The run-and-gun series Turrican has blasted its way into many hearts over the years. Though it originally began life on home computers back in 1990, it soon received ports for various other platforms, leading to spectacular sequels like Mega Turrican for the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis and Super Turrican for the SNES.

But what you might know is that its original creator Manfred Trenz actually made another run and gun shooter for the SNES, called Rendering Ranger: R², which oddly never saw the light of day outside of Japan despite being developed mostly in English. Now, almost twenty-seven years later, it is finally coming to the West, thanks to the developer Ziggurat Interactive.

In contrast to Turrican, Rendering Ranger: R² places you in the boots of a special forces soldier. Armed with a spread-shot and a laser cannon, you must defend Earth against a deadly alien invasion, which means facing off against ever-increasing threats and collecting cool powerups along the way.

Worth noting is that in addition to a digital release for the PC, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation 5, it will also receive a physical SNES release from Limited Run Games. Like most Limited Run Games' releases, this will be available as both a standard edition for $59.99 and a more expensive collector's edition for $99.99 that comes with some additional guff like keychains and coins (which doesn't particularly interest us), as well as the soundtrack and some nice art (now that's more like it!)

Honestly, we're happy to see Rendering Ranger: R² given a chance to shine outside of Japan. Back when Nintendo Life contributor Gonçalo Lopes reviewed the game back in 2016, he gave it a 9/10, which obviously only makes us want to check out even more! Pre-orders for the physical copies will be open from August 5 to September 4th at this link. You can view some images of it below:

What do you think? Is this something that you might want to pick up? Let us know in the comments below.