Yoooooo! I just learned that earlier this month R-Type Final 2 released!!!
I've just bought it and oh man is it juicy!

I don't know if I'm making this post in an attempt to plug it or if I'm doing it just because I'm super excited and have nowhere to channel this love, so forgive me if it's a little sporadic.

I got into the series when they hit the Wii Shop Channel, so long after the franchise ended with R-Type Final on the PS2 (though I suppose it did have that odd tactics games that came out of nowhere on the PSP). I've since been able to gather and play about half of them and understand how this franchise came to be one of the cornerstones of the shmup genre.

And would you look at that, this new company (Granzella) behind R-Type Final 2 is actually make up of people that split off of the original studio (irem) behind R-Type. It looks like a fair number of the people who initially made R-Type split off from irem because they weren't happy when irem decided to basically stop making games and focus on... pachinko and slot machines... (ugh)

The announcement they were working on R-Type Final 2 came out on April 1st. I thought it was just a joke, chuckled, and move on. But it turns out while I wasn't paying attention they raised over a million bucks through kickstarter and this baby has been in development for 3-4 years.
It's not been too widely advertised so I only stumbled back on it by chance.
But now it's here!
And damn it's really rad!
And none of my friends are into shmups so I have no one to talk to about this AAAAAAAAH!