Who Were Irem?
Founded in Osaka in 1974 as IPM Co. Ltd, Irem Corporation spent two decades as one of Japan's most creative and technically ambitious arcade game studios. Where other companies chased trends, Irem repeatedly set them - designing the first beat ‘em up, producing the most demanding horizontal shooter ever made, and building some of the most sophisticated arcade hardware of the 16-bit era.
Their legacy is complicated by opacity: Irem rarely credited its staff, rarely gave interviews, and dissolved its game development operations in 1994 without fanfare. But the games they left behind - R-Type, Kung-Fu Master, Moon Patrol, In the Hunt - shaped the medium in ways still felt today.
The team behind In the Hunt went on to create Metal Slug. The designer of Kung-Fu Master and Moon Patrol went on to create Street Fighter. Irem was, as much as anything, a school. This site is a tribute to what they built.
A Catalogue of Firsts
Irem's output spans three decades of arcade hardware generations, from the Z80-powered M52 of Moon Patrol (1982) to the 16-bit M92 of In the Hunt (1993). At each generation they produced at least one title that reset expectations: Moon Patrol introduced full parallax scrolling; Kung-Fu Master invented the beat ‘em up; R-Type brought biomechanical enemy design and a physics-driven auxiliary weapon to the horizontal shooter.
Their catalogue rewards discovery. For every landmark title there are lesser-known works that repay time: Image Fight (1988) applied R-Type’s precision demands to a more conventional vertical shooter format; Ninja Spirit (1988) pushed the hardware sprite count beyond any contemporary brawler; In the Hunt (1993) combined underwater scrolling shooter mechanics with the large-sprite aesthetic that would define Metal Slug.
R-Type Deep Dive
The Bydo Empire
Released in 1987, R-Type changed everything about the horizontal shooter genre. With its indestructible Force device, biomechanical enemy designs, and unrelenting demand for pattern memorisation, it remains one of the defining games of the arcade era.
Our deep dive covers the Bydo lore, Force device mechanics, version history from arcade to SNES, and why R-Type’s difficulty philosophy is fundamentally different from bullet-hell.
Read the deep dive →Irem on Video
R-Type Arcade Longplay (1987)
Complete run of the original arcade version on Irem M72 hardware. All eight stages including Dobkeratops.
Irem History & R-Type Retrospective
Company history retrospective covering Irem from IPM founding through R-Type and beyond.