Good old Irem Corporation was one of the best things that ever happened to hardcore gamers, known by most of us for all-time classics like R-Type, Moon Patrol and Kung Fu Master. But what you probably don't know is that the company was born under the name of "IPM" in 1974; manufacturing, selling and renting arcade cabinets. In 1978 they created their first video game, and then in 1979 changed their name to "Irem Corporation". Originally standing for "International Rental Electronics Machines", in the mid 80's they switched the meaning of their acronym to "Innovations in Recreational Electronic Media" to better reflect their involvement in software too.
In the early 90's Irem wasn't doing well at all. They ceased production of video games in 1994, with their cabinet division separating itself from the company, and a bored and frustrated team of programmers leaving to form "Nazca Corporation".

This article has nothing to do with R-Type, I'm sure you'll have no problem finding articles about Irem's best known shoot'em up in the vastness of the internets. Instead, I'll be focusing on other, less known titles of the genre that you might have missed at the arcades. These share virtually the same graphic design and style, which is what caught my attention in the first place: Lots of steel and rust accompanied by dark, ruined cities in a very distinct cyberpunk theme.

Gallop Armed Police Unit

Players: 1 About: High-speed shooter Courtesy of: IREM Back in: 1991 Originally on: Arcade Also on: N/A

There's a very good chance you never heard of Gallop (known as Cosmic Cop outside Japan), and there's a reason for that. Visually very close to R-Type 2, it has it's graphic style, biomechanical huge bosses and some of its dreaded "memorize-or-die" stage sections. Detailed graphics, big sprites, decent animation and some novelty high-speed chases. What could go wrong?
The Armed Police Unit Gallop is out on the streets chasing and taking down "mad cars": dangerous war vehicules that are terrorizing the city. Your job as representative of the law is to clear regular horizontal shooting levels that represent a police chase, taking down these mad cars at the end of each in an original time-trial scoring system.
The premise of the game sounds promising at first, devised as a Chase H.Q./R-Type hybrid. But a few high-speed screen scrolls and a countdown timer aren't enough to make a good chase, neither can hide the fact that you are playing a game that seems to have been put together with rejected R-Type sprites, complete with Bydo-looking bosses.

Gallop - Arcade

The game freaks out and turns pink when you enter "SEX" as your initials.

Arcade flyer

Bladerunner anyone?

The sound department is nothing worth writing home about. Graphics, on the other hand, are very detailed. Although backgrounds, wall designs and enemies turn repetitive, dull and uninteresting after a couple of stages. Too many reused background tiles.

Air Duel

Players: 2 About: Vertical shooter Courtesy of: IREM Back in: 1990 Originally on: Arcade Also on: N/A

Air Duel is another example of Irem's cyberpunk shooters. It sports futuristic aircraft, abandoned cities, a dark ambiance and lots of rusted metal flying around.
Two players can play simultaneously to save the world from a "secret organization" in this vertical shoot'em up thru 7 very hard levels. At the beginning of each, you choose either a plane (with a straight shot) or a helicopter (able to shoot diagonally but with a weaker shot). Weapon upgrade? Check. Screen-clearing bomb? Check. Huge end-of-level bosses? Also check. But don't ask for shield pods, secondary weapons, or even different types of main weapons for that matter either. In Air Duel you'll be stuck with the same boring shot from start to finish, which results in a game heavily suffering from oversimplified gameplay even though it's possible to upgrade its power multiple times.
Switching to the helicopter helps keeping things fresh, increasing your shooting angle by 30 degrees to each side. But the chopper's weaker gun will often get you overwhelmed by enemies quicker, worsening the already mundane experience.

Arcade flyer

Then there's Air Duel's poor enemy variety and design. Uninteresting, unoriginal enemies tend to repeat themselves over and over across different levels.
Bosses, although adequately big, lack attack patterns and animation. Most of them consist of big chuncky sprites that blindly roam around the screen spewing bullets, but the final boss (although impressive) is actually part of the background.

Air Duel - Arcade

The final boss looks impressive, but is still just part of the background. Very disappointing.

Graphic-wise, you can see Irem starting to transition into what would be the company's signature design in the future. Lack of variety aside, it's Air Duel's only chance of getting you hooked.

The only interesting piece of trivia has to do with Air Duel's music. It seems that years after its release, Irem chose to forget Air Duel ever existed and salvaged what they could to recycle it into later titles. Some tunes were apparently good enough to be included in "Metal Slug" precursor "Gunforce 2", SNK's "Metal Slug 2", and "Metal Slug 3":

In spite of all that's wrong with Air Duel, an alledged sequel called "Air Assault" (or "Fire Barrel" in Japan) was released in 1993. Although its emulation is still very broken at the time of this writing, it is evident that Irem fixed most of the original's faults.
The helicopter is gone, but the game can still be played by 2 simultaneous players and various different weapons were added.
Air Assault, however, traded in its previous cyberpunk theme for a cleaner, more futuristic look.

Fire Barrel - Arcade

AirDuel's alledged sequel.

Air Duel is a tricky little creature. Screenshots lure you in with colorful, defined, early 90's graphics that resemble Capcom's "Varth", but what lies beneath is "Tiger Heli's" mid 80's simpleness.
With no excuses for its faults, Air Duel makes you feel like you are dealing with an unfinished product. Specially when R-Type came out 3 years before showing off 3 totally different main weapons, a secondary weapon, "bit" orbs, and an attachable pod.

In The Hunt

Players: 2 About: Underwater shooter Courtesy of: IREM Back in: 1993 Originally on: Arcade Also on: PSOne, Saturn

Before even inserting a quarter, "In The Hunt" gets extra brownie points for avoiding the "alien invasion" curse that plagues 95% of shoot'em-ups, reminding some of us that during the late 70's and early 80's the genre also demanded piloting fighter jets, driving tanks and jeeps, and commanding submarines. Speaking of the latter, prehistoric titles like the monochrome "Subs" and "Sub Hunter" represented the first of their kind, and lightgun-operated cabinets like Midway's "Submarine" soon followed. But as PC technology advanced, submarine titles fell into the simulation genre and were rarely heard from again at the arcades.

Saturn japanese cover	Playstation european cover

Despite the obvious reference to certain Sean Connery movie in the title, Irem's 1993 take on submerged warfare is a straight evolution jump from those early black-and-white shooters. It completely lacks any introduction except for a couple of lines urging you to "destroy the system before it's too late", which leaves you guessing about plot.
The player's sub is a little cute chubby tub that bounces around a lot, showing off abundant animation frames. Its arsenal consists of an horizontal-firing main weapon (assorted torpedos), an upward secondary one (including anti-air machine guns, homming missiles and floating mines), and depth charges that slowly sink underneath your ship. All of these are interchangeable and upgradable via items, and you will need to arm yourself wisely to take down the huge beautiful bosses at the end of each level.

Arcade flyer

In The Hunt's main gameplay feature is the ability of scrolling the screen at your own pace. Timing your moves thru cramped spaces, destroying enemy mine fields before advancing, or just waiting for an opening in their defenses is very common during the game's pace and it gives the genre a fresh, easy-going touch.
The difficulty level is moderate, and the fact that you can shoot most enemy bullets down and ram your vessel against walls all you want helps a lot. There's no screen-clearing bomb or any kind of special weapon though.
Gorgeous stages, amazing bosses and its incredible animation frame-rate is what In The Hunt is selling, hindered maybe by the unavoidable slowdown and the waters getting so cluttered with explosions and torpedo trails that it's sometimes hard to see what's going on.

Arcade flyer

The poor sound effects and music keep In The Hunt away from technical perfection. A low point its at-the-time unparalleled animation frame-rate and rich, luscious special effects more than make up for by putting the player into what looks like a beautifully designed scaled model. Devastated towns, ominous dark skies, and post-war remnants abound as part of the cyberpunk theme; with destructable houses, falling bridges, flying shrapnel and several other smashable background objects showering the screen in such a way that video slow-down is inevitable.

The Saturn version was ported by Imagineer and features a cheesy FMV as an intro, giving a little bit more insight into the game's story.
The Playstation port was made by Kokopeli (?). Both are pretty much arcade perfect.

Put it simply, In The Hunt is a visual wonder for its time. Gorgeous graphics, unmatched animation, amazing bosses and a very reasonable difficulty level are enough to hook you until the end. Just don't expect to come back to it once you have seen it all.

Here's a quick look at some SNK games that share that similar post-apocalyptic theme and graphic design. Irem and SNK often shared designers on many games, including "Last Resort", "The King of Fighters '94", "Top Hunter" and even "Metal Slug". The latter one being the direct sucessor to Irem's "Gunforce 2".