[Via MEDIUM | LUIS CHAVES]

It’s time to end this once and for all! Whether you are a hardcore Yasushi Suzuki fan, or are just waiting to pick up a physical copy of Ikaruga for the Switch/PS4, and finally play this classic for the first time, you’ve come to the right place.

A quick Google search for Ikaruga artwork will present to you a wide array of results, not only concerning the resolution of the images but even the “verisimilitude” of the artwork so to speak. There is one particular example that later I’ll get to, that gets thrown around time and time again, even in some of the “major players” regarding gaming news outlets, that is just fan-art, despite being presented in an “official manner”.

Without further ado, here are the rules. While it would be nice to gather all Ikaruga “wallpaper worthy material” in one place, the truth is that if this list included fan-art, then it would inherently require constant updates, since there is no stopping no one from making their own wallpapers, be it with official material or original creations. That said, I ended up realizing that most of the artwork that would fit into this list, was already present in the Gallery section of most Ikaruga versions, and to my surprise, most of it was still unavailable online in high quality. Realizing this, I thought it would be a good idea to upload all the Illustrations in the Gallery online, leaving only two other official finished pieces of artwork from the game left untouched. These are new backgrounds made for the main menu in the Switch/PS4 versions. And that’s about it. I present to you all the illustrations + 2 from Ikaruga, all neatly packed together into one place.

First off, the full versions. While many people might just want to use these as wallpapers, if you are writing any kind of article about the game, these images might also be useful, especially since I didn’t find any of these in any official Ikaruga press kit around the internet. I bring this up because none of the artwork is presented in a standard ratio (i.e. 4k, 1920×1080…). That said, I think its important to present the artwork as it is, especially because the weird resolutions might not be a problem to you. So… here they are, along with their official titles.

A little side-note regarding this last one: this is what I was talking about previously regarding the decision of uploading everything from the game’s gallery. While in normal circumstances I would have skipped over this one due to being nearly identical to the main image, besides a little signature on the bottom left corner, it is part of the gallery, so here it is. We also need to think about those hardcore fans that want access to the WHOLE gallery I guess…

And this concludes all the illustrations from the in-game gallery. Now this is where things start to get a little bit tricky. Maybe its just due to the nature of being more recent when compared to all these previous ones, but try as I may, I could not find clean, full versions of these last two. I also couldn’t find if they have any “official name” so I’m just gonna make up my own. Another interesting fact is that since there doesn’t seem to be an official source floating around the internet for these two, they are both exactly the same as they appear on the main menu in-game which means they already have a standardized resolution. This in turn means that they probably don’t reflect the full artwork , but enough talking, let’s get up and close with the real deal.

While not my favorite of the bunch, its still a shame that the only version I could find still has all the lettering on top. That said, it has a standard resolution, so extra points for that I guess.

This is where things get interesting. Regarding the vertical menu, there actually is the full version available, but only in this format, which is an absolute shame. Regardless, my goal here is to present the artwork as raw as possible, so this version is the best I could find. That said, you could always attempt something like this, despite not ending up with the best quality.

To conclude the Vertical Menu Image saga, there is also, a Wallpaper Version of it, in high quality, so… choose whatever fits you best!

And with that last image, this post comes to an end. Disregarding the different needs that people may have concerning these images, I know that I would have loved to find something like this when I was looking for a new wallpaper for my laptop, so in turn I hope this small post might come in handy to somebody else. If you are in fact looking for 1920×1080 versions of all of this artwork, I’ll make another post in the near future with corresponding versions to all of these for your convenience, although the “scaling to fit” method works on some images better than others. As a last note, sort of a PSA type of thing, this is not official Ikaruga artwork:

According to my research, all seems to point out that this is in fact an amazing Ikaruga related piece of artwork, but it was done by a fine lady by the name of rogner5th, so keep that in mind. Shout out to the great artwork though, and you can find the original source in here! 

Anyway, hope someone finds this helpful, and if this post violates any kind of law, feel free to contact me. Sorry in advance if that’s the case!

PS: Couldn’t get the vertical images to be uploaded in their original resolution, sorry 😦

PPS: If your images are taking forever to load, sorry about that… On the flip-side, Reddit preserves images’ resolution, so if you are really craving for that top resolution, click here.

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