Former Irem director and current Granzella head Kazuma Kujo recently talked about an R-Type Final 2 that was discussed but never made, owing to a screenshot that surfaced on Twitter recently.
The screenshot, which comes from advertising for an Eizo monitor display that highlights the monitor’s different modes and options, was found by @OKA_B_1B3 on Twitter recently, showing a seemingly in-development R-Type game.
Kujo, on Twitter, commented on the picture saying that it comes from back when Irem’s R-Type team was considering making a new game under the development name R-Type Final 2. The picture ended up being used for the advertisement and an Irem April Fools’ joke titled ‘Grand Finale’s Ambition’. According to Kujo, the green line on the right side of the screen would have been a real-time active indicator showing the player the current level of difficulty.
In another Tweet, Kujo stated that he was surprised at how his previous Tweet took off, but said that even if it were to be made, it probably wouldn’t be called R-Type Final 2, because players would probably get angry if a new game was made after the previous game was titled Final.
Kujo also talked about a bit of the development of R-Type Final. According to him, he felt sorry for titling it thus, but at the time, demand for side-view shmups was declining, and the team thought they wouldn’t be able to continue to make more games. Thus, they put all that they wanted to do at the time into R-Type Final with the intent of that being the last game. Kujo ended off his thoughts by saying that he will start thinking of what he can do for the series from now on.