shmup studio focus no. 2: irem
The second in an occasional series, Forenoon Filings will be looking at the Japanese developer: Irem.
The success of Irem has been tied in very closely to its best known shmup released in 1989 that has inspired many sequels and spin offs: R-Type (pictured above).
Vertical and horizontal shmups had been made for many years prior to this game's release, yet when this game was released it was quite revolutionary in two key ways:
Firstly, its level design ramped up the quality of presentation that many had expected of games of this genre. Each level featured am increadible amount of detail, and was astounding for their incredible set pieces: the first level's revolving pod, the second level's organic design, the mothership of the third - just to name a few. Instead of settling a for generic starry background or more cliched space settings, here was a game set in space that had a real theme echoing elements of HR Giger in its execution.
Secondly, the use of power ups had mainly been restricted to powering up the players' ship in many games pervious to this, yet here in R-Type, the 'pod' was a detachable power-up that could be mounted at either the front or rear of the ship. This added a whole new aspect of strategy that the player had to use as some level required a dextrous switching of front or back mounting of the pod.
It's success was phenomenal and many sequels followed: R-Type 2, R-Type 3, Super R-Type, R-Type Leo, R-Type Delta and most recently R-Type Final.
It may be tempting to view Irem as some sort of one-trick pony, but in recent months a runaway hit was realised with Zettai Zetsumei Toshi (sold as Disaster Report in the West) - a survival game where set in Tokyo just after an earthquake has hit. This took many critics by surprise and a sequel has been confirmed as being developed currently.
This entry was posted
on Thursday, September 22, 2005 at 9:06 pm.
