R-Type III: The Third Lightning (アールタイプ3 ザ・サード・ライトニング, Āru Taipu Surī: Za Sādo Raitoningu) is a 1993 side-scrolling shooter video game developed by Tamtex and first released in Japan by Irem in 1993 for the Super Famicom and in North America and Europe in 1994 for the SNES.

The shots fired create damaging explosions, and if the player has collected one or two Bits, they spin around the ship burning with energy.

However, this Hyper mode causes the ship to overheat after a short while, and it must subsequently spend seconds cooling down, during which time the wave cannon is inoperative.

R-Type III was originally released only on the Super NES, but later ported to the Game Boy Advance by Italy-based Raylight Studios.

[1] R-Type III: The Third Lightning is a game built into Retro-Bit's Super Retrocade, which features a number of legally-licensed titles.

[2] Electronic Gaming Monthly's five reviewers gave the Super NES version a unanimous score of 8 out of 10 each, commenting that "Huge levels, excellent bosses (and a rather high difficulty) makes this the shooter to get."