Japanese legend Irem might be best known for R-Type but they produced plenty of other fantastic 2D shooters in the 80s and 90s, as these two retro compilations prove.
If you spent any time in arcades in the 1980s or 1990s – or played any of the many home conversions, on every format imaginable – the name no doubt rings some nostalgic bells.
The influential 2D shooter stands as Japanese developer Irem’s most defining work, spawning a decades long run of sequels and leaving a legacy that can still be felt to this day. It was a remarkable work of tone, tension, and claustrophobic bullet dodging, that even now remains as entertaining as ever.
And yet R-Type was far from the studio’s only contribution to arcade culture. That assertion sits at the heart of the ongoing Irem Collection series, which has now seen its second volume land on modern consoles. Contemporary developer Tozai has stepped up to bring classic arcade games to modern platforms, working under the careful eye of Irem themselves. A third volume has already been confirmed and, once again, not a single R-Type game is included.
Irem Collection Volume 1 includes three classic 2D shooters (or shmups, if you will), starting with 1988 arcade hit Image Fight and its menacing 1992 console exclusive sequel Image Fight 2: Operation Deep Striker. There’s also a port of the somewhat less demanding 1989 shooter X-Multiply. All games released after the first R-Type but clearly influenced by its success.
The games themselves are undeniably well-crafted, exciting shooters, deserving of all the respect and praise lavished on the R-Type series’ highlights. They’re emulated well here, too. Some might be disappointed to read that these are emulated releases, rather than true ports, yet they perform relatively precisely compared to the real thing.
Image Fight is perhaps best known for its significant influence on Treasure’s classic , released a decade later, and is so therefore seen by many as a precursor to the bullet hell sub-genre. It itself is not technically a bullet hell shooter – the bullet patterns just aren’t that dense – but it is very hard, nonetheless.
The game presents a lively, intense vertically-scrolling shooter that insists you memorise every attack pattern, so as to be ready for the arrival of each enemy on screen. You can whip between four ship speeds and customise weapons on the fly, thanks to collectible pods that add different blends of firepower to devices that magically follow your attack fighter around the screen. The result is a dynamic, pacy shooter oozing the energy of ‘90s Japanese sci-fi.
Included in the collection are the Japan-specific and internationally-facing ‘world’ versions of the arcade original, as well as the PC Engine, NES, and Famicom ports. Each game is presented in both Arcade and Standard modes – the latter offering a rewind function and other concessions to modern difficulty standards, including access to cheats such as infinite lives and invincibility.
Each game also comes with an online leaderboard-focused challenge mode and all manner of display options that do a fairly decent job of letting you replicate the warm, scanline-slashed image of on old arcade CRT monitor.
Image Fight 2 was a PC Engine CD-ROM² exclusive back in the day and so that’s the version you get here. Like its forebearer, it insists on dedication, resilience, and a lot of memorisation before you can conquer it without cheats. Overcome the wild difficulty and there’s a precisely considered, deeply rewarding shooter experience to unearth; but you’ll really have to be a genre fan to get the most out of it.
Finally, X-Multiply presents a horizontally-scrolling traditional arcade shooter very much in the same vein as R-Type, with a deliberately grotesque biological setting – in that it takes place inside a human body, albeit one with an excess of tentacles and throbbing, fleshy growths.
X-Multiply is a little more welcoming than its compilation stablemates, letting less experienced players enjoy its thrills, while still having plenty of capacity to delight more experienced contenders. Only the Japanese and world editions of the arcade release are available here, as well as the extra modes and settings seen in the compilation’s Image Fight titles.
That makes for three top notch and underexposed arcade games, well realised for modern platforms. The thing is, beyond that, Irem Collection Volume 1 is rather bare bones by modern standards. It’s an issue that also afflicts the second volume, so let’s just tuck into the games included there before returning to that point.
Irem Collection Volume 2 review
Any consideration of Irem Collection Volume 2 has to start with a mention of Nazca Corporation, the Irem spin-off founded in 1994. Most famously, the Nazca team made the remarkable, highly regarded run ‘n’ gun shooter series Metal Slug. Famed for its exquisite pixel art, energetic hand-animation, and association with the remarkably expensive Neo-Geo arcade and console systems, Metal Slug is a titan of retro gaming .
Everything about Irem Collection Volume 2 seems intended to explore the games that led up to Metal Slug, including titles made by developers that later moved to Nazca.
That is most obvious with GunForce (1991) and GunForce 2 (1994), both of which, like Metal Slug, are run ‘n’ guns game, with lots of dashing through worlds and leaping from platform to platform, while shooting down enemies in all directions with an enjoyably percussive weapon. Think the better known , from Konami, or 2017’s indie darling .
In the case of both GunForce and GunForce 2, there’s a focus on frenetic play and overpowered player weapons, as you move through various stages, unleashing a torrent of ordnance at almost anything that moves. There’re four versions of GunForce included, across arcade, SNES, and Super Famicom.
With GunForce 2, you get the international arcade version, as well as Geostorm – which was its name in Japan’s arcades. The two games include a substantial focus on commandeering vehicles, letting you smash your way through stages with a great deal more power. A reminder, if you needed it, that Metal Slug is named after the powerful tank vehicle its players can assume control of.
Both guns are immensely fun, although the first, GunForce, feels a shade clunky and primitive now, in 2024. GunForce 2, meanwhile, is packed with all the brilliance, vibrancy, and detail that made Metal Slug so beloved. There is good reason GunForce 2 is sometimes affectionately referred to as Metal Slug 0, although that title is not official. Both GunForce games bring plenty of challenge but plenty of fun too, making them a blast to play, regardless of how familiar you are with them.
GunForce 2 happens to have taken its music from the Irem 1990 2D scrolling shooter Air Duel, leading many to speculate that they are set in the same universe. Air Duel is also included on Irem Collection Volume 2, presenting a visually rich but fairly simple example of the genre. With brilliantly detailed pixel art, and a choice between a generic fighter plane and a helicopter with limited directional shooting abilities, it’s surprisingly engrossing and delightful – somehow blending plenty of challenge with an easy going pace.
While extremely typical of shooters of its time, Air Duel is substantial fun and a welcome inclusion. It would have been nice to have its even more obscure sequel Air Assault included, but perhaps that is for another volume. (But not Volume 3, which is set to include Mr. Heli, Mystic Riders, and Dragon Breed.)
Both compilations feature some great games, even if some of the inclusions are showing their age. Alas, the extra features are simply too limited, considering what the best retro compilations and ports now serve. Across releases like or the incredible M2 ShotTriggers ports, of more recent arcade shooters, we have grown used to the inclusion of troves of archive material, entirely remixed new modes, specially shot mini-documentaries, and bucket loads of modernisation features.
There’s none of that in the first two volumes of the Irem Collection and instead you merely get well emulated games and a minimum of extras, spread across some confusing menus that have inexplicable and considerable variations in their volume. In other words, the games are good but the collection itself is lacking in both content and context.
If you’re a fan of gaming history, Irem, 2D shooters, or Metal Slug, these are entirely worth picking up as playable, archival releases. If you just fancy a spot of nostalgia and some ludicrously hard arcade gameplay, they are still worth your time but don’t go in expecting anything too grand.
Irem Collection Volume 1 and Volume 2 review summary
In Short: Solid realisations of some superb, underexposed games from the heyday of the 2D shooter genre, that illustrate the immediate legacy of R-Type and the coming of the Metal Slug games.
Pros: Solid emulation and a great time capsule from a different era of gaming. All of the games are usually difficult to get hold of and there is a clear logic to the inclusions in each volume, even if it’s never spelt out.
Cons: The games haven’t aged perfectly and the extreme difficulty won’t be for all. The menus to access the games are a shade confusing and the extras are disappointingly bare bones with very little museum content.
Scores:
Irem Collection Volume 1: 6/10
Irem Collection Volume 2: 7/10
Formats: PlayStation 4 (reviewed – Volume 1), Xbox One, Nintendo Switch (reviewed – Volume 2), Xbox Series X/S, and PlayStation 5
Price: £19.99 each
Publisher: ININ Games
Developer: Tozai Games and Irem
Release Date: 7th December 2023 (Volume 1) and 14th November 2024 (Volume 2)
Age Rating: 7
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