Image Fight

"Witness a game crippling its own gameplay trying to be different."

The Space Shooting genre has seen titles that were great and unoriginal come and go. It’s seen some that are unbelievably hard and others that lack any real challenge. Image Fight falls in both cases of the latter. It didn’t get its due because it wasn’t original enough to break the mold, and it‘s not challenging enough to draw attention to itself.

The world is in peril, then moon base is soon to be obliterated by aliens. The human’s military bases were being destroyed and the future was looking grim. They unveiled their most high-tech fighter jet to date to counter the aliens, the OF-1. The OF-1 isn’t the standard fighting jet, its ability to change speed at any time, equip pods and frontal weapons makes it stand out above and beyond the rest of the human‘s military equipment. Unknown to the humans at the time, these “aliens” were just foreign vegetation from another planet multiplying and taking over. This idea seems rather silly, because I can’t see any vegetation taking over a whole planet.

You’ll be introduced to the OF-1 on the first stage. The overhead view of a welcoming clear sky and placid blue waters are only there to hide something much more sinister that you’ll soon encounter. Jets (how unworldly those are) begin to come from both sides of the screen and assault you. Using the default weapon (two blue lasers that are parallel to each other) will make quick work of them. You’ll find a container up ahead that’s twirling out of control. Smash it open to reveal a pod.

Pods come in either blue or red, and have the ability to form a protective shield around the sides of you (More pods around you -- Greater the effect.) You can decide what color of pod you get by waiting around, it’ll change color automatically given time. The difference in the pods isn’t just the color, but rather, the fashion in which they shoot. Blue pods will shoot straight, while red ones will fire whichever way that corresponds with the direction you pressed on the controller.

Irem, realizing this probably isn’t enough to make any gamer to look twice at its product, decided to go nuts with adding in another feature. There’s a plethora of guns that can be strapped onto the front of the ship. The guns will be located in containers with pods. They might’ve overdone it here, as they added too many guns for such a short game. They’ll do things such as fire out plasma balls diagonally, discharge torpedoes through two turrets on the front, waves from the side, homing missiles, lasers that’ll ricochet off of solid surfaces, form a shield around you, and finally, release the all-scary bubbles that wander around the screen. The humans believe they can “clean up” the alien’s act if they kill them in a bubble bath. Unlike the pods, these frontal guns are easily destroyed, it’ll only take a brush up against a wall or a lone bullet by an enemy.

Image Fight basically defeats its own purpose later in the game. They included a hefty amount of enemies that’ll ruthlessly attack you to give the game a challenge. Long behold, there really is no challenge because you’ll have weapons that can take care of every monster that comes onto the screen. That, combined with the fact all the enemies are practically carbon copies of each other doesn’t help either. You’ll know beforehand how they’ll attack, and be able to take them down before they even become a threat. Levels will be simply reduced to systematically taking out all enemies before the boss without anything to spice it up in between.

If you attempted to go through the game without collecting any pods or front guns, it’d be difficult. The pods negate all side attacks while clearing away everything else that’s needed to be taken care of. If you have homing missiles equipped, you’ll just have to sit there while they finish off all regular enemies and bosses. Speaking of bosses, they’re pushovers. The first boss is a monkey looking thing that just fires out circular lasers at you, that’s it. Second boss falls into the same category at the first: Mundane. It’s a floating platform that’s covered in turrets that do the same attack. The next 6 bosses all fall into the same category, too. In shooters, there’s a pattern that’s needed to be figured out, usually this might require you to observe the boss‘s actions a few times. In Image Fight, it only takes a matter of seconds to decipher this pattern.

Image Fight crippled its own game play trying to be different. There’s an overabundance of weapons, the monsters are all the same, and the game is short (8 levels that take around 3 minutes each.) It’s a rather obscure and overlooked shooter, and there’s a reason for that.

Final = 3

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 11/29/03