320 · ImageFight

• Victory will come only to the worthy. Are you?
• NES Longplay
• 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 military 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 strange 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.
• Gameplay
  • Imagefight is Irem which is also R-Type. Their teams Gradius. This game came out one year after R-Type, but we haven’t seen R-Type on NES
  • The game begins with five stages taking place inside a combat simulation, and the player's ability to destroy enemy entities is tested.
  • Upon finishing a simulation stage, the game displays results and shows if their score is considered passing or failing.
  • The player must have an average kill rate of 90% or better in the simulation stages to immediately proceed to real combat.
  • If the player fails, they must play an additional stage before entering real combat.
  • Real combat consists of three stages. The real combat stages play very much like a traditional shoot em' up game
• The Pods
  • The Pod, once collected, floats alongside the player's ship.
  • 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 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.
• The ship has four different levels of speed that the player can switch between, to allow for more precise manoeuvering in confined spaces.
• Power-Ups
  • Described as components
    • 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.
• Sequels and Spinoffs
  • According to producer Hiroshi Iuchi, creator of Radiant Silvergun, Image Fight was the main inspiration for Radiant Silvergun's design
  • Image Fight on FM Towns has player controlled scrolling (same game otherwise)
  • Image Fight II: Operation Deepstriker, a sequel for the PC Engine Super CD-ROM² in 1992 exclusively in Japan.
    • featuring an expanded story told in fully-voiced, animated cinematics, new enemies and arsenal options, a new ship, and remixed soundtrack
  • The ship from this game is included in R-Type Final, where it is the first in a series of five fighters called the OF series. The Pods are also available on fighters of the OF series.
• EGL
• NEXT WEEK - Jeopardy! 25th Anniversary Edition
  • What is…the last time we have to review Jeopardy

Auto-generated transcript. Each paragraph starts with its timestamp. Speakers are not identified.

00:00 Image Fight! Victory will come only to the worthy! Are you? Nostalgia! And welcome to NEStalgia! A chronological exploration of every NES game released in North America. I'm Mike. I'm Sean. And I'm Joe. Can I just read the plot for the game before we even talk about it? Please. On a fateful day in 20XX, the Earth's moon exploded into four large fragments and a multitude of meteors.

00:49 Aliens from afar had succeeded in destroying the West's moon base. One after another, mankind's other military 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 strange 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 fighter ship. Combat pilots.

01:32 Oh no. Combat pilots depart the Earth to fend off the invaders and earn everlasting glory. Now, I read all that because that is, for a shmup, that is a pretty detailed plot of what's going on. Like, it's not just four large fragments of the moon exploded. There's also a multitude of meteors. And it's not like just aliens. These aliens are from the Boondoggle galaxy.

01:57 And, you know, there's just like a bunch of fill-in information, even the fighter ship. But, so, why would the game then start with like, an incredibly lengthy simulation experience before you ever get to the actual fights? That was pretty crazy. Now, I have two thoughts here. The first is, this whole story is just another example in a long line of them of like, they do, like they literally do not care about the story. This was just made up on the spot, probably by the guy that, like, no, because it is in the game too at the end. But, it just made up on the spot just to, for it to be an excuse to play the game.

02:41 And, this one actually has proof in calling the galaxy the Boondoggle galaxy. Like, that is literally just a word that means, it's nonsense. The word is nonsense. It means nonsense. So, they don't even, they're not even trying to hide it anymore. So, that's, that's just an annoying, annoyance to me. And, it's something that I keep seeing in these old NES games. And, it just annoys me. Now, okay.

03:07 Mike, what you were saying. Wait, so it did say the moon exploded from a multitude of meteors, right? No, no, no. Not into. No, no. It exploded into. Yeah, so it's a bunch of like fragments. So, why did it explode? Well, you know, the computer at the center of the moon, you know. It's just, it's a, it's a mad lib. It's a mad lib of things that are vaguely sci-fi. I don't think I even heard the rest of the story because I spent the whole time you were talking, trying to figure out, wait, why did the moon explode? Did I miss that? No, you know what the funny part is?

03:38 So, Sean, Sean is also hearing like bits and pieces of the story. And, maybe I didn't do a great job with, you know, like reading it. But, the moon's main computer is still intact after the explosion. It's not what caused the explosion. No, I heard the whole thing. Okay. But, that's the thing. It doesn't matter. Yeah, no, it doesn't matter. And, to Joe's point, no, they didn't. They just say aliens succeeded in exploding the moon.

04:01 But, thank God, there was still some vegetation around to keep the main, I know. What is the goal of destroying the moon? Like, aren't you screwing up like the planet that you're probably trying to take over as well by blowing up the moon?

04:17 Probably. It was definitely a surprise to me in the game. And, maybe it's meant to be. Yeah. Like a twist, you know? Like, oh, this whole time, you know, you were just training. And, now it's like, this isn't a drill anymore. Like, they're here. Right? This is no drill. Yeah, and that's supposed to have like some weight. Right? Like, oh my God. Like, now it's real. But, then it doesn't feel any different than the simulation. Simulation. Which is like, kudos to the simulation team for, you know, really like, you know, they really, in that universe, like they really, 20XX, they really got it down pat to what real life feels like. Because the simulation and the real life levels might as well be the same damn thing.

05:02 Exactly. Yeah. And I feel like the simulation part is like longer than the rest of the game. It is. It is three to two, right? Or maybe even longer than that. I think it's three sim levels, two real levels. Yeah. So, what'd you think? Yeah. I was just, I was gonna get into it. Image Fight is Irem. Irem developed the game. They are also the developers of R-Type. R-Type is Irem's like equivalent to Gradius. I'm sure you guys have heard of R-Type, right? We played it, didn't we? On the NES? Well, maybe I'm thinking of something with Z instead. Yeah, we didn't play R-Type. Section Z.

05:39 Yeah. Sorry. It was a letter. You did throw me in for a loop there though Sean, because my next fact was this game came out a year, one year after R-Type, but we haven't seen R-Type on the NES. So that would have been a little embarrassing had we have played R-Type on the NES, but we have not. And so I think that's, yeah, that's kind of interesting that Image Fight is like Irem says, put this forward instead of their like main franchise.

06:05 And so it borrows a lot of the qualities from R-Type, but since we haven't played R-Type, you know, what are those things? Well, the biggest thing is that the change here from every other shmup is that there are these pods that you collect and you can have three of them. There are two different colors of those pods. They are red and blue.

06:32 The red one changes directions based on the movement of the ship. So you have like kind of this mini pod ship next to your ship that first appears on the left, then the right, and then finally one behind you. And so if you move to the left, it now starts shooting in the left direction as well. The blue pod doesn't do that. It always points forward. And I think that's the only difference between these two pods. That is the only difference. But I do think that it's like a, it is a fundamental difference that actually adds something new to this formula. Um, one little correction. I think it's if you move to the left, it's going to shoot to the right.

07:16 Oh, okay. And vice versa. Um, so I think it would be, it would feel a little off if it was just like shooting in the direction you're moving. It did feel weird at first, uh, for it to be sort of inverted like that. But as it went on, it made more sense to me. Um, but no, I think it's cool. Like I, I remember, uh, you know, going as far back as like commando or games that, you are sort of like, like shmups, but not shmups, you know, um, where I was annoyed that you could only fire in the direction that you're moving. And that made just maneuvering very awkward and frustrating.

07:57 Um, and I may have mentioned it on an episode or I may have just thought it in my brain or I may not have thought it at all, but like just being able to do both is really, is really nice. Yeah. Because there actually is strategy between like, you wouldn't just take all the red pods, right? Even though it seems obvious that like, Oh, well they changed based on the direction. So, uh, you know, like it is kind of a good versatile, uh, strategy to have like a blue pod that just always shoots forward.

08:31 So this way you have additional fire power directly in front of you. And then maybe like if your red pods are on the left and right, those can kind of take care of the enemies on the side. And in general, just like having something about the context of these, if they feel less like power ups and they feel more like, Oh, I'm actually building onto my ship. I think because you can actually kind of see them building onto your ship in that way. But it, so it does feel like you're kind of customizing your ship in that way. Like with, with the different combinations of the blues and the red.

09:04 Yeah. It's kind of like a load out, um, as opposed to just like a straight power up. Um, cause yeah, they are, uh, additive and like, so your, your main ship will always shoot just forward like a regular shmup. So you could just do all reds and just sort of orient yourself. Um, if, if you really want to focus all your fire forward. So there's like a lot of flexibility in how you play. And then there's also upgrades for like your main hull where you can, uh, have different, uh, projectiles or just, I think there's one that just makes it a shield. Um, so there's a lot of, there's a lot of customization in here. And the way it works since you can only have three at a time is that, uh, whatever you,

09:55 whatever, whenever you pick up the next pod, it overwrites, um, the previous pod. So, uh, you know, the, the, it does kind of become a game that if you are liking your load out of, like I suggested two reds on the side and a blue on your back, you now have to dodge all other pods in the game to make sure that you don't, uh, bust that load out. Not that that's incredibly challenging. Remember the whole game is dodging. So, um, it's not the biggest deal, but definitely, um, you know, a strange choice when you consider that the other power up in this game, the, uh, I think they're described as components,

10:34 uh, in the manual are things that cannot, uh, like be removed from the ship or interchanged with the other ones. Once you collect one of these components, which change how the main ship, the, uh, OF1, how, how that shoots, it changes the direction, the rate of fire.

10:52 Now you have, um, now you have to like get hit in order for that to come off. Yeah. That's what I was going to say. Like maybe it's kind of counter to how they expected you to play this game, but I just would go and take chip damage against a wall, not chip damage. It would be, I'll go hit a wall and then go back to the upgrade to change what I wanted it to be. So there's still, there's still some room for, for error there. Yeah. But I, I actually compared to some other ways we've seen this done, prefer this because other times it's like, anytime you run into a powerup, it just switches out the powerup that you have. And while this is obviously far from the ideal way to do it, uh, it's at least.

11:41 Like it's your choice to decide like, okay, I want to, I want to swap this out. So I'm going to lose this. Like it's a weird way that you have to like take deliberate damage to do it. But at least it's not like I never, I felt like, Oh, like I accidentally ran into this powerup and now I lost the powerup I wanted because I, you know, I'm being punished for getting a powerup. That is still a, like a thing you have to be cognizant of with the pods at least as, as Mike was describing, but I appreciate that it wasn't for everything.

12:12 And then another change from other shmups is that the ship has four different levels of speed that you can switch between. And the way to do this is actually by just pressing the A button on your controller and you adjust the speed from one, two, three, four, then back down to three, two, one. This way you're not going from one, two, three, four back all the way down to one. You're kind of, uh, you know, able to fine tune it a little bit as you slow down.

12:42 This is a big change from, uh, the other means of speed that we've seen in games like Gradius, where you have to acquire the powerup and select to permanently boost your speed. Um, something that is good at a, at a certain point and then kind of becomes detrimental, uh, to a shmup is, you know, being too fast and colliding with things that you didn't mean to just because, uh, just like adjusting your, the sensitivity of your mouse cursor. On a computer can swing you over from, you know, like one window to the other too quickly. That's what happens in a shmup. You wind up being able to move too fast in this one. Being able to control your speeds is a really neat thing. Was it worth like removing a whole button, uh, to, to do that?

13:30 Sure. Because I never felt like it should be doing anything else. Well, I mean, it does several things, right? Like it, you can then press that button, the same button that you use to change gears, which I also didn't really notice that big of a difference in the speed, but maybe that's just a me problem.

13:49 Um, but you also sort of do a, um, like a, it like kicks the back burner on. I think you can use that as sort of a short range. Um, yes, that is true. Yeah. It can, it can, it can take off enemies on, on that regard too, of like, um, the, the heat from your jets. Which is helpful, especially when you don't have any power ups, so you can't shoot behind yourself. Um, and also I don't know the rhyme or reason to it. Again, maybe I should have read the manual for this. Um, sometimes it'll launch your pods forward and just sort of take out whatever's in front of you. Oh, that's A and B. Oh, okay. Yeah. If you press them both at the same time, that's your special.

14:34 Okay, cool. Going back to the, um, what you said about the, the kind of engine, you can like, you can shoot it out behind you. Did anyone, did you guys find that useful ever? Like, I thought that was cool, but like, did you ever use it in like an actual practical situation? Or was it just behind you? No, because by then I had the red pod, right? Like I was just using that to shoot from behind. But at least it's there. And like when I didn't have it, I was just like, you got to get really close in order to do it. Like at that point, it's going to fly away if it's behind me. I agree. I was wrong on the number of simulation stages. It's five.

15:08 I was going to point it out, but it seemed petty. Now, what's crazy about that is that five simulation stages, uh, does feel like a lot, but did you know that there's actually a way to like fail those simulation stages and have to play an additional stage to get to the, to the real world? Because I'm, I'm me. That was me.

15:33 So Sean, what happens if you don't get above an average kill rate of 90%? Uh, you have to do like, it's called a penalty round and it just forces you to do another level, which is weird that they're making you play, that they're punishing you by giving you more of the game. Um, and I guess it's like, it's relatively tough. Like the game is tough. Uh, but it was, it's odd. It was on a black background. It was just sort of like the same three enemies for longer than I would have expected.

16:12 Um, but yeah, that's what it does to you. And that's kind of funny because if, you know, if the twist of the game is that this whole thing was simulation and I keep saying twist, but they're, they're spelling it out for you that they are simulation stages inside the game. But I'm saying like, if the, if the turn, let's do that. If the turn was, oh no, now it's happening for real, right?

16:34 Like then the whole, you're not ready. Uh, cause your kill rate was below 90%. It doesn't really hold any weight because it's just kind of like, we need every man on deck, but like, don't send this guy. He's not ready. Like might as well send everybody, right? Like there's, it's only happening for real ones. And if the aliens get close enough, they're going to blow up the simulation where you're chilling anyway. Now in the canon of, of the lore, uh, while you're training is, have they already blown up the moon? Yeah, absolutely. Right. Like, I think that's what you're, you're now training.

17:10 I'm saying absolutely, but I don't know. I don't know how far away the boom doggal galaxy is. Uh, I was going to say you guys, but I mean, just even Sean asking a question about the lore and then you with such, with such a confidence, I was like, man, I really got to get brush up on my, on my lore or whatever this game is called. Well, what's funny is the lore was written, the lore was written by Chad GPT. So I might as well ask Chad GPT what the answer is.

17:41 And so we've talked about like the interesting, the things that separate it apart from the other shmups. Right. And even just very recently, we put a game called dragon spirit on the essential games list. And that was a shmup. And so this game is, is offering already like things that are a little bit different than, uh, than what dragon spirit was offering.

18:05 I'm not asking for you to contend this game against dragon spirit, but the only other thing left to talk about when it comes to a shmup is basically the, the level variety, like the, the enemies and, and are the, is the game fair and it's difficulty Sean, you seem to suggest that it is a difficult game. Would you like to talk about that? Yeah. I mean, in, in this obviously can shift based on like what kind of upgrades you have, like there's a part near the end, at least in my playthroughs where I got like homing missiles and it made the whole game kind of trivial.

18:43 But depending on if you don't have that, um, like there are some bosses that like, there's just one specific way to get to them. And there are some bosses that, uh, there's, there's a boss where there, it shoots out these sort of like circular, uh, I don't know, domes at you and it acts both as something that will hurt you and it shields the, the boss. I wouldn't say that that was entirely difficult, but it was frustrating and it made it a much longer fight than it needed to be. Um, they, uh, they're, I don't know.

19:26 It, it, it throws a lot at you. And a lot of times you can get lost. Like a problem that with shmups that we've seen in the past is that like these projectiles can get lost in the background and you're, you're just sort of caught in the middle.

19:43 I'd say that it's somewhere in the middle in terms of how difficult the game is. Joe, your thoughts on difficulty? Yeah. I mean, I'm kind of, I'm kind of in the same boat. I didn't think that it was, you know, it at least didn't do the, the crime that I see in a lot of other, um, in a lot of other shmups. There is just suddenly the screen becomes so incredibly saturated with projectiles that there's nowhere to move. Like I always felt like it was fair in that sense.

20:13 Um, I don't know. I think, I think it's hard to say because I am just generally bad at shmups. I thought it was a little more forgiving than other shmups that, that we've played overall. But, uh, you know, I didn't beat this game. It might've gotten a lot harder when I, when, you know, when I got further, but, um, I do have one more point. Yeah. I don't know. Kind of middle of the road. Yeah. About the, there is one boss that I, I would not have beat if I didn't cheat.

20:37 Um, and there is, there's one that shoots these lasers out at you and then the lasers take wild, like windy, like it basically turns into a maze. And I guess maybe there's a pattern. So, you know, like what sector to just sort of park your ship, but there, like if you're in the wrong spot, you can't dodge it. Like you're just going to get caught and you're going to get hit. So that was incredibly hard for me at least. Yes. No, that, that, that is the moment in the game. I think for me, where I was like, am I good at this? Like I was, I was thought I was breezing by.

21:11 And then all of a sudden it was like, how do I find out like quick enough? Like, you know, the, the, there is a, so the boss shoots out a bunch of different lasers and very quickly they kind of zig and zag across the screen to a point where there is a, a hole where the player should be, but it's not like a hole where you can see it coming. You see it after the fact, uh, you see it after it's done building it.

21:41 You can't predict where, because of the way these lasers zig and zag, can't predict where they're going to wind up. And so I have to think that it is a pattern that you learn and that it, it always goes the same way or something, because I can't imagine another way. That was the one where I just had to, you know, uh, brute force through it in order, in order to keep playing on another way to, another way to think about this game though, is, you know, the, um, the NES does come with controller or does come, does have the option to have controllers with turbo on them.

22:18 And while that is helpful in any shmup in this game, it actually makes most of the fighting like trivial, uh, with the turbo. And I'm not sure how, like how it differentiated from other shmups. Maybe it's just the rate at which it lets you fire, but it lets you fire so many bullets, a constant stream of them that it kind of resembles, uh, at least for the player's ship, a modern bullet hell where like you are just shooting everywhere. It's a fire hose. Yeah, exactly. You, you are able to hit everything on screen.

22:52 Nothing, nothing is to worry about. And provided you're just paying attention, you can complete almost every single stage with a 100% completion. Man, I can only imagine, especially with the, the fact that you're shooting in all directions, you know, so many different directions. And so many times you must just be like, not a fire hose. You're like a, you're like a, you're like 20 fire hoses all like spinning around. And there's like, it's like a wall. It's like a wall between you because they just can't reach you by, you know, like you're just spread, your spread is so wide that you're shooting everything as they enter the screen.

23:26 Uh, you know, now you don't have to play that way. Uh, and I'm not saying that's the preferred way, but it is just funny that it's not like, it's not a cheat in the game necessarily. It's a cheat in the controller that actually like, that actually works this time, right? Like sometimes it just gives you a little bit of an advantage. This one trivializes the game. Do I think without the turbo that the game is as hard as most of the shmups we've had on the NES? I don't think that. And I don't know if it's just the, the rate of scroll. We, we always talk about this in shmups that like, if, if it, if everything is moving too quickly and enemies are appearing, um, too suddenly that it just becomes difficult to manage what's going on.

24:07 I did feel like in this game, as long as you were clearing out the enemies, you never really had more than four at a time. And four sounds like a lot, but trust me, it's not. Uh, they're just in general, the bosses are, are what makes this game and the actual enemies that you fight are really just a variety of shapes that shoot very slow projectiles at you and either are attached to walls or move glacially towards you.

24:38 So, um, it can become something that just like, you know, um, surprises you with how quickly it gets hard that, and that, you know, other shmups are guilty of that. But as an overall thing, I do think that provided you have three pods and a great, uh, component on you, you're, you're going to breeze through a lot of this game. I mean, we, we've been, I guess we've been kind of medium on this game, uh, leaning positive, maybe, but what did you guys think of like the sound, the audio?

25:17 Did you, did you notice it? Did you care about it? Did it give you any kind of feeling? You know, I sort of forgot that that actually was like one of the first things I noticed, which is that there's no, like, there's not a, I don't know if there's like, I wouldn't say there's no feedback, but like the feedback is not satisfying when you fire or when you're, you know, like, I think the music is fine, but it sounds like it's like, you know, it reminds me of like a, like a, something that's not mixed properly.

25:43 Like, you know, the music is like, is like very prominent and everything else feels kind of silent. Yeah. The sound, all the sound effects in this game are really lackluster. Like anytime you shoot it, just like this little pink and it doesn't feel like, I mean, obviously you're very powerful. Like we were talking about how God-like you could be with the turbo button and some good

26:08 pods and equipment. But it doesn't sound like it. It's pretty weak sounding and it's very rare for me in one of these games to point out the sound. So that just tells you how much it sort of stood out. And all the sounds are, you know, like high pitched or like, they're just not, there's no satisfaction to them. There's no like awesome explosions. And while the music might've been cool. And I do agree that sometimes like the way bosses enter on and stuff like, you know, that they have cool music cues.

26:40 It's a shame because the actual original arcade game does have great music and sound effects. And so it's just a result of the NES port being a little bare bones. I will say, I don't know based on how the sound effects are. It's probably a blessing that like every time you shoot, it doesn't make a sound because they probably would have chose a very annoying sound. But it did make me like wonder. I was like, wait, do all shmups do this? That like when you shoot, they don't make a sound? Like it was weird that like your, your, your firing doesn't have like a, you know?

27:14 Yeah. Like everything's made of like very soft felt until a bullet makes an impact and then just goes blink. I mean, really there should be no sound in space. So, you know, maybe it's getting closer to accuracy. True. No.

28:20 by the way if you didn't know um but on the fm towns version of image fight the player controls the scrolling of the game by using the ship so it's the same exact game otherwise but you can like force to move up yeah you can push the screen forward and backwards keep in mind and it does it doesn't it's not fluid it is jank right yes but joe that's what i was thinking it's like not really a shmup anymore like now you have control over like when you'll see the enemies yeah

28:54 that's wild so i just thought it was neat that it's it's literally like same layout same number of stages it's just that for whatever reason when they were programming the game they were like oh we can't make this one auto scroll it probably wasn't that it was probably the reverse they were like you know we have the power to let the player control the scrolling ultimately the reviews online

29:15 seem to um skew towards that it's just janky it doesn't it doesn't really work when you're in the game um and then you know there's uh there's a pc engine version of the game that uh seemed like a great port there's a sega saturn port of the game which is very close to the arcade one uh if not identical except for on the left hand side of the screen constantly there's this little like you know

29:40 like super mario brothers 3 had that like one pixel line that just like always carried over from the other side of the screen but you wouldn't see that on a crt right you you shouldn't yeah you shouldn't but i'm saying it it for whatever reason technology didn't get that far between super mario brothers 3 and the sega saturn port of image fight because it had the same problem well you just reminded me of something and sorry jumping back to the to the original game here but the the screen populates

30:12 or loads that that did anyone else notice that like top pixel like loads in like a like a inkjet printer you know it's like it's it it goes from left to right really quickly i but i did not notice that filling in does that make any sense to anyone when does that happen instead of it being it's the the whole game like instead of it being like okay you're scrolling and like the next line of pixels appears the next line of it starts with like very quickly the first pixel on the top left

30:42 appears and then it like it like moves across the right and it fills up like that like really quickly well there's a lore explanation for that yeah i'm sure there is no because at the beginning of the game it you know the the simulation turns on and it says image projector okay oh yeah we never what the hell are they talking about what is that's the that's the image projector scanning in the uh information

31:06 at no point now i'm actually curious does it not do that once you once you go to a real mission oh i have no idea honestly i think what you're seeing is just the fact that you're you're you're playing this on a high def monitor uh it wouldn't have been seen on a crt due to overscan um it's just a quirk of a lot of nes games but yeah um you're probably right but i like i like the idea that it's

31:36 built in deliberately i like that too but did you bring up another point like did they ever explain what the hell an image projector is supposed to be i think that's because you're in the simulation right yeah that's just the screen yeah but does it load up again at the end actually the image projector gives the idea that you're not even in the simulation you're just like in one of those

32:00 like you're in the cockpit of something and then they're just projecting it onto the screen in front of you and you're seeing the video game yeah i think it's like one of those like mirror projectors that teachers used to have like the clear sheets that they would put on yeah the overhead projector yeah problems on yeah the overhead projector image projector is also the only clue we get as to why

32:19 this game might be called image fight because it's all just images are there not images on the screen that are fighting yeah that's exactly what's happening video game yes yeah there you go yeah the street fighter actually wanted to be called image fight as well but these guys got to it first uh also on the sequels and spinoff side since that is the section we're in uh image fight got a sequel image fight to operation deep striker um a pc yeah go for it yeah that's funny a pc engine super cd rom

32:55 uh exclusive game which is uh good luck finding that uh add-on and everything especially because that's only in japan uh but image fight 2 i was like oh let me see what changed and everything and apparently they added uh an expanded story to the um to the game that we have here including fully voiced animated cut scenes um new arsenal options a whole new ship and a remix soundtrack of the first game when i loaded it up on youtube and just skipped around i was always in the animated cut scenes it's

33:32 like it's insane how long these things go on for and like you jump ahead and it's like oh miss the gameplay like i'm back in the cut scenes i think every word that you said in like reading the plot needed like probably 15 minutes of explanation for it to make sense so yeah i believe at one point in the cut scene the guy is saying so wait what exploded the moon

33:59 uh okay according to producer hiroshi iuchi the creator of radiant silver gun image fight was the main inspiration for radiant silver guns design um cool what's that felt that you don't know radiant silver gun do you yeah that's like one of like the that's like on the top list of shmups all of all time it's always up there oh okay yeah it's on steam you can you can play that whenever you want god it's like ikaruga ikaruga is always on the list too radiant radiant garden what's that joe i said how do you not know about radiant guns um radiant garden i only know of choaniki so radiant garden it's called radiant silver gun for those of you interested and it's a it's a pretty good shmup uh

34:46 and the ship also makes an appearance in an r-type game r-type final uh where uh basically the of series uh which is never referred to in game but is referred to in manual um in this game the of dash one the of dash one does appear in r-type final get a load of this with the pods hey so it's it's like it's like a complete callback not just like uh hey this ship looks like that ship from our other game it's like it even functions the same way was this uh was this ship in smash wasn't in smash and probably never will be um that that's too obscure but believe it or not uh the moon from this game is in smash wow is this where the moon came from eventually first appearance all roads lead to smash brothers just like all roads on this podcast lead to the essential games list

35:46 middle of the episode sean guessed that we were all middle about this game or mid as the kids say uh you know we we couldn't decide uh or at least we were trying to hide whether we uh love it or hate it and i think i just wound up liking it and what's funny is is that as i was playing it i was like okay but is it really like worse than dragon spirit a game i just voted on the essential games list and i think what the reasons for why like dragon spirit got on the essential games was i was like

36:16 image fight without knowing it took like the wrong lessons went like the other way with the things i was so positive about with dragon spirit and now with image fight i'm just kind of like i mean yeah they did it but i wasn't like surprised and i mean or i wasn't like excited about the the changes they made to the shmup thing the speed thing for instance right it's like there's a whole mechanic there and

36:41 to sean's point like do you really feel like you're changing uh you're you're changing the gameplay on its head because you can adjust the level of speeds ever so slightly between a number of one and four the pods are do feel great but in a way they they are just a trick to feel like they've added a completely new gameplay element there are other power-ups in other shmups that do what the pods do until you collect a new power-up and once again completely change the way of the game i don't think

37:15 power-ups do enough in image fight to be worthy of saying like oh they change how a shmup works they just again another thing that like changes how you hit enemies and in a in a genre where we have seen many different ways to take on enemies i don't think any of the things they listed here were enough to throw it up to the essential games list definitely a play it i did enjoy the game just didn't do anything so innovative that it's worth adding to the list so it's a no for me sean

37:48 yeah i agree i mean i think that what i what i really liked about the power-up system in this game was that it really that made it feel like more components that you are uh that that you are actually thoughtfully customizing um and not just like oh i picked this up and it it's a big it's a big bullet like it's it felt a little bit more thoughtful um but that said like i i do i do like the game i just think it's it's very flawed in a way that dragon's beard is not um whether it's the pretty lackluster sound design the kind of up and down difficulty between the the levels themselves and the uh the bosses that sometimes can be just it it dicks um but i i'd say yeah i i liked the

38:52 i like the game it's not essential though joe yeah i don't think i'm voting this essential uh i don't have like it's one of those instances that i've talked about before too where it's like yeah i don't have like it doesn't mean that i'm like i i've got a bunch of really negative things to say about it just something about it didn't really stick stick out to me too much like there were there were parts i thought it was pretty cool the way they did the the pods and the power-ups and everything i thought that was neat and i guess if you twist my arm yeah to play it but like

39:23 i i don't know exactly what it is about this compared to dragon spirit but like you know it's no secret i'm not a shmup fan and dragon spirit like subverted that for me and made me really like it and this felt like oh this is pretty cool but it's still a shmup and i'm still just like you know it felt a little slow it felt you know i don't know i'm saying negative things about it now i i don't need to like i just think that it uh it didn't blow my mind so i'm gonna say no all right so it's three no's um which might be surprising after um how hype we've been on shmups lately uh

39:56 maybe not i don't know maybe you guys are tired of us putting those things on the essential games list and then so casually removing them later on but that's how shmups are they're they're fluid uh you know they they go with whatever the games were playing alongside at the time uh dictate because they're very easy enjoyable uh little bite-sized games and if you want more bite-sized stuff consider checking out patreon.com slash nostalgia for our nostalgia bites show did you know every month you could get an additional episode and that as of right now there's over 25 of those available for you to

40:34 listen to that's right we don't delete them after the month by the longer you wait how many specifically just just 26 okay thank you over 25 sounds so much better sean 26 i can't believe it was exactly one over 25 yeah did can you believe that we have over one trillion seconds of nostalgia recorded for you to listen to i don't believe that i don't actually don't i don't know how many i way overshot right how many seconds that would be um oh yeah disregard anyway the important thing is is that whether you go to that nostalgia bites on patreon or whether you just stay here know that we will

41:17 always be delivering content to both um and that if you're enjoying what you see here you're probably gonna enjoy what you saw over there next week we have jeopardy 25th anniversary edition where we will review jeopardy for what it feels like the fourth but probably final time yeah really i think i skipped a couple of them too and it still feels like a lot yeah you actually have to make up also ground on the other ones that you missed on the next week's episode well yeah i'll have to do answer more questions and speaking of trivia questions a little trivia for you apparently just googled it uh one trillion seconds is slightly over 31,688 years one trillion so we'll get there one trillion whoa oh

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