Image Fight was released one year after Irem's successful horizontal scroller, R-Type, and, although not directly related, the two games have some similarities.

The player flies a futuristic red ship. (R-Type Final identifies this ship as the OF-1 Daedalus, but it is not known if that was the ship's original name. However, the term OF-1 does appear in the NES version's instruction manual and in the official artwork for the sequel, Image Fight II.)

The game appears to be set inside a holographic simulator, like the holodeck on Star Trek: The Next Generation.

In the NES version of the game, the first 5 missions are called "Combat Simulation Stages" and the last 3 missions are called "Real Combat Stages."