Irem Collection Volume 3 – PS5 Review

Irem Collection Volume 3 is a collection of three arcade shoot ’em ups from Irem, the classic coin-op company.  And this one offers up three arcade-perfect ports, as well as a Turbografix/PC Engine one, and they’re all shoot ’em ups, which is a running theme for these collections so far.

As you’d expect, you get a lot of emulation features here with wallpapers (albeit rubbish ones), CRT-style filters, scanlines, quick saves, rewinds and cheats.  That said, anything that helps you with the difficult gameplay will disqualify you from earning trophies, so if you want a Platinum here, you’ll need to master three very difficult arcade games.  And with no museum features or unlockables, the whole focus, for better or worse, is on the games themselves.  So let’s see what you get.

Battle Chopper/Mr. Heli (1987)

Mr. Heli (to give its original Japanese name) is a multi-directional scrolling shooter that sees you playing as a small helicopter that has to traverse a very tricky landscape full of enemies looking to blast you out of the sky.  This is a substantially difficult game and one that we played quite a lot when reviewing Antstream last year.  The enemies are fast, hostile and never stop coming and you can’t really aim your weapons and so anyone coming at you from a diagonal is going to be able to get to you quite easily.

The power-up system is a bit clumsy too.  You have to shoot out rocks that hide crystals and power-ups.  We’d have rathered a Gradius type of system where you’ve got more control over what you pick as here it all feels a bit random.  But, aside from that and the savage difficulty, the game plays okay and the visuals are colourful and pleasant (apart from the dark stages, which are a bit of a pain).

You also get the PC Engine port of the game and we actually preferred this one as it tones down the difficulty and is just a lot more playable, despite having obviously downgraded visuals.

Dragon Breed (1989)

This horizontally-scrolling shoot ’em up definitely turned heads back in 1989 thanks to some very nice visuals and its unusual pairing of protagonists.  You play as King Kayus, a regular guy with some basic platforming abilities, but for the majority of the game he’s sat on Bahamoot, a massive dragon who can block attacks and breathe fire.

Bahamoot’s long body can wrap and curve around, offering protection to Kayus from enemies and projectiles which makes for some interesting gameplay and the detailed, colourful visuals reminded us of R-Type at times, which is good praise for the late ’80s.

Again though, this is a very difficult game and the size of your dragon means there isn’t always a lot of room to move around.  It’s all pretty chunky and the dragon’s body is a little unpredictable in terms of the shapes it makes, which means that Dragon Breed can often feel imprecise.  But, again, this is a pretty decent game and a lesser-seen coin-op that deserves a new lease of life.

Mystic Riders (1992)

Continuing the horizontally-scrolling theme, Mystic Riders is the only ’90s game on here and is a crazy, and colourful, cutesy shooter that’s still pretty tough but marginally easier than the other games here.

What we like about this game is  that it’s not your usual shoot ’em up.  There are no military or space enemies here and instead it’s more of a fantasy-style shooter in the same vein as the Cotton series.  And technically this game is the strongest of the three, thanks to it coming a bit later in Irem’s softography.

Overall, this is an interesting collection of arcade games that you don’t see all that often (although, again, Antstream is possibly a better option) and we’re still not sure that £20 is a great price for three arcade ROMS and a PC Engine one.  This is especially true when you consider that the old Irem Arcade Hits compilation had 18 games on it (including all the games on offer here) and probably for a similar price.  It also included Kung-Fu Master which was amazing.

Also, these games are incredibly difficult and so disabling trophies for using the quality-of-life features is a bit mean if we’re being honest.  Arcade games weren’t designed to be completed unless you shoved in a whole lot of coins.  And so, that means that these games were more about parting kids from their pocket money rather than being fair.

But as with the other two collections that came before it, the games offered up here are good, and quite interesting, but we’re still not convinced they offer much in terms of value for money.  That said, if you’re a fan of these games and want to play them without figuring out emulation, this is a good enough way to play it.