Irem Collection Volume 3 PS5 Review

Gameplay

Graphics

Audio

Value

Summary: A brutal reminder that most arcade games required several dozen microtransactions to finish.

3

Peace Spirit!

Imrem Collection Volume 3 presents the player with a curious, yet slightly inconsistent trio (plus a PC Engine port) of R-Type adjacent side-scrolling shooters from gaming’s arcade heyday.

The collection bundles together Mr Heli’s Great Adventure (Battle Copter in the US), Dragon Breed, and Mystic Riders.

Older readers might remember Mr. Heli and Dragon Breed if they had a Micro in the day. Since both ended up with well-received ports on Spectrum, Amiga, and Amstrad.

Mystic Riders got a random PC port in 2018. The PC Engine Port of Mr Heli (also in the collection) landed on the Virtual Console for the Wii in Japan and later everywhere else on the WiiU. But overall, we’re looking at some arcade ports that have never hit consoles in anything close to an arcade-perfect state previously.

I hate to say that it’s not the case now either. Even playing on a PS5 Pro, each game suffers from some seriously egregious slowdown whenever the action gets anywhere close to hectic, and there’s also plenty of graphical glitches, and in the case of Mr.Heli, I hit one game-breaking glitch that forced a reset at the end of the penultimate level.

There have also been some odd design decisions made to the presentation of the games. Each can be played in either classic or casual mode. Classic mode, pretty much the game as it would have been in the arcade. Some minor adjustments can be made to the amount of lives you start with and the difficulty, and that’s your lot. Pump as many pretend coins in as you need to slog through them, and away you go.

Meanwhile, Casual mode contains all of the quality of life improvements that make these kinds of early arcade games a lot more fun to play, including rewind and fast forward features, save states, and a nice suite of cheats for each title to make those single hit kills far more bearable.

There’s just one problem: you can only earn achievements in classic mode, and I’m not sure I have the patience for it (with one notable exception).

Probably the most modern of the three games, Mystic Riders was initially released in 1992 and sees players team up to blast their way through a charming world of big bold sprites broom riding witches Mark and Zeal toss elemental spells (and occasionally their wands) at anything daft enough to get in their way as they fight to save the world from an evil witch.

It’s the kind of simple, challenging side-scrolling shooter that I adored as a kid, and probably the closest game in the collection to Irem’s famous R-Type series. Just with witches and giant skeletons, and mimics, and even the occasional mermaid.

Every enemy you kill leaves behind a gem, and the more gems you collect, the more powerful your spells become. Take a hit, and it’s straight back to peashooter strength.
It’s the most manageable game to play in Classic mode, and the most fun, thanks in part to the fact you’re not kicked back to the beginning of the level every time you die. So though it’s tough at times, you can press on thanks to the infinite stack of quarters a press of L3 bestows upon you.

However, the same can’t be said for Dragon Breed, which is a fantastic game, with some awesome ideas, brought low by the obvious nickel and diming of arcade games of the time.

Dragon Breed answers the question, What if Snake was a shooter? You play as King Kaylis riding on the mighty Bahamoot, a powerful dragon that can shit lightning with the correct powerup.

Bahamoot is invincible, capable of blocking attacks from enemies or outright murdering them with a clever coil of his tail. Kaylis, on the other hand, is the Achilles’ heel of the piece. He dies whenever anything hits him and is armed with a bow that’s quickly outgunned by whatever new elemental power Bahamoot stumbles upon, which includes homing attacks, raining lightning, and belching big streams of flame.

The problem lies in the fact that it seems to be almost impossible to stop Kaylis getting cracked in the bonce by the myriad of awful insectoid monsters that want to murder him.

When this happens, and it will. A lot. You’re chucked straight back to the beginning of the stage. To just get randomly twatted by some other rando bolt or bullet form off screen.

However, after I had given up and started playing on casual with invincibility on, because life is too short for this kind of bullshit, I enjoyed my time with it. Romping along as a dragon is a power fantasy, and not dying every two seconds to a gnat with a grudge revealed that to me.

I liked this game. I just wish Kaylis had a health bar, or losing a life didn’t mean a swift trip back to the start of a stage. I also would have appreciated some trophies for bothering to run through it twice. But it’s a small sacrifice for it to become fun.

Last up is Mr Heli’s Great Adventure (Aka Battle Chopper). The only game in the collection that also includes a home console port, in this case, the fairly impressive PC Engine version, is a neat shooter that mixes exploration with mining, the occasional maze, and massive boss battles.

You’ll spend most of your time blasting away at the environment, hunting for crystals that are used to buy powerups like improved guns, bombs, and missiles, and more energy to keep Mr Heli in the air before eventually making your way into some sort of facility and then finally face off against an end of level boss.

Then you rinse and repeat. The backgrounds aren’t particularly memorable, but the core gameplay is a lot of fun, and trying to grab enough cash and deciding what upgrades to snatch before you inevitably pass them by adds an element of strategy to proceedings.

That being said, Mr Heli is another arcade era glass cannon. With the lightest of blows sapping your health, and oftentimes you’ll get trapped by several enemies that will blow the little chopper that could out of the sky in seconds.

Then back to the last checkpoint (which are few and far between), you go.

Final Thoughts

If, like me, you have a soft spot for obscure arcade game collections, genre fans, and those who prefer their retro gaming a little off the beaten path, Irem Collection Volume 3 is probably worth a punt.

For game history buffs, it’s worth bearing in mind that it is light on extras; you won’t find the kind of treasure trove of extras you’ll get in your average Digital Eclipse collection or Night Dive remaster. It’s a shame the old home computer ports didn’t make the cut either, since old home computer ports of old arcade games are always fascinating to play, even if they aren’t always fun.

Likewise, many old arcade games had a horrible habit of placing profit over fun, and unfortunately, these are three arcade titles specifically designed to hoover up your change as fast as they can, even if you do now have infinite cash by default. It still negatively impacts the pacing and makes each game feel like a slog at times.

As such, it’s harder to recommend Irem Collection Volume 3 to all but the most ardent and slightly masochistic shooter fans.

About the Author

Gareth Newnham

Irem Collection Volume 3 PS5 Review