R-Type changed shoot-em-ups forever. It took the core gameplay of Scramble and Gradius - fly from left to right, collect power ups and kill things - and blasted the genre into new, previously unimaginable realms.
After R-Type's release to arcades in 1987, developers had to come up with their own weapon systems to match the innovation and sheer cunning of that game's Force, an indestructible orb that could be used as a shield or a brutal battering ram to tear into the enemy's ranks. After R-Type, every shooter needed a spectacle to match the curling mass of tails and eyeballs that was Dobkerratops, the creature that scrolled menacingly into view at the end of the first stage, or the bravura spaceship found in stage three, a monstrosity so vast that it had to be destroyed one piece at a time - in essence, it was one relentless boss fight. In short, R-Type became the standard by which all other shooters were judged.
Indeed, R-Type cast a shadow so great that Irem never quite stepped out of it. They released many other games - shooter or otherwise - but these never reached the creative pinnacle that their most famous creation represented. Like Joseph Heller with his most famous novel, Catch 22, or Orson Wells and his directorial debut Citizen Kane, Irem's name became synonymous with R-Type, and everything that came after it - including the R-Type sequels themselves - were deemed anaemic by comparison.
X-Multiply was one of three shooters released by Irem in 1989, and in many ways it's simply a variation on a theme; another side scrolling shoot-em-up with bio-mechanical visuals, there's initially little to suggest that X-Multiply is anything more than a derivative regurgitation of the developer's previous ideas, its premise - a miniaturised ship injected into a human body to destroy alien parasites - a flimsy excuse for an extended reworking of its illustrious predecessor's visceral second stage.
Only gradually does it become apparent that X-Multiply does, in fact, have an identity all its own; the weapon system, which initially feels like a cagey re-working of R-Type's force, eventually becomes a deadly and eerily graceful tool of destruction. Where other late eighties/early nineties shooters were all too keen to head down a blind alley of flashier ordnance to an oddly desensitising effect, Irem wisely took another, more austere path.
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