Irem was a pretty swell developer with a celebrated legacy in the shoot-’em-up genre. Personally, I appreciate them for being where the minds behind Metal Slug began to congeal, which means Irem Collection Volume 2 was for me, as it starred Gunforce 2, which was sort of a prototypical Metal Slug.

On the other hand, the Irem Collection, er, collections aren’t the best value. $34.99 Canadian Loonies for three-ish games. I could get three Arcade Archives releases for, like, $30. Don’t get me wrong, it isn’t terrible, but it makes it a bit of a hard sell next to bulk buys like Capcom Arcade Stadium.

Anyway, Irem Collection Volume 3 includes three shoot-’em-ups, most of which I haven’t tried before. As I’ve done with arcade collections in the pass, I’ll give you a quick mini-review of each one. I may break the games out to full reviews later.

MR. HELI (BATTLE CHOPPER)

I just can’t with this game. It has its fans, apparently, but the whole central hook doesn’t work for me. You play as a chubby little helicopter man. There’s no forced scrolling for most areas, so you can move at your own pace. Touching the landscape doesn’t kill you.

What gets me is that you need to buy upgrades. Fantasy Zone did the same sort of thing, but in that game, you just needed to pick up money off destroyed enemies. Mr. Heli has you shoot into blocks of cracked rock to uncover crystal formations, and picking them up grants you currency. The power-ups themselves are also in the cracked rock and are kind of expensive.

It just slows things to a crawl, and I can’t tell if the best strategy is to take it slow and pick up as much money as possible, or prioritize moving through the levels. Either way, I don’t want to shoot rocks. It’s boring. So, I got to the end of the third level and called it. Mr. Heli will be fine for some, but definitely not for me.

It’s unfortunate, because Mr. Heli’s PC-Engine port is thrown in as a bonus. From what I can tell, it’s pretty much the same as the arcade version, but the screen size is reduced, so there’s additional vertical scrolling in formerly horizontal areas.

MYSTIC RIDERS

Mystic Riders, on the other hand, is fab. The broom-riding shoot-’em-up may seem like a relative to Cotton, but that turns out to be a mostly cosmetic similarity. Mystic Riders has its own approach to things, and it’s pretty awesome.

The main focal point for its awesomeness is the way you can throw your broom. You can toss it out like a boomerang, dealing major damage to any enemy in its path. This doesn’t interrupt your main pea-shooter, however, so it gives you the ability to attack in one direction with the broom while keeping the heat on directly in front of you. The broom also destroys projectiles, so it’s great as a defensive option. It feels really great.

It also doesn’t munch quarters as noticeably as most Irem shooters I’ve sampled. I’m used to them getting pretty brutal close to the finale, but Mystic Riders is a lot more manageable. Not easy, by any stretch, but to the point where 1cc’ing it doesn’t feel like a remote possibility. It’s definitely my favourite game in the collection.

DRAGON BREED

A pretty unconventional conventional shoot-’em-up. In this one, you play as a dude riding on a dragon. The dude shoots a crossbow, but the dragon can be upgraded to breathe fire or piss lightning. But the most important function of the dragon is that it’s nigh invulnerable. If you position it between your dude and danger, it will typically absorb the hits and damage any enemy in your way.

This adds a unique defensive positioning to the game. Sure, blasting the enemies in your path with your crossbow or the dragon’s charge shot is important, but Dragon Breed absolutely dumps enemies on you most of the time, so you’re going to have to multitask and make sure your scaly friend is absorbing all the damage.

That sometimes can make you feel like you’re cheating as you hide in the corner, but Dragon Breed winds up being extremely difficult toward the end. There’s only a mid-level checkpoint that you continue from each time you die, and that means a lot of time spent memorizing the levels. But the later levels are absolutely brutal. For the last boss, I had to lean on Irem Collection’s rewind feature to see the end. Unlike Mystic Riders, I don’t think I’ll ever be 1cc’ing this one.

IN SUMMARY

Irem Collection Volume 3 dishes out a solid collection of three games, but that’s about it. And its asking price is rather high for what you get. There are few bells and whistles besides each game having “Classic” and “Casual” difficulties, which basically just decide what kind of assists you have. There are leaderboards, but that seems kind of basic at this point.

I just wish some extras could have been bundled in. Concept art, flyers, interviews, maybe. The games themselves don’t even get credits. I mean, Irem rarely credited their staff, but at this point, I’m sure someone working with the company could dig up the folks who were behind the games and acknowledge them.

Nonetheless, at least Irem Collection Volume 3 is a compilation of three good arcade titles. Okay, maybe I didn’t really jive with Mr. Heli, but I don’t think it’s a bad game… probably. I just don’t think the price tag is representative of the package. If I had to guess, it’s because they want to keep parity with the physical release. But when you’re looking at it on a digital storefront between Taito Milestones and Capcom Arcade Stadium, it doesn’t look very tantalizing, regardless of how much you like Mr. Heli.

5/10

This review was conducted using a digital version of the game for Switch. It was provided by the publisher’s PR, so I don’t know what the author is complaining about.