IREM Collection series

[Sumez]

LoL where is Vol 2?
Will they stop the series so soon? ahahah

...

[SeafoamGaming]

Lol, incredible

2/20 came and not even a tweet going “hey we need more time”

All as SLG’s physicals continue to have unexplainable delays and the rumor i heard about them having finance problems continues to seem more plausible every week they throw an extra discount on stuff for their store before shipping out new games

[Samildanach]

The first volume having two of its three games being already available on consoles through the excellent arcade archives series was a bit of an own goal in my opinion.

[Koa Zo]

Lol, incredible

2/20 came and not even a tweet going “hey we need more time”

All as SLG’s physicals continue to have unexplainable delays and the rumor i heard about them having finance problems continues to seem more plausible every week they throw an extra discount on stuff for their store before shipping out new games

hmmm
It's almost like this was entirely predictable

Strictly Limited already has listings for bundles of all five collection entries.

A couple particularly interesting notes below, copied directly from SLG's listings. First volume expected to release in Winter 2023, final volume expected to be released in Autumn 2024. Vol.2 is already confirmed to be another shooter-focused volume.

These SLG people lie so bad. My only question is are they still deluding and lying to themselves after never meeting a shipping estimate in all their years of business? Or are they blatantly lying to their customers in order to con them into prepaying and funding projects which aren't anywhere near production?

They estimate an 8 month lead time to ship volume 1 (which we can be sure they won't achieve)
But then they have the gall to suggest that they will ship the next 4 volumes in the following 8-9 months?! Particularly when those other volumes aren't even off the drawing board yet?
As if they are going to be able to achieve shipping a new volume every 2 months after the first volume?
Does anybody believe this shit anymore. I'll eat my socks if volume 5 ships before 2025.

[miwa]

I still had 4 open preorders with SLG, which I cancelled this morning.
I'm so tired of these preorders that take years to ship while the Japanese versions have been out for months, oftentimes a lot cheaper, too.
From now on I'll order the Japanese releases, even if some SLG exclusive content is missing.
And if I really feel like I can't live without SLG/LRG release, there's always eBay.

Have to give SLG credit though, they did processed my cancellation within minutes.

[ryu]

Can we be sure though that future releases of the Irem collection will see physical releases in japan?

[Samuray]

Can we be sure though that future releases of the Irem collection will see physical releases in japan?

I feel like that's a lot more likely than SLG releases at this point.

[SeafoamGaming]

Lol the site got edited today to say “soon” vs Feb 20

https://www.iningames.com/games/irem-collection-vol-2

Two days ago it was still Feb 20

[MOSQUITO FIGHTER]

Why not some games that we don't see often? Like Gallop, Undercover Cops, and that Dragon game that I can't remember the name of.

[Sumez]

Dragon Breed has already been confirmed, and I'd be surprised if Undercover Cops isn't in volume 4 ("Get ready to fight!")

[gbaplayer]

What about R Type Leo?

[AGermanArtist]

I hate that these fuckwits are preventing Hamster from putting these out.

[ryu]

I hate that these fuckwits are preventing Hamster from putting these out.

Yeah. Honestly don't understand why they're not working with either those guys or M2 for these releases. Can anyone who's played volume 1 confirm if they at least put a decent scanline filter in?

[Sumez]

Is "decent scanline filter" a thing that exists?

[ryu]

Is "decent scanline filter" a thing that exists?

Hahaha. Yeah I guess they're either good (just plain scanlines with adjustable opacity, or a good shader like in Sonic Mania), or complete shit (the shaders that mimic uncared for aged CRTs).

I'm undecided if I prefer no filter at all over the bad shaders. Both suck.

[gray117]

They even announced the later volume contents?

... I remember having the sneaky suspicion they weren't going to get any r-types... Or they'd maybe only fund it if cash had come in...

But yeah doesn't sound like a ringing endorsement for a roadmap dev or product manufacturing.

Still...

Aside from potentially loosing out to a competitor, there's a certain extent where getting any of these released feels like an achievement when you are dealing with low print runs and all the other disparate things that have to come together from licensing/dev/cert/manufacturing... It isn't just a homebrew launch, even if the game dev side is not too much more than getting an emulator to run...

[BJQ1972]

Inin have confirmed the delay.

Devs busy on patch for vol 1.

https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2024/ ... first-game

[ryu]

Glad to hear they're at least taking the criticism seriously.

[ryu]

I just got the collector's edition of volume 1 and the artbook is just a collection of printed ingame graphics. That's just sad.

[SeafoamGaming]

I just got the collector's edition of volume 1 and the artbook is just a collection of printed ingame graphics. That's just sad.

The Japanese CE I take it?

I forgot it got delayed, yet alone was still coming out; the digital version is STILL nowhere near passable and is utterly broken. IF NES still has autofire broken, and IF2 has the pausing glitch active. I'm baffled they actually shipped this to Japanese store shelves at all in its current state.

Inin have confirmed the delay.

Devs busy on patch for vol 1.

https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2024/ ... first-game

Yeah no shit they need to work on a patch for Vol 1; it's feels a lot like a beta at this point. I was just amazed that they didn't announce the delay until three days after the release date they announced! That's rather impressive despite me poking PR asking about the game. They legit didn't know why they hadn't heard recent news about it either.

God, what a sad state of affairs. I really wanted to play Gunforce II, too.

[ryu]

The Japanese CE I take it?

Yeah. I haven't had a chance to test the games on it yet, will report back when that's changed. Although I doubt it will be different from the current sate of the overseas version.

[ryu]

Here's my remarks after a quick hour of testing this on PS5 (version 2 - no idea when that came out)

- Using auto fire and the pod shot did not trigger a speed change in any of the 8 bit versions
- The pause button seems to work fine in Image Fight II
- However the music on the NES/FC versions makes your ears bleed. Might be working as intended. I think it's hilarious though
- I haven't seen a single leaderboard with more than 5 people on it lol
- The CRT filters aren't great..Kinda bad but I feel like I've seen worse. What's so hard about just putting in scanlines? Also in the right screen orientation please
- Surprisingly Imagefight supports true tate
- No noticeable input lag
- Imagefight II's cutscenes are still japanese only if anyone cares about that

Personally I think this collection is alright. Just pointless for anyone that doesn't care about physical boxes or is a die-hard fan of these games. Not bundling R-Type Leo was a stupid move.
The artbook not featuring actual development and print artworks is a legit scam though. Not sure yet getting the CE was worth it for the flyers and OST.

Anyways, was my first time playing these games. They're brutal fun.

[Jonpachi]

Are there save states?

[ryu]

Are there save states?

6 per game. Rewind and fast forward worked fine for me in IF arcade and NES. Didn't test the features in any of the other games.

Really my biggest gripe is the lack of good scanlines and the main menu feeling like shovelware. And that they advertized the CE with a sorry excuse for an artbook. The games themselves work completely fine as far as I can tell. Obsiously M2 didn't develop this but the current state on PS5 is not a bad release for anyone wanting to own a box and disc for the HD console versions of these games. Can't speak for the quality of the Switch port however.

edit: I wasn't aware the slg release for volume 1 was still pending. Sucks I didn't get any of the posters with the japanese one. Not sure what to make of all the doomsaying about slg because I have friends that regularly order from these limited release stores and delays of up to 3 to 4 years seem to be the norm there.

[hamfighterx]

Really my biggest gripe is the lack of good scanlines and the main menu feeling like shovelware. And that they advertized the CE with a sorry excuse for an artbook. The games themselves work completely fine as far as I can tell. Obsiously M2 didn't develop this but the current state on PS5 is not a bad release for anyone wanting to own a box and disc for the HD console versions of these games. Can't speak for the quality of the Switch port however.

So, I just got the Switch retail Japan release of Vol.1, and my initial impressions are the same as yours. I've only given significant time to the arcade Image Fight and Image Fight II so far, but the performance feels fine to me, no glaring issues or truly excessive lag. The main menu does feel amateurish. It's nice that they pack in the console ports too, which is an actual advantage over the barebones Arcade Archives releases, as are better save states and the rewind feature.

IDK, I'm kinda fine with these? The early complaints here seem a bit overblown now that I've tried it myself, though IDK if the initial download version was significantly worse.

edit: I wasn't aware the slg release for volume 1 was still pending. Sucks I didn't get any of the posters with the japanese one. Not sure what to make of all the doomsaying about slg because I have friends that regularly order from these limited release stores and delays of up to 3 to 4 years seem to be the norm there.

The issue isn't necessarily just due to long delays - it's that Strictly Limited has not produced or shipped ANY new games in over a year. They used to be fairly reliable and would consistently ship new games, but that changed shortly into 2023. I got a couple of their most recent releases, Drainus and Cannon Dancer, and both of those had fairly short time (like, a few months) from their announcements to shipping in early 2023. Things were looking good, I ordered several more SLG games that were announced and put up for preorder in 2023... and then SLG just completely came to a halt. Anyway, they refunded me for IREM Collection Vol.1 and 2, and several other titles.

[Bear78]

Looks like they have a new patch coming out: https://x.com/ININ_Games/status/1769772 ... 99355?s=20

[ryu]

I have a feeling the japanese version got all those patches a while ago. There really was nothing noticeably wrong when I tested and my PS5 isn't downloading any new patches today either.

[AGermanArtist]

This has been a total shitshow. Fuck these guys. I'd have loved more ACA Irem. I'm actually genuinely angered by this bullshit.

[Jonpachi]

I know I say this a lot, but just get the import. It's cheap and readily available right now. Why waste time stressing out over these limited print runs? This seems like a fine little set of Irem classics with decent performance and the features I want. There's nothing here I need translated or put in a box with only English text on it.

[ryu]

The japanese release is multi-lingual. First thing you see starting it up is a language select screen.

It's really just the Image Fight II cut scenes that aren't translated. Don't know if a patch changed that for the western release though.