Forums > Game Forums > R-Type > Irem's Battle Bird
Freeman (65099) on 2/19/2024 6:49 AM · Reply · Permalink · Report
Was Battle Bird, a 1986 arcade game by Irem, ever officially released? Note 10 from this interview with Masato Ishizaki mentions Battle Bird this way:
『バトルバード』 1986年1月稼働。 ナナオの技術をフル活用した立体映像が売りの大型筐体ゲーム。疑似3Dのシューティングだが、 出荷台数は極めて少なく、ほとんど幻のゲームとなっている
Here's a translated interview on the game's development. There was also an arcade flyer produced for the game. Arcade-History states, though, that the game was unreleased.
Does anyone know anything more?
Kayburt (31897) on 2/19/2024 9:54 AM · Reply · Permalink · Report
The visuals are pretty reminiscent of Sega’s “Galaxy Force”. Mind you Sega had developed SubRoc-3D in 1982.
Having searched under the Japanese spelling バトル・バード I found out that the way the Arcade cabinet seems to function is very similar to how Nintendo’s Virtual Boy or a pair of 3D glasses works. There’s more detail at https://archive.org/details/Computer_Gamer_Issue_12_1986-03_Argus_Press_GB/page/n25/mode/2up
From what I can conclude, it seems the game didn’t get past the prototyping stage and interview shows the only existing cabinet, with its current whereabouts unknown. Some of its assets might have been reused for something else such as R-Type. This page https://retrogamegoods.com/gamegoods_item/flyer/アイレム「バトルバード」チラシ mentions that game appeared in some Beep magazine.
There isn’t much more than copies of the Arcade flyer.