Classic of the Month - Image Fight

Manufacturer:	Irem
Genre:	Vertically-scrolling shmup
Board:	Irem M-72
Year:	1988

I've been ill for the past few days, so I've fallen back on a favourite subject, shoot 'em ups. I'm sure you won't mind.

Usually when you mention Irem and shoot 'em ups, most people will talk about R-Type.  However, Irem made a slew of shmups in the late 80s and early 90s, including Dragon Breed, Mystic Riders, X-Multiply, In the Hunt and of course, Image Fight, which was my favourite.
Unlike the majority of Irem's shmups, Image Fight is a vertical scroller, but in keeping with their other classics, it has a weapon system that is as much about strategy as it is power.  As well as being able to power up the main guns, there are two kinds of pod (Image Fight's version of R-Type's "Force") to collect, both multiply your basic shot, but each behaves differently.  Blue pods only face forwards, giving you the most people forward fire power.  Red pods turn to face the opposite direction to your last month, making them more versatile.  You can attach a total of three pods, the first two appears on the left and right sides of the ship, while the third Pod appears behind it. When a pod is drops it alternates between red and blue, so you can choose what type to collect.  Futhermore, you can mix and match them as you see fit. The other thing that Image Fight is noted for is the variable speed system, which is controlled with button two.  This is a system that would be later adopted by the R-Type series.  And that isn't the end of Image Fight's ties to R-Type.  It's signature OF-1 fighter went on to cameo in R-Type Final. 

If you want to play Image Fight now, you can get it as part of the Irem Arcade Hits pack, from DotEmu.com.

MTW

Street Fighter III Online Edition comes home

There's no denying Capcom's Street Fighter franchise is one of one my influential and popular arcade series ever created and thanks to 2009's Street Fighter IV, it help revive the fighting genre after years of neglect. However, while the various Street Fighter spin-offs and versus games enjoyed huge success, the third "proper" sequel was something of a slow burner. For many the new parrying system was too hard to execute and ignored as a failed experiment, for many more the strange and unappealing cast of fighters was just plain off-putting, with only Ryu and Ken returning from the myriad of other SF games. Thankfully, Capcom continued their trend of releasing updates to their Street Fighters and the third iteration, subtitled 3rd Strike, nailed it. Perhaps it was the improved roster that encouraged people to stick with the game and master the parrying system or perhaps it was because fighting fans had to go nearly a decade before the true king of fighters returned, but whatever the reason, Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike is now recognised as perhaps the greatest 2D fighting game ever made.

Today Capcom released this seminal game on Xbox Live Arcade for 1200MSP and PlayStation Network for £10.20.  As well as a near-perfect emulation of the original arcade game, Capcom have included multiple display filters, from sharpening up the aging, lo resolution sprites, to applying a scanlines and curved edges, as though you're playing on a tradition arcade cabinet, rather than a HDTV.  More important for all you budding Daigos out there is the inclusion of the GGPO net code, which provides the best online fighting around.

If you have any love for the genre, I cannot recommend this port enough - especially if you own an arcade stick for your next gen console.  Let's take a look at the trailer, shall we?

MTW

What are kill screens?

What happened when you completed an early arcade game?  Did they even have an ending?  Did Jump Man (AKA Mario) ever rescue Pauline from Donkey Kong?  Did Frogger finally get home?  Were the Galaxians ever thwarted? The answer, I'm afraid, is no. The truth, however, was only ever revealed to players with the skill and patients of demi-Gods, because in most cases you had to play through hundreds of screens to get to the "end" - and let's be honest, even getting past the first dozen screens on Pac-Man is impressive.  So what did happen?  Quite simply, the game broke, like this:

This is a 'kill screen' and in the case of Pac-Man it occurs on level 256.  When games like Pac-Man, Dig Dug, Donkey Kong and Galaga were originally developed, nobody expected players to play for that long.  So kill screens are little more than bugs, often caused by integer overflows on the level counter.

Back in the day, I never heard anybody talk about kill screens.  The first I heard of them was when I watched arcade championship documentary King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters.  For top arcade gamers, reaching a kill screen is the Holy Grail and the only way to "beat" these old games.

MTW

EVO 2011 Results

The Evolution tournament (or Evo for short) is probably the most famous gaming competition on the planet and it isn't for first person shoot 'em ups or real time strategy games, oh no.  Evo is about fighting games, the only genre to still have any sort of presence in modern arcade, thanks to games like Super Street Fighter IV, Tekken 6 and Virtua Fighter 5.

Thanks to the likes to YouTube, it's possible to watch some highlights of the tournament from over the years and this year Sony showed it live on PlayStation Network, which says a lot about the continued popularity of these games.

Sadly, despite it being an absolutely top notch game, Virtua Fighter 5R has fallen out of favour, with more console fighters like the new Mortal Kombat and Marvel vs Capcom 3 taking its place.  However, we aren't interested in the console fighters, so here are the results from the arcade fighters, Super Street Fighter IV: AE, Tekken 6 and BlazBlue: Continuum Shift 2.

Super Street Fighter 4: Arcade Edition

1. Fuudo (Fei Long)
2. Latif (C.Viper)
3. Poongko (Seth)
4. Daigo Umheara (Yun)
5. Kindevu (Yun)
6. Tokido (Akuma)
7. Wolfkrone (C.Viper)
8. Flash Metroid (Zangief, C.Viper)

See the final here.

Tekken 6

1. Kor (Bob)
2. NYC Fab (Bob/Miguel)
3. Rip (Law)
4. JustFrameJames (Law)
5. Crow (Bob)
6. Mr. Naps (Bryan)
7. Tokido (Bob)
8. Ryan Hart (Kazuya)

See the final here.

BlazBlue: Continuum Shift 2

1. Spark (Haku-Men)
2. Lord Knight (Litchi)
3. Tokido (Noel)
4. Zong One (Carl)
5. Heart Nana (Makoto)
6. Severin (A-11)
7. DSmoove12 (Noel)
8. Wuku (Hazana)

See the final here (part 1) and here (part 2).

While I'd love to go to Evo, just watching the games makes me realise I will never have the skilled needed to get anywhere.  Never mind.

Results source: Shoryuken