R-Type III on SNES is one of those shooters that makes you appreciate how hard the genre can go. Yeah, it's a sequel, but it cranks everything up—the pixel art is crisp, the Mode 7 effects give bosses this wild sense of scale, and the soundtrack? Pure 16-bit adrenaline.

You start off with the classic R-Type ship, but the real fun comes from the new Force Pod system. Instead of just one attachment, you get three types to swap between mid-game—each with its own quirks. I kept bouncing between the standard one and the lightning-fast Shadow Force, though the third option’s homing shots saved my skin more than once.

Fair warning: it’s brutal. Some stages feel like they’re actively trying to crush you, but nailing a perfect run after a dozen tries? That’s the good stuff. The SNES hardware really flexes here, especially in later levels where everything’s spinning, scaling, or exploding in ways that shouldn’t work on a cartridge. Still holds up.