Image Fight is a vertically scrolling shoot ’em up developed and published by Irem, originally released in Japanese arcades in 1988 and ported to the Famicom in 1990. You pilot the fighter craft OF-1 Daedalus through a mix of simulated training missions and real combat stages, collecting detachable support pods that change how your ship attacks. It’s one of the more unusual entries in Irem’s shooter lineage alongside R-Type, trading straightforward difficulty scaling for a pass/fail evaluation system that decides how much of the game you have to fight through.
How to play
The game opens with five simulation stages. Finish them with an average kill rate of 90% or better and you skip straight to the three real combat stages; fall short and you’re routed through an extra stage first. Use the arrow keys to move. The B button (mapped to Z) fires your main weapon, and the A button (mapped to X) cycles your flying speed through four preset settings. Press Z and X together to launch a boomerang-style pod attack, and Enter for Start. Along the way, collect up to three detachable pods, the first two settle on either side of the ship, the third hovers behind it. Blue pods lock forward for steady close-range power, while red pods track your ship’s movement and can hit enemies at odd angles.
Tips
- Mix pod colors when you can: a blue pod gives consistent forward firepower, while a red pod is better against enemies that aren’t directly ahead of you.
- Save the Z+X pod boomerang attack for tight enemy formations or armored targets up close; it hits harder than your pods’ normal fire.
- Slow your ship down with X before the simulation stages’ busier waves – precision matters more than speed when a 90% kill rate decides whether you skip ahead.
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