Video games - Image Fight

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	Video games - Image Fight

Image Fight
is a vertically-scrolling shoot 'em up arcade game produced by Irem in 1988. A version of the game was also released for the Nintendo Entertainment System, and x68000 in 1990.

Description

Image Fight was released one year after Irem's successful horizontal scroller, R-Type
, and, although not directly related, the two games share many features and similarities.

The player flies a futuristic red ship. (R-Type Final identifies this ship as the OF-1 Daedalus, but it is not known if that was the ship's original name. However, the term OF-1 does appear in the NES version's instruction manual and in the official artwork for the sequel, Image Fight II.)

The game appears to be set inside a holographic simulator, like the holodeck on Star Trek: The Next Generation.

In the NES version of the game, the first 5 missions are called "Combat Simulation Stages" and the last 3 missions are called "Real Combat Stages."

Story

The following is taken directly from the NES instruction manual:

On a fateful day in 20XX, the Earth's moon exploded into four large fragments and a multitude of meteors. Aliens from afar had succeeded in destroying the West's moon base. One after another, mankind's other minitary industrial space complexes were being lost. What mankind dreaded had come to pass. Scores of unidentified fighters were in the area. In addition. the moon's main computer, still intact after the explosion, had a stranged vegetation coiled around it. Their trademark evil exploits being a dead giveaway, invaders from the Boondoggle Galaxy had arrived to take over the Earth. To counter these evil forces, leading scientists from all over the globe created the "OF-1" Fightership. Combat pilots depart the Earth to fend off the invaders and earn everlasting glory.

Features

Pods

The defining feature of Image Fight is the Pod - a small, coloured sphere with two short gun barrels attached to it. The Pod, once collected, floats alongside the player's ship.

There are two different kinds of Pod:

Red Pod - this changes direction based on the movement of the ship, and can therefore be aimed at enemies. This can be very useful, as enemies can and do attack from any direction.

Blue Pod - similar to the Red Pod, except it always points forward and the direction cannot be changed. This makes it more powerful in direct confrontations, but less versatile.

The ship can support up to three Pods. The first two Pods collected will take up positions on the left and right sides of the ship; the third Pod hovers behind it.

The Pod Shot

The Pod Shot is a special attack in which the side Pods are launched forward at high speed, before circling back and returning to the ship. This enables them to be used as projectiles themselves, and thrown at enemies ahead. This attack can be performed with either one or two side Pods - the rear Pod, if present, does not participate.

Speed control

The ship has four different levels of speed that the player can switch between, to allow for more precise maneouvering in confined spaces. The structure of the ship transforms during a speed change, the wings angling down and back at higher speeds.

The ship's thrusters exhaust a large blue flame whenever the ship changes speed; this can be used as a weapon to damage or destroy enemies.

'Forces'

The player can acquire various butterfly-shaped devices that attach to the front of the ship. These are very similar in function to the Force in R-Type
- they turn the player's blaster into a powerful laser weapon. They can also act as a weak shield, protecting the ship from impact; this destroys them but leaves the ship intact. Unlike the Force in R-Type, they cannot be ejected from the ship - the only way to remove them, in fact, is to have them destroyed. The ship cannot pick up a new device if one is already attached.

There are a number of different kinds, each of which provides a different weapon. The weapon names are taken from R-Type Final.

R-Type Final implies that these devices are in fact early versions of what it calls the OF Force, but this may be retroactive continuity.

Red

'Drill Laser' - fires two flashing blue-red bolts straight forward.
'Search Missile' - fires a barrage of homing missiles upward.

Yellow

'V Ball Laser' - fires two yellow balls at about 30 degree angles from the vertical.
'Rebound Ball' - similar to its smaller counterpart, except that the balls can bounce off walls.

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Image Fight ]

This page is based on the copyrighted Wikipedia article Image Fight; it is used under the GNU Free Documentation License. You may redistribute it, verbatim or modified, providing that you comply with the terms of the GFDL.

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