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HAMSTER has been rather busy with Arcade Archives titles on the Switch, with a lot of Neo Geo releases and a planned roll-out of Nintendo arcade classics. Now Irem's debut title as part of the Arcade Archives line-up is on the way with Tate functionality (hold the Switch vertically); Traverse USA will be joining up with World Heroes this week on the Switch eShop.

Irem's 1983 title (aka Zippy Race in Japan) is both a motorcycle overhead racing and sprite scaling hybrid game affair. In good OutRun fashion your quest is to race across the old U.S of A. from Los Angeles to New York. However, things are far from being a leisurely trek across the country, since every single other racer seems hellbent on trashing you and your bike. Any sane rider would slow down, but since you're fighting your declining fuel gauge the game offers a very nice balance between risk/reward. You can even take a chance to try and grab some extra points, do slick maneuvers and even get some fuel cans along the way if you opt to race along the more dangerous bits of the track.

A challenging and fairly colourful game by 1983 standards, and a curious insight onto Irem's early days. Will you pick this up tomorrow? Were you already born in 1983? And how long until R-Type shows up?

Keep a lookout for more Irem-related news in the Nintendo Life retro coverage, because we here know that there is no better school than old school.