IREM gets no respect

[Crowquill]

I've always wondered why IREM's name never comes up in the talk of great game companies.

They licensed most of their games for other companies to manufacture, but they had some great innovative games:

Moon Patrol
Tropical Angel (try it--it's quite original)
Kung-Fu Master
R-Type
Vigilante
In the Hunt
Gunforce 1 & 2(who's developers later made the Metal Slug games)

[rlemmon]

I agree, They had some great games. Are they still around ?

[brophog]

For starters, they never had that really big blockbuster series. Konami, Capcom, EA......these companies have long lasting series that people identify with.

IReM doesn't have that. The closest thing they have is R-type which is relatively short lived as a series and doesn't get the genre appeal that some of the others get.

Don't get me wrong, I adore shmups. Easily my favorite arcade genre. But many people ignore them due to their diffculty. With the eye candy of recent years in the arcade and on the Sony and Sega systems, they're probably more popular now than ever before.

Secondly, it's because they are innovative. Innovation is popular in the underground, but the masses are spoonfed certain genre types to such an extent that while everyone is clamoring for innovation, sales for the copycats drive more copycats. This isn't exclusive to video games either. In fact, it's probably more prevalent in movies, TV, and music.

[RayB]

Because Hammering Harry ruined their entire reputation.

No, seriously though, it has alot to do with the small quantity of hit games they put out and also the fact that most of their games were licensed out to other big name manufacturers, so most people think of the North American distributor instead.

For example Moon Patrol IS fondly remembered and still talked about, but people consider it a Williams game.

Irem is still around, in japan: http://www.irem.co.jp/e/game/index.html

[TOK]

Moon Patrol is one of my all time favorite games, but I find many of the newer Irem games brutally hard. I tried In The Hunt after someone mentioned it a couple days ago. I could understand why it was never successful in the arcades. Very cool theme, look and enemies, but my first 3 games probably lasted about 40 seconds each. I like challenging games, but if I was pumping money into it, I would have bailed after one try.

I think I used about 8 continues getting to the end of the third level, then I had to bail to do some shopping. I'll go back and play through later and see how much it would have cost me!  I remember one of the other newer Irem games leaving me with that same impression, and I believe it was Gunforce.