 3 is where I tend to hit the wall. Quite literally, in this case - up to this point in the series, any brush with the wall spelled an embarrassing instadeath for your ship and the little ant-sized pilot inside. Delta lets you scrape your ship against the wall as often as you want, giving you nothing more than a playful dig in the arm, a kind of “ah, go on, we’ll let you away with that one” response.
But Stage 3 in R-Type Delta is the traditional series battleship level, where the entire stage environment is an enemy battleship, a walking quadruped tank in this case, that you’ll be destroying in multiple parts.
Drive your glass plane into this tank’s “walls”, which I tend to do many, many times in a row, and you’re gone. This leaves you sitting there for an uncomfortable half-second of deafening silence, bewildered, trying to determine what it was that totalled your ship this time. What I want to know is, how do you let something six times the size of a Metal Gear sneak up on you in the first place?
I hate to admit it, but Stage 5 out of 7 is as far as I’ve gotten, and that’s on Easy mode. I know I mentioned before about being able to see into the future as I drove my little car through the icy mornings. But I have to admit it, I had outside assistance.
I was helped along by beeps from opposition cars, as well as vague outlines of rude hand gestures. That demonstrates a real attention to detail, you know, something that would have served me well in the Air Force, I would have thought. R-Type Delta, however, demands just a little bit more than that.
Though it kicks me into the dirt every time I attempt to beat it, this is a game I’m particularly fond of, even if it reminds me of my (many) aviation inadequacies. But that’s why those guys rule the skies and probably bed a hundred women a night, while I must be content to sit down here on plain old Earth and get vaporised on my PS1. I bet Tom Cruise and the boys are no good at Microsoft Excel, though.
12 December 2025