IREM Collection series

[SeafoamGaming]

Uhm...everything disappeared into thin air? What the hell happened?
Too bad... Vol.2 contained 3 games that had never arrived on console before
and Vol.3 was interesting too..

Vol 1 is still a buggy piece of shit and the western ver doesn’t have the latest patch because ININ are near broke to submit it on their end.

Pretty horrid turn of events really. All because they wanted to pump physical crap that also, sold like shit. We should have got ACA versions.

[Arino]

Uhm...everything disappeared into thin air? What the hell happened?
Too bad... Vol.2 contained 3 games that had never arrived on console before
and Vol.3 was interesting too..

Vol 1 is still a buggy piece of shit and the western ver doesn’t have the latest patch because ININ are near broke to submit it on their end.

Pretty horrid turn of events really. All because they wanted to pump physical crap that also, sold like shit. We should have got ACA versions.

What's wrong with Vol. 1? I bought a digital copy on PS4 and never noticed anything. I remember some kind of patch that added or changed auto fire, not sure what else.

[Lemnear]

Uhm...everything disappeared into thin air? What the hell happened?
Too bad... Vol.2 contained 3 games that had never arrived on console before
and Vol.3 was interesting too..

Vol 1 is still a buggy piece of shit and the western ver doesn’t have the latest patch because ININ are near broke to submit it on their end.

Pretty horrid turn of events really. All because they wanted to pump physical crap that also, sold like shit. We should have got ACA versions.

I was wondering, because it was announced ONE YEAR AGO...Vol.2...also they no longer said what Vol.4 and 5 will contain...but i suppose one of the two had something like Undercover Cops, Blade Master, Ninja Baseball Bat Man.

[Arino]

Uhm...everything disappeared into thin air? What the hell happened?
Too bad... Vol.2 contained 3 games that had never arrived on console before
and Vol.3 was interesting too..

Vol 1 is still a buggy piece of shit and the western ver doesn’t have the latest patch because ININ are near broke to submit it on their end.

Pretty horrid turn of events really. All because they wanted to pump physical crap that also, sold like shit. We should have got ACA versions.

I was wondering, because it was announced ONE YEAR AGO...Vol.2...also they no longer said what Vol.4 and 5 will contain...but i suppose one of the two had something like Undercover Cops, Blade Master, Ninja Baseball Bat Man.

Vol. 2 is still scheduled for winter and the games of 4 and 5 were never revealed so far.

[SeafoamGaming]

Uhm...everything disappeared into thin air? What the hell happened?
Too bad... Vol.2 contained 3 games that had never arrived on console before
and Vol.3 was interesting too..

Vol 1 is still a buggy piece of shit and the western ver doesn’t have the latest patch because ININ are near broke to submit it on their end.

Pretty horrid turn of events really. All because they wanted to pump physical crap that also, sold like shit. We should have got ACA versions.

What's wrong with Vol. 1? I bought a digital copy on PS4 and never noticed anything. I remember some kind of patch that added or changed auto fire, not sure what else.

So, so many things wrong. At launch and a bit after it was nigh unplayable if you wanted to remap stuff certain ways or do certain things and the PCE games had a stupid thing of making the A button the Run button, causing random pauses during gameplay. It was horrid. And the fast forward/rewind was so bugged it caused the framerate of even fucking Image Fight NES to drop to single digits upon using it. I was gobsmacked it even passed Nintendo's lotcheck.

Even now it feels hella sloppy but I don't have the JP version to see if the subtitle patch improved other bugs. The fact it's still not in the US has me very suspicious. I can't imagine Irem's happy with this rollout either.

And yeah I was hoping maybe Vol 2 would launch on the right note, but I still remember reaching out to ININ's PR like, a few days before the digital release date they had listed (Feb 20), and they didn't even know what was going on with the game like, a day or so before launch; sure enough, two days after it was supposed to launch, it got delayed indefinitely because Vol 1 is still a broken mess, at least on Switch.

The most nuts thing to me is the Parasol Stars port had a pretty nasty bug with the true ending and they fixed that in like two weeks lol; while Jajamaru still has bugs 1.5 years later, Irem's had bugs present since the launch in December, Over Horizon has GBA slowdown emulation errors so offensive it makes Gradius III look like a SA-1 game by default... I don't get why the ININ/Ratalaika ports are so hit or miss. Ratalaika's ports by themselves are basic but at least include nice bonuses and almost always work pretty darn good and are fun ways to play Gleylancer and Shockman and so on, but it seems ININ is crunching them to death or rushing stuff out the door or giving them like no budget for these sets. Very sad to see.

[Lemnear]

what worries me most is the slowness with which the volumes are coming out, practically 1 per year...the end of the universe is easier than the end of this collection...

[Arino]

Vol 1 is still a buggy piece of shit and the western ver doesn’t have the latest patch because ININ are near broke to submit it on their end.

Pretty horrid turn of events really. All because they wanted to pump physical crap that also, sold like shit. We should have got ACA versions.

What's wrong with Vol. 1? I bought a digital copy on PS4 and never noticed anything. I remember some kind of patch that added or changed auto fire, not sure what else.

So, so many things wrong. At launch and a bit after it was nigh unplayable if you wanted to remap stuff certain ways or do certain things and the PCE games had a stupid thing of making the A button the Run button, causing random pauses during gameplay. It was horrid. And the fast forward/rewind was so bugged it caused the framerate of even fucking Image Fight NES to drop to single digits upon using it. I was gobsmacked it even passed Nintendo's lotcheck.

Even now it feels hella sloppy but I don't have the JP version to see if the subtitle patch improved other bugs. The fact it's still not in the US has me very suspicious. I can't imagine Irem's happy with this rollout either.

And yeah I was hoping maybe Vol 2 would launch on the right note, but I still remember reaching out to ININ's PR like, a few days before the digital release date they had listed (Feb 20), and they didn't even know what was going on with the game like, a day or so before launch; sure enough, two days after it was supposed to launch, it got delayed indefinitely because Vol 1 is still a broken mess, at least on Switch.

The most nuts thing to me is the Parasol Stars port had a pretty nasty bug with the true ending and they fixed that in like two weeks lol; while Jajamaru still has bugs 1.5 years later, Irem's had bugs present since the launch in December, Over Horizon has GBA slowdown emulation errors so offensive it makes Gradius III look like a SA-1 game by default... I don't get why the ININ/Ratalaika ports are so hit or miss. Ratalaika's ports by themselves are basic but at least include nice bonuses and almost always work pretty darn good and are fun ways to play Gleylancer and Shockman and so on, but it seems ININ is crunching them to death or rushing stuff out the door or giving them like no budget for these sets. Very sad to see.

I just checked and updated to version 1.04. Is that good? I am playing it on the PS4 Pro and I bought it from the North American PSN. I just played Image Fight 2 since you mentioned it and I did not get any pauses from shooting the pod or the regular fire button either. The intro with the Japanese audio had English subtitles. However, I did not test the rewind feature because I never use it in games where it was added to.

My general impression from ININ is that apart from postponing their releases and adding all kinds of funny modes and features that I'd never use, once they actually do release something, the games seem to run fine. No additional input lag (that's the only thing that matters to me anyway) I'd have noticed, plus the most important options such as remapping buttons and a few scaling options, that's all I need. I usually try to stay away from any kind of rereleases because I'm worried they'd screw it up so I think the only ININ games I have besides the Irem Collection Volume 1 are Cannon Dancer, Clockwork Aquario, Turrican Flashback (and Pocky & Rocky Reshrined, but that's a new game, not a rerelease of an old game). All of these are fine in terms of IL and featuring the most important settings and options.

[SeafoamGaming]

What's wrong with Vol. 1? I bought a digital copy on PS4 and never noticed anything. I remember some kind of patch that added or changed auto fire, not sure what else.

So, so many things wrong. At launch and a bit after it was nigh unplayable if you wanted to remap stuff certain ways or do certain things and the PCE games had a stupid thing of making the A button the Run button, causing random pauses during gameplay. It was horrid. And the fast forward/rewind was so bugged it caused the framerate of even fucking Image Fight NES to drop to single digits upon using it. I was gobsmacked it even passed Nintendo's lotcheck.

Even now it feels hella sloppy but I don't have the JP version to see if the subtitle patch improved other bugs. The fact it's still not in the US has me very suspicious. I can't imagine Irem's happy with this rollout either.

And yeah I was hoping maybe Vol 2 would launch on the right note, but I still remember reaching out to ININ's PR like, a few days before the digital release date they had listed (Feb 20), and they didn't even know what was going on with the game like, a day or so before launch; sure enough, two days after it was supposed to launch, it got delayed indefinitely because Vol 1 is still a broken mess, at least on Switch.

The most nuts thing to me is the Parasol Stars port had a pretty nasty bug with the true ending and they fixed that in like two weeks lol; while Jajamaru still has bugs 1.5 years later, Irem's had bugs present since the launch in December, Over Horizon has GBA slowdown emulation errors so offensive it makes Gradius III look like a SA-1 game by default... I don't get why the ININ/Ratalaika ports are so hit or miss. Ratalaika's ports by themselves are basic but at least include nice bonuses and almost always work pretty darn good and are fun ways to play Gleylancer and Shockman and so on, but it seems ININ is crunching them to death or rushing stuff out the door or giving them like no budget for these sets. Very sad to see.

I just checked and updated to version 1.04. Is that good? I am playing it on the PS4 Pro and I bought it from the North American PSN. I just played Image Fight 2 since you mentioned it and I did not get any pauses from shooting the pod or the regular fire button either. The intro with the Japanese audio had English subtitles. However, I did not test the rewind feature because I never use it in games where it was added to.

My general impression from ININ is that apart from postponing their releases and adding all kinds of funny modes and features that I'd never use, once they actually do release something, the games seem to run fine. No additional input lag (that's the only thing that matters to me anyway) I'd have noticed, plus the most important options such as remapping buttons and a few scaling options, that's all I need. I usually try to stay away from any kind of rereleases because I'm worried they'd screw it up so I think the only ININ games I have besides the Irem Collection Volume 1 are Cannon Dancer, Clockwork Aquario, Turrican Flashback (and Pocky & Rocky Reshrined, but that's a new game, not a rerelease of an old game). All of these are fine in terms of IL and featuring the most important settings and options.

Yeah those fixes werent done to the US switch version then; ps4 got em in the west which i guess is good but i guess they just forgot the switch us version lol.

Still crazy it took so long to fix most of the issues, though. Should have never launched in the state it’s in. Apparently the ps4 physicals are shipping later this month from SLG, so i guess they consider this the final build…?

[Arino]

So, so many things wrong. At launch and a bit after it was nigh unplayable if you wanted to remap stuff certain ways or do certain things and the PCE games had a stupid thing of making the A button the Run button, causing random pauses during gameplay. It was horrid. And the fast forward/rewind was so bugged it caused the framerate of even fucking Image Fight NES to drop to single digits upon using it. I was gobsmacked it even passed Nintendo's lotcheck.

Even now it feels hella sloppy but I don't have the JP version to see if the subtitle patch improved other bugs. The fact it's still not in the US has me very suspicious. I can't imagine Irem's happy with this rollout either.

And yeah I was hoping maybe Vol 2 would launch on the right note, but I still remember reaching out to ININ's PR like, a few days before the digital release date they had listed (Feb 20), and they didn't even know what was going on with the game like, a day or so before launch; sure enough, two days after it was supposed to launch, it got delayed indefinitely because Vol 1 is still a broken mess, at least on Switch.

The most nuts thing to me is the Parasol Stars port had a pretty nasty bug with the true ending and they fixed that in like two weeks lol; while Jajamaru still has bugs 1.5 years later, Irem's had bugs present since the launch in December, Over Horizon has GBA slowdown emulation errors so offensive it makes Gradius III look like a SA-1 game by default... I don't get why the ININ/Ratalaika ports are so hit or miss. Ratalaika's ports by themselves are basic but at least include nice bonuses and almost always work pretty darn good and are fun ways to play Gleylancer and Shockman and so on, but it seems ININ is crunching them to death or rushing stuff out the door or giving them like no budget for these sets. Very sad to see.

I just checked and updated to version 1.04. Is that good? I am playing it on the PS4 Pro and I bought it from the North American PSN. I just played Image Fight 2 since you mentioned it and I did not get any pauses from shooting the pod or the regular fire button either. The intro with the Japanese audio had English subtitles. However, I did not test the rewind feature because I never use it in games where it was added to.

My general impression from ININ is that apart from postponing their releases and adding all kinds of funny modes and features that I'd never use, once they actually do release something, the games seem to run fine. No additional input lag (that's the only thing that matters to me anyway) I'd have noticed, plus the most important options such as remapping buttons and a few scaling options, that's all I need. I usually try to stay away from any kind of rereleases because I'm worried they'd screw it up so I think the only ININ games I have besides the Irem Collection Volume 1 are Cannon Dancer, Clockwork Aquario, Turrican Flashback (and Pocky & Rocky Reshrined, but that's a new game, not a rerelease of an old game). All of these are fine in terms of IL and featuring the most important settings and options.

Yeah those fixes werent done to the US switch version then; ps4 got em in the west which i guess is good but i guess they just forgot the switch us version lol.

Still crazy it took so long to fix most of the issues, though. Should have never launched in the state it’s in. Apparently the ps4 physicals are shipping later this month from SLG, so i guess they consider this the final build…?

Huh that's weird that one platform of the same region got the update while the other one didn't. Yea, SLG and ININ is basically the same one or two guys iirc.

[Acid]

Is it gross neglect to own Xexex but not X-Multiply?

[BIL]

Is it gross neglect to own Xexex but not X-Multiply?

R-Type Delta can stand in for X-M if necessary. RX Albatross got the tentacles and the annoying/adorable Easily Distracted Puppy Force.

[SeafoamGaming]

Vol 2 slated for November in Japan now.

They still have not fixed Vol 1’s US Switch Version.

[1KMS]

Irem Collection Vol. 2 NA physical edition announced and official boxart revealed.

Source: https://www.iningames.com/games/irem-collection-vol-2
Pre-order: https://www.strictlylimitedgames.com/collections/irem-collection-volume-2

Spoiler

Six or seven more of these mean-muggin' bad boys and you'll have yours(h)elf a nice little Irem starter collection. Do you need a Switch case with Resistance Army Soldier ID "SO-1" Call Sign "MILKMAN" on the cover that badly? I don't see why you wouldn't.

[SeafoamGaming]

FINALLY, sometime in the past few weeks, Irem vol 1 on NA Switch got the patch.

And it still sucks as a collection lol; but is marginally better. IF2 got subtitles that looks great, but the pause bug when firing your normal shot still exists & is annoying when you die. IF1 NES STILL does not work with autofire and I'm gobsmacked they never fixed it. It was in the review i emailed to them and told ININ PR about multiple times when pointing out their lack of bugfixes on other ratalaika compilations. Either they legitimately forgot, do not care or didn't even try.

IF1 PCE is all smooth and fine now though. No problems at all anymore and felt great with my 8bitdo Genesis pad. Same with Arcade XMultiply and IF1 Arcade.

Still feels largely redundant due to ACA/IF2 itself being mid, and the lack of bonuses really hurts the set still imo, but at least I can say that eh, it's average and passable. If you wanna play PCE Image Fight this is a fine way to do it now at least, but it still blows my mind we waited like, 4/5 months to get a patch the rest of the world got an eternity ago.

Vol 2 being next month has me legit curious as to how it'll turn out. I can't believe they'd do the same mistakes again and with only a single SNES port this time around and 3 arcade games, surely they'll turn out better... Right?

[Lemnear]

The release date appears to be November 14, 2024, earlier than the new Japanese date poster said.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22HO5Ny9wNc

Spoiler

[gbaplayer]

I wonder when they will reveal the games of vol. 4 and 5.

[Lemnear]

It's out, but judging by the unusual Bundle, I suspect it's the last volume in the collection...

Spoiler

[Sima Tuna]

Are these versions of Gunforce decent?

[PC Engine Fan X!]

For Sima Tuna,

Both arcade roms of Gun Force (1991) and Gun Force II/Geo Storm (1994) run flawlessly on the Switch and even have screen options such as 4:3 (DAR), pixel perfect, 1x -- original arcade resolution, etc. + screen shaders as well. Looks awesome if played on an oled Switch setup. All buttons are completely re-mappable/customizable. It's just that there's no button to pause a session of either roms of GF1 or GF2/GS (as they were originally played in the arcades/game centers in the mid-1990s without the ability to "pause in-game" anyways making them 100% arcade accurate from the get-go).

By pressing the "+" button and holding it down, you can exit the current game session at your leisure/at anytime.

----------

The Irem Collection Vol. 2 compilation is also available on the USA Xbox store (and therefore, on the Series S and Series X consoles as well) with a proper 11/14/2024 released date + a $24.99 usd MSRP as usual.

It's also listed on the USA region Switch eShop site with a MSRP of $24.99 and is a 158mb d/l. All console ports (PS4, PS5, Series S/X and Switch) have Air Duel, Gun Force, Gun Force II and the SNES port of Gun Force as the bonus game.

Considering that Gun Force II (aka Geo Storm in Japan) was Irem's swan-song arcade pcb kit release, it's quite uncanny to see some sprite artwork that's considered pre-Metal Slug (Nazca was given free reign when developing Metal Slug as SNK sat back and let them do their work unfettered) -- with it's initial 1996 worldwide release on the Neo-Geo MVS arcade platform, it was legendary in terms of overall gameplay, game mechanics and absolutely gorgeous 2D hand-drawn sprite artwork. There's mention of an early build of MS with the player just controlling the tank (and no playable Marco character) but it got accidentally erased over and was never saved for posterity/safe-keeping purposes -- would've been interesting to see Nazca further develop MS with the tank as the "main character" instead (taking MS in a new and uncharted direction).

The first time I saw MS running on a "Big Red" MVS cab back in 1996, I didn't have any money to try it out and could only watch the cool demo runs of it at best -- I did manage to bring some quarters the next time I saw MS at the local Tilt! arcade joint and the rest is history.

The sequel of Metal Slug 2 was a different story with it's horrible slowdown issues (due to sub-optimal issues that weren't resolved during development) but the follow-up release of Metal Slug X fixed them for an improved game "through-and-through," indeed. The juggernaut Metal Slug 3 finally released on MVS hardware in 2000, really pushed the well-established MS franchise to new heights previously not seen nor attempted before. MS4 and MS5 couldn't top what transpired with what MS3 was able pull-off/achieve.

Of course later on, someone did go back and fix the persistent "slowdown issues" with MS2 and with the corrected patched roms installed, it runs and plays much better than before (Nazca could've fixed the issues plaguing MS2 but at the expense of a later release date than anticipated but the highly awaited MS sequel was shipped out "as is" instead).

Suppose if MS2 had been properly fixed before being shipped out, there wouldn't have been no need for Nazca to develop "Metal Slug X" to rectify it's earlier MS2 woes in the first place and begin working on MS3 with an earlier proposed release date prior to 2000 (and perhaps work on a proper Nazca created MS4 sequel with cool new twists & spins to eclipse the lofty "high bar" already established with MS3 rather than the current MVS based MS4 game release that we did get from a completely different game developer & game publisher instead -- which was, admittedly, made with unused MS3 based sprite assets found within the MS3 sprite library itself -- true story, folks).

An eighth MS game sequel (after Metal Slug 6, Metal Slug 7 and Metal Slug XX) with the original Nazca dev team back at the helm to create it, it'd certainly be very welcome especially nowadays -- is it possible in this day of age, Nazca? (In retrospect, canon-wise, it'd be considered as the proper true fourth sequel after MS3 if this were to happen/get "green-lit" -- all subsequent MS sequels starting with MS4 though MSXX would be regulated as an "alternate MS universe/timeline/mythos.")

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

[PC Engine Fan X!]

Upon messing with the Video settings with Gunforce II/Geo Storm (if played on an oled based Switch setup), these selected settings will look at it's best in CRT mode with obligatory scanlines included:

Display: Perfect (4:3 screen mode)
Color: RGB
Shader Style: CRT
Mask Type: 0
Mask Intensity: 0.5
Scanline Intensity: 0.6
Sharpness: 3
Curvature: 0
Trini-curve: 0
Corner Round: 0
CRT Gamma: 2.4

With the above selected settings, especially on the later stages, you'll see some cool background moving sprite animation that the Irem dev team added to further enhance GF2/GS to look at it's razor-sharp best with maximum visual impact, indeed. Very impressive cyberpunk themed "run 'n' gun" action-platformer at it's best (considering it's 1994 arcade pcb release -- two years prior to Nazca's Metal Slug debut in 1996).

Enjoy.

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

[Sima Tuna]

For Sima Tuna,

Both arcade roms of Gun Force (1991) and Gun Force II/Geo Storm (1994) run flawlessly on the Switch and even have screen options such as 4:3 (DAR), pixel perfect, 1x -- original arcade resolution, etc. + screen shaders as well. Looks awesome if played on an oled Switch setup. All buttons are completely re-mappable/customizable. It's just that there's no button to pause a session of either roms of GF1 or GF2/GS (as they were originally played in the arcades/game centers in the mid-1990s without the ability to "pause in-game" anyways making them 100% arcade accurate from the get-go).

By pressing the "+" button and holding it down, you can exit the current game session at your leisure/at anytime.

----------

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

Thanks bro, you are a treasure on this forum. I'll probably pick this up on the next sale. There are so many new releases on the storefront right now, yet I've purchased none of them.

[Dampfwalze]

I found some problems with GunForc2/Geostorm.
In the first Level on the train, the background graphics flicker/disappear shortly.
Like the satellite dishes for example.
Later the trees and clouds also flicker from time to time.

This is not present on the original PCB:
https://youtu.be/zWJJC0_Kte4?feature=shared

[gbaplayer]

Will we ever get vol. 3-5?

[Kino]

Volume 3 finally set to release on July 10th.

[gbaplayer]

Thats some awesome news, hopefully they will continue this line with Vol. 4 and 5. We need R-Type Leo on modern Systems

[Jonpachi]

We need R-Type Leo on ANY Systems

[Lemnear]

We need R-Type Leo on ANY Systems

I think they've already said there won't be one, if I'm not mistaken.

[Kino]

We need R-Type Leo on ANY Systems

I think they've already said there won't be one, if I'm not mistaken.

Correct. Volume 4 will be b'mups*, Volume 5 will be platformers. Consider it a blessing, it means the likes of R-Type Leo and Gallop have a chance of getting the ACA treatment they deserve.

* Hmm, judging by the hint ("Get ready to fight!"), there is a minuscule chance we could see either Superior Soldiers or Pound For Pound. To the disappointment of everyone else on the planet.