Before you read this, put on some Whitesnake.

Yeah that’s right. Here I go, again on my ooooown.

Is it going? Good.

R-Type Dimensions, the combination of R-Type, R-Type II, and polygons, will hit the X-Box Live arcade tomorrow, reviving a bit of that late 80’s shoot-em-up glory. The game costs 1200 Microsoft Moon Points ($15 real dollars), which is a bit more than your average XBLA game. However, if you’re a SHMUP fan, you drop that much in any given session at an arcade, so no complaining.

The game gives players the ability to toggle between old school sprites and new fangled 3D hotness on the fly just by pressing the Y button. In addition, players can also view the game at a skewed angle - a feature that even the game’s website can’t convincingly justify.

R-Type Dimensions will also continue the time honored tradition of nudging your partner into walls and wasting the last life with co-operative play (though collision detection can be turned off). I can already hear the wails of anger and incredulity echoing in my headset.

For the folks that like a more stress free experience (read: sissies), the game will also offer an infinite mode with unlimited continues. To post high scores, players will have to man up to a limited stock though.

It’s lucky that gamers will get a chance to play the first two games, as they are quite integral to the epic and ongoing story of R-Type. No doubt newer players have been confused by missing some of the complex narritive, which was elegantly summarized thusly by 2003’s R-Type Final:

The Humans of the 26th century abandoned a horrible weapon in space.

That mistake has come back to haunt us in the form of the Bydo Empire.

Also, if you feel like being particularly cruel, point out to a friend the very intentional and very phallic monster design. Once you see a giant penis shooting sperm at you, you can’t unsee it.