Image Fight
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Image Fight is a vertically-scrolling shoot 'em up arcade game produced by Irem in 1988. A version of the game was also released for the Nintendo Entertainment System, PC Engine and Sharp X68000 in 1990.
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[edit] Description
Image Fight was released one year after Irem's successful horizontal scroller, R-Type, and, although not directly related, the two games have some similarities.
The player flies a futuristic red ship. (R-Type Final identifies this ship as the OF-1 Daedalus, but it is not known if that was the ship's original name. However, the term OF-1 does appear in the NES version's instruction manual and in the official artwork for the sequel, Image Fight II.)
The game appears to be set inside a holographic simulator, like the holodeck on Star Trek: The Next Generation.
In the NES version of the game, the first 5 missions are called "Combat Simulation Stages" and the last 3 missions are called "Real Combat Stages."
[edit] Story
The following is taken directly from the NES instruction manual:
On a fateful day in 20XX, the Earth's moon exploded into four large fragments and a multitude of meteors. Aliens from afar had succeeded in destroying the West's moon base. One after another, mankind's other minitary industrial space complexes were being lost. What mankind dreaded had come to pass. Scores of unidentified fighters were in the area. In addition. the moon's main computer, still intact after the explosion, had a stranged vegetation coiled around it. Their trademark evil exploits being a dead giveaway, invaders from the Boondoggle Galaxy had arrived to take over the Earth. To counter these evil forces, leading scientists from all over the globe created the "OF-1" Fightership. Combat pilots depart the Earth to fend off the invaders and earn everlasting glory.
[edit] Features
[edit] Pods
The defining feature of Image Fight is the Pod - a small, coloured sphere with two short gun barrels attached to it. The Pod, once collected, floats alongside the player's ship.
There are two different kinds of Pod:
- Red Pod - this changes direction based on the movement of the ship, and can therefore be aimed at enemies. This can be very useful, as enemies can and do attack from any direction.
- Blue Pod - similar to the Red Pod, except it always points forward and the direction cannot be changed. This makes it more powerful in direct confrontations, but less versatile.
The ship can support up to three Pods. The first two Pods collected will take up positions on the left and right sides of the ship; the third Pod hovers behind it.
[edit] The Pod Shot
The Pod Shot is a special attack in which the side Pods are launched forward at high speed, before circling back and returning to the ship. This enables them to be used as projectiles themselves, and thrown at enemies ahead. This attack can be performed with either one or two side Pods - the rear Pod, if present, does not participate.
[edit] Speed control
The ship has four different levels of speed that the player can switch between, to allow for more precise manoeuvering in confined spaces. The structure of the ship transforms during a speed change, the wings angling down and back at higher speeds.
The ship's thrusters exhaust a large blue flame whenever the ship changes speed; this can be used as a weapon to damage or destroy enemies.
[edit] 'Forces'
The player can acquire various butterfly-shaped devices that attach to the front of the ship. These are very similar in function to the Force in R-Type - they turn the player's blaster into a powerful laser weapon. They can also act as a weak shield, protecting the ship from impact; this destroys them but leaves the ship intact. Unlike the Force in R-Type, they cannot be ejected from the ship - the only way to remove them, in fact, is to have them destroyed. The ship cannot pick up a new device if one is already attached.
There are a number of different kinds, each of which provides a different weapon. The weapon names are taken from R-Type Final.
R-Type Final implies that these devices are in fact early versions of what it calls the OF Force, but this may be retroactive continuity.
[edit] Red
- 'Drill Laser' - fires two flashing blue-red bolts straight forward.
- 'Search Missile' - fires a barrage of homing missiles upward.
[edit] Yellow
- 'V Ball Laser' - fires two yellow balls at about 30 degree angles from the vertical.
- 'Rebound Ball' - similar to its smaller counterpart, except that the balls can bounce off walls.
[edit] Green
- 'Ring Laser' - fires green rings over a wide range of various forward angles.
[edit] Blue
- 'Side Laser' - fires blue bolts horizontally left and right.
- 'Search Laser LRB' - fires semi-homing light-blue bolts forward which can turn 90-degree angles.
- 'Mufti Barrier' - a non-projectile weapon; holding down the fire button generates two blue rings of energy, which act a little like cutting discs. These can damage enemies and block enemy projectiles.
[edit] Legacy
The sequel Image Fight II was released in arcades in 1992 and in 1998, Image Fight along with X-Multiply was released only in Japan as a one-disc doublebill on PlayStation and Sega Saturn.
[edit] Trivia
- The ship from this game is included in R-Type Final, where it is the first in a series of five fighters called the OF series. The Pods are also available on fighters of the OF series.
- According to producer Hiroshi Iuchi, creator of Radiant Silvergun, the main inspiration for that game's design was Image Fight. [1]
