Irem Collection Volume 2 Review

Irem Collection Volume 2 is the follow up to Irem Collection Volume 1 which was released in December 2023. This new collection contains various versions (console and arcade) of Gunforce, Gunforce II and Air Duel.

Gunforce is a run n’ gun game akin to Konami’s Contra where you have to complete every linear level while surviving the onslaught of enemies and their projectiles only to be confronted by a boss. Take out the boss and you can move on to the next level. Akin to Konami’s flagship series, it’s one hit death. For this one, players can choose between the Super NES, Super Famicom, Worldwide arcade and Japanese arcade versions.

Gunforce II is the sequel to GunForce; which keeps the same run n’ gun formula, but this time around you’re using two machineguns at once. It also introduces a 2 player coop mode; just to make things even more chaotic. With this sequel, you get the choice between the arcade versions (World vs Japan). This sequel also allows you to commandeer a few vehicles for some extra power.

Air Duel is a top down shoot’em up (shmup) where players take control of a fighter jet and need to survive the slew of enemies and their projectiles; from small annoying little jets to near screen filling flying monstrosities. There’s a single arcade version available for this one.

All three games also allow players to pick up power ups for some extra firepower. Although when it comes to the GunForce games, there isn’t much of variety in terms of power ups. What is a nice little touch however is when you die, the power up remains on the floor so you can pick it back up when you’re back. Also oddly enough, for GunForce games, you won’t die if you touch your enemies; only their projectiles.

Each game offers two different experiences. Casual and Classic modes. The former allows players to benefit from save states, rewind, cheats; among other perks. Whereas Classic mode is the true experience from the original game. To be honest, Casual mode is completely unnecessary for Arcade versions; as long as you re-up credits, you’re good to go.

Nothing special to report on the presentation side of things. Both console and arcades versions look great; even by today’s standards in all of their pixelated glory. Environments are a bit dark and sometimes, there’s so much shit on screen it can be dizzying; so much to the point that it’s easy to lose track of enemy projectiles and die. On the soundtrack side of things, arcade versions will clearly have a bit of a nostalgia effect to older gamers. The console versions sound fair for what they are but they are far from classics.

One of the issues here is the fact that they opted to gatekeep Achievements behind Classic modes; meaning if players want to play casually for practice or whatnot, you won’t unlock any Achievements and have to go through each game’s classic mode. Also insanely annoying to have to identify your account every time you launch one of the games. As you’d expect, the variety is pretty slim.

Calling this Irem Collection Volume 2 feels a bit misrepresentative considering 99% of games in this collection are different versions of Gunforce and its sequel. If you’re a fan of classic Contra/Probotector-like games, then this collection is a must play. If you’re looking to dive more into this old school developer/platformer, this ain’t it.