It's new to me: Hyper Iria
A fan translation of a licensed Super Famicom game that's a successor to a prequel OVA that sprung out of a Japanese live-action movie. Got all that?
This column is “It’s new to me,” in which I’ll play a game I’ve never played before — of which there are still many despite my habits — and then write up my thoughts on the title, hopefully while doing existing fans justice. Previous entries in this series can be found through this link.
In 1991, a film called Zeiram released in Japanese theaters. It was the story of a bounty hunter, Iria, chasing down an immortal alien creature, with the help of an AI named Bob. It wasn’t a major hit and didn’t receive much critical praise, but it did manage to do well enough to secure a sequel (Zeiram 2), and ended up with an original video animation prequel series in 1994. This OVA, called Iria: Zeiram the Animation, had just six episodes, but managed to stuff a compelling universe into the less than three hours of time given to it.
And the OVA did well enough, too, that it got its own licensed game a year later: Hyper Iria, on the Super Famicom, developed by TamTam and published by Banpresto. The game is short. Real short. Five stages where you’re timed and are expected to finish in a hurry if you want to get a score bonus short. It has its moments of fun, though, and probably wouldn’t work as well if it was longer, either: more of the same thing would probably feel worse, instead of time spent mastering what’s already there.
I had a hard time getting into the game at first. The presentations values were high, surprisingly so for the Super Famicom, which would often lose cutscenes or character art that existed on their ports or continuations of series from, say, the PC Engine CD, but something was still missing in this side-scrolling action platformer. An explanation of what was going on, who was being chased, the world that all of this was happening within. It was a little odd to have as much background and chatter as existed in this game but still be missing something, but that’s how it felt.
So, I found where the OVA was streaming (Tubi, for free, and without even needing an account there, either), and decided that, since the game was an extension of that show within the same universe, maybe watching it would help me out with the game itself. Maybe it could fill in the blank that not reading the manual or having a familiarity with the material that was now in video game form for fans of the show had left.
As I said before, Iria built a compelling universe over its six episodes. The more personal tale of Iria and how she became a full-fledged bounty hunter works well, but I really appreciated how much attention was given, verbally and non-verbally, to what made this world stand out. Weapons, from guns to grenades, looked like they were assembled by bounty hunters in between missions, and were often crafted out of materials you wouldn’t expect to see in sci-fi weaponry, such as wood and tape. Iria’s landspeeder-looking vehicle was capable of spaceflight, as a shield would pop up over the normally top-down ride to protect its passengers — the shield also worked on terra firma, as a way to repel blasters and projectiles. Iria had a whole bag of tricks, with wings that helped her glide, tension wires she could use to tie up the arms or legs of her foes, or as a pseudo grappling hook to help her avoid a fall or to scale buildings. Everything is designed to blend a sci-fi feature with Japan’s past, in order to create a memorable setting that pops, and Iria’s whole look is excellent, as well.
What Zeirman even is also gets more explanation in the OVA, which helped considerably. Zeiram can be destroyed, but it takes very specific methods to get there: otherwise, the seemingly immortal creature just regenerates otherwise, and is capable of making seemingly endless genetic clones, too, so long as it has the necessary fuel to do so (read: so long as it has consumed anything with genetic material that can be repurposed). These clones are pale imitations, and look basically like unfinished versions of… well, whatever they’re supposed to look like, besides something that’s in the process of melting.
I found the game much more enjoyable after watching the show it shares a universe with. Which makes sense! This isn’t some wild revelation: the game was developed because people liked the show and would likely purchase a Super Famicom title set in that world, one that let them shoot Zeiram and its clones in the face a lot. It didn’t need the emotional weight that Iria carried: it just needed some cool moves you could pull off with some button presses, and stuff to kick and shoot. Which it included plenty of.
Iria the show built a foundation, and Hyper Iria built on top of it. If you’re going to seek out the fan translation of the game, consider watching the OVA first, as it will ground you much more in everything going on, in the items you can purchase to help you in missions, and in Zeiram’s whole deal.
Hyper Iria also sticks out as a licensed game in this time period because it actually managed to convey the world it is representing. Super Star Wars and that family of games are plenty of fun, but they’re not exactly Star Wars, you know? They’re action games, with emphasis on the action, and many, many Jawas will die at Luke Skywalker’s hands over the course of those games even if there is no reason for it to happen other than the need to be doing something action-oriented in a video game adaptation. True Lies has a whole lot of fights and action, sure, but the video game version of it is a run-and-gun affair that ramps everything up to 11. Total Recall, well… let’s not even get into Total Recall, the video game. Just know that, while great licensed games certainly existed in the 80s and 90s (hi, Capcom), there were also plenty that failed to put together a fun experience, or, even if they did manage fun, like Star Wars, they didn’t always feel like whatever they were based on.
Hyper Iria, though, feels like it belongs in the greater Zeiram-verse. There’s tons of action in the show, with a mix of gunfights and melee battles and climbing buildings and sneaking around and flying. All of that occurs in Hyper Iria, and the game doesn’t all of a sudden have you gunning down dozens and dozens of Iria characters that weren’t antagonistic in the show, either, for lack of something else to do. The beauty of the whole army of melting Zeiram clones thing is you can fill the game with an army of melting Zeiram clones, so that’s just what TamTam did.
Hell, the video game version of Bob probably puts in more work than the show version. Bob is Iria’s former boss among the bounty hunters, the one who assigns missions and rank, but as he was dying, his consciousness was transferred into a computer. This is how he became Iria’s AI partner: in the show, Iria actually sometimes leaves Bob disconnected from her communication devices so she can go off and try to do something reckless on her own, but in the game, Bob is a constant companion. Before missions, Bob is the one giving the briefing on what’s to come. In dialogue occurring while Iria flies to the mission’s location, she and Bob progress the plot with their conversation, and he often fills in some blanks on what they’re up against and why the mission matters.
Then, in the levels taking place inside of enclosed spaces, like a laboratory, Bob is constantly helping Iria (and the player) find their way around with directions. Telling you that if you head all the way to the right, you’ll find one objective, but if you head up the stairs to the left, you’ll be on your way to another objective. And letting you know a bit about where you are every time you enter a new room or take the stairs. It’s all helpful in getting Iria where she needs to be, and fast enough to get that time bonus at level’s end, too. It’s also ahead of its time, since games weren’t exactly flush with navigational tips and tools like this in 1995. Super Metroid had just added a map to the franchise the year before, you know, you can forget about any kind of companion who would explicitly tell you which way you needed to go next.
In the more outdoor spaces, Iria and the player are left to their own navigational skills, but these are more left-to-right affairs, with verticality an aspect, sure — this is a game that balances the need for successful platforming double jumps with action, after all — but your general direction is still generally linear. Move up, move down, but always be moving right. There is also a horizontal shoot-em-up level, where Iria uses the craft she flies into every mission to do actual combat: things aren’t incredibly varied across the game’s five levels, but considering there are just five, TamTam mixed things up more than you’d expect.
I found the combat itself a little tough to grasp at first, but it just takes a little time and experimentation to realize that this is in part because you have a lot you can be doing. There are straight kicks and punches, but also you can duck down and sweep kick, or get a running start and do flying dropkicks, or jump high in the air to kick opponents hanging off the ceiling. Or you can fire a gun, which you can carry three of at a time: you start with a weak pistol, but you can get a rifle, a wide-blast shotgun, a powerful bazooka, and more. And you purchase these with the money you earn from completing missions, and the amount of money you get goes up depending on how quickly and effectively you finished the mission. There are also items you can carry with you in limited number: a wide variety of grenades, a boost for your jump, the aforementioned gliding wings.
Health refills are scattered throughout levels, and their placement encourages a little bit of exploration to find. You will also come across additional rounds for your weapons in the same way, but fear not: if you do run out of ammo, you can always kick enemies, even bosses, squarely in the face. Sometimes it’s the superior option, even, depending on how you’re going about avoiding their attacks, or because you’re left to your weak pistol.
I don’t want to let all of this sound like I think Hyper Iria is a great game. It’s a good game, one that got to that point for me because I bothered to watch the show it spun out of to get a grounding in what was going on. There was something enjoyable, though, about being able to play a Super Famicom game with a fan translation (by Dynamic Designs and Matt’s Messy Room) after watching a subtitled OVA. It felt like a more complete experience, like being able to time travel a bit to the moment that the pairing was conceived. And, from a more technical point of view, it was fun to get to see the presentation-based parts of Hyper Iria that the fan translation allowed to shine, and in a non-JRPG setting, too.
If you enjoy anime full of action, 1990s-style action video games, and have four hours to fill, you could do worse than pairing Iria: Zeiram the Animation with Hyper Iria. None of it will cost you a dime, given the availability of either.
This newsletter is free for anyone to read, but if you’d like to support my ability to continue writing, you can become a Patreon supporter.