Image Fight (イメージファイト) is a 1988 vertically-scrolling shoot 'em up arcade game developed and published by Irem. The arcade game was also ported for the Nintendo Entertainment System, TurboGrafx-16 (Japan-only), Sharp X68000 (Japan-only), and FM Towns (Japan-only) in 1990.
Gameplay
Image Fight was released one year after Irem's successful horizontal scroller, R-Type, and, although not directly related, the two games have some similarities.
The player flies a futuristic red ship. R-Type Final identifies this ship as the OF-1 Daedalus, but it is not known if that was the ship's original name. However, the term OF-1 does appear in the NES version's instruction manual, as well as in the official artwork for the sequel, Image Fight II. The game appears to be set inside a holographic simulator, like the holodeck on Star Trek: The Next Generation. In the NES version of the game, the first 5 missions are called "Combat Simulation Stages" and the last 3 missions are called "Real Combat Stages".
Ports
The arcade game was also ported for the Nintendo Entertainment System, TurboGrafx-16 (Japan-only), Sharp X68000 (Japan-only), and FM Towns (Japan-only) in 1990. The TurboGrafx-16 version was later re-released for the Virtual Console only in Japan. In 1998, Image Fight, along with another arcade game by Irem, X-Multiply, was released only in Japan as a one-disc double-bill for the Sony PlayStation and the Sega Saturn.
The arcade game was followed by Image Fight II: Operation Deepstriker, a sequel for the PC Engine Super CD-ROM² in 1992 exclusively in Japan. Like the TurboGrafx-16 version of the first Image Fight, Image Fight II was re-released for the Virtual Console only in Japan.
The ship from this game is included in R-Type Final, where it is the first in a series of five fighters called the OF series. The Pods are also available on fighters of the OF series.
Source: Wikipedia, "Image Fight", available under the CC-BY-SA License.