Irem

Founded: 1974-07-10

Defunct: 2013 (halted game production)

Headquarters:

Tokyo, Japan

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Irem (アイレム) is a Japanese arcade developer best known in the west for R-Type, however their catalogue is full of genre-spanning games running on a long history of Irem-designed arcade hardware. Irem never existed as a Sega third-party developer — all Irem games on Sega systems were ported by third parties, while Irem themselves primarily targeted other platforms.

After the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, Irem cancelled most of their game projects (with the exception of Doki Doki Suikoden) and started focusing on the panchinko business.

Former Irem employees founded Granzella in other to continue producing games (buying the Irem's R-TYPE and Disaster Report IPs in 2014).