Image Fight

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.

Plot
The following is taken directly from the NES instruction manual: On a fateful day in 20XX, the Earth's moon exploded into four large fragments and a multitude of meteors. Aliens from afar had succeeded in destroying the West's moon base. One after another, mankind's other military industrial space complexes were being lost. What mankind dreaded had come to pass. Scores of unidentified fighters were in the area. In addition, the moon's main computer, still intact after the explosion, had a strange vegetation coiled around it. Their trademark evil exploits being a dead giveaway, invaders from the Boondoggle Galaxy had arrived to take over the Earth. To counter these evil forces, leading scientists from all over the globe created the "OF-1" Fightership. Combat pilots depart the Earth to fend off the invaders and earn everlasting glory.

Game play
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".

Reception
Felix Arabia of HonestGamers, a website about reviewing video games, reviewed and gave the arcade version a 7 out of 10, the NES version a 6 out of 10, and the TurboGrafx-16 version an 8 out of 10.undefinedAccording to producer Hiroshi Iuchi, creator of Radiant Silvergun, Image Fight was the main inspiration for Radiant Silvergun's design. Tomonobu Itagaki, creator of the Dead or Alive series, listed Image Fight as one of his five favorite games.