- Irem Collection Vol. 1
- Irem Collection Vol. 2
- Irem Collection Vol. 3
Much like the previous two volumes, Irem Collection Volume 3 includes three Irem arcade games – Dragon Breed, Mr. Heli, and Mystic Riders – into one shoot-em-up-filled package.
Like X-Multiply, Dragon Breed is one of those R-Type adjacent Irem shooters, which feature unique mechanics to protect your character from harm. Here, it’s the enormous multi-segmented dragon Bahamoot, who is impervious to damage and can protect its vulnerable human pilot Kayus. It’s still a tough game, as you’ll get sent back to an earlier checkpoint when you die, but taking advantage of Bahamoot’s unique capabilities helps even the playing field a bit. In addition to attacking with the crossbow, the dragon can also fire charge shots and has a handful of extra abilities, like raining lightning down from its body.
It’s also one incredible looking game, which is a given for most Irem titles. It takes place in a post-apocalyptic world similar to Ghibli’s Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, complete with enormous vicious insects. Combined with a powerful FM synth soundtrack, it’s one of Irem’s most overlooked titles.
Mr. Heli
Alternatively known as Mr. Heli no Daibouken (“Mr. Heli’s Great Adventure”) or Battle Chopper, this unique shoot-em-up features a little bulbous anthropomorphic helicopter. While most shoot-em-ups autoscroll, here in most sections of the stage, you can advance the screen forward at your will. This allows you to use missiles and bombs to destroy rocks and hunt for crystals, which can be used to purchase more weapons. You have a life meter, but you can’t take much damage and can still be easily destroyed. Nevertheless, it’s not quite as brutal as other Irem games. And despite the cutesy hero copter and its charming opening music, this is no cute-em-up, as you’ll fight a number of savage mechanical foes.
This package also includes its PC Engine port. Like most Irem ports for the system, it’s a very solid conversion, losing a bit of visual detail and making some compromises for the slightly smaller resolution, but it’s still quite excellent. It also includes an extra mode that lowers the difficulty.
Mystic Riders takes after Success’ Cotton, featuring two broom-riding magicians as they face off against a variety of fantasy and demonic features. You can use two types of magic, which can be upgraded by grabbing gems, plus you can toss your broom like a boomerang, which can block enemy bullets.
This one is quite a bit easier than other Irem shooters, especially owing to the two-player simultaneous play and the instant respawn. But it’s still a colorful game that benefits from Irem’s typically excellent pixel artwork.
The emulation quality is consistent with previous releases. In addition to visual options, you can rewind or fast forward gameplay, plus there are some cheat codes you can enable, though enabling these disables Trophies. The built-in rapid fire is also extremely handy, as it gives players an alternative to focusing on charge shots. The emulation is mostly decent but Mr. Heli has some occasional visual glitches in the vertical scrolling section where it seems to misplace the status bar. One curious inconsistency – all of the arcade games feature options to shrink the high resolution graphics to 4:3, but the sole PC Engine game is missing this feature, so you can only play in the slightly wider native resolution. Additionally, like previous Irem Collections, there’s nothing in the way of supplementary material.
The Irem Collection set has had a rough start. The first volume (Image Fight, Image Fight II, X-Multiply) consisted of games that were already issued as part of Hamster’s Archives, while most of the games in the second volume (Air Duel, Gunforce, Gunforce II) simply weren’t very good. But all of the games in this third volume range from great-to-excellent, making for a solid value. It’s doubly worthwhile since some of these titles were rarely ported – Dragon Breed had some computer ports in the early 1990s which Mystic Riders didn’t even get, and otherwise they only appeared on the ropey, forgotten Irem Arcade Hits PC collection. It makes for an essential purchase, especially for shoot-em-up fans.
