R-Type III - The Third Lightning USA

R-Type III - The Third Lightning for the Game Boy Advance is a disappointing port of a terrific game. The game suffers from poor collision detection (dying from "touching" an enemy when they're a good 20 pixels above your ship), and a scoring system that does not stay true to the original. The wonderful soundtrack of the SNES version has also been completely demolished. The rockin' melody of the Force selection screen is nonexistent, and the levels don't have the same feel to them. The music of stage one, in particular, is extremely repetitive and no longer has that crunchy, rock-based feel of the original. I do not attribute this to the hardware limitations of the Game Boy Advance either, as series such as Mega Man Battle Network and Mega Man Zero have demonstrated what a good sound engineer can do. Raylight Studios, the developers of the port, argue that the poor quality is due to a lack of the original game source code, which required them to build the game up from scratch. In my opinion, source code or not, there is no excuse for the poor quality of this game. Don't waste your time with this one, and to anyone new to the R-Type series, do not let this particular port affect your opinion of the games. Just get the SNES version.