Developer Profile / Compile50 / wfmag.cc
his autumn’s launch of the
Mega Drive Mini may have
brought Sega’s peak years
back to the fore, but it’s
worth remembering that
some of the console’s best third-party
games were created by a lesser-known
studio named Compile. In fact, while the
Hiroshima-based developer was never
a particularly huge name – unlike other
outfits from the country, like Capcom or
Konami – Compile was still one of the
most prolific and talented studios of
its day.
Before all that, though, there was
the somewhat less interesting phase
of Compile’s existence. Founded in
1982 by Masamitsu Niitani (often
known by his nickname, ‘Moo’), Compile
began life as Programmers-3, Inc. – a
company dedicated to producing
business software rather than fast,
challenging video games. Sales of its
office management software were
worryingly slow, however, so Niitani –
who’d dabbled in game development
a bit in the past – kept the fledglingT
Through the eighties and nineties, this Japanese
company quietly produced some absolute gemsCompile
Developer ProfileInterface
Developer Profile / Compilecompany ticking over by porting Namco’s
Galaxian to the Apple II. While copies
of Niitani’s business software flatly
refused to budge, the Galaxian port
sold several hundred copies – the first
sign that the company’s future might lie
down a more colourful path. From here,
Programmers-3 began porting several
of Sega’s early-eighties arcade titles
to its Japan-only console, the SG-1000
(titles barely heard of in the west,
such as Borderline, Safari Hunting, and
Hustle Chumy), which began a working
relationship between the two firms
that would persist right up until the
new millennium.
It was in the mid-eighties, when
Programmers-3 changed its name to
Compile, that the studio really began
to find its own identity. After a couple
of years spent porting arcade games
like Lode Runner and Choplifter to the
MSX, Compile came out with a game
that established its signature style.
Horizontal shooter Zanac, designed by
Niitani and programmers Koji Teramoto
and Takayuki Hirono, unleashed a
barrage of bullets and enemies on
unsuspecting players; despite the
limitations of the MSX, the computer
on which it first appeared, the game
had the pace and difficulty of a proper
arcade title. Aside from its unusually
complex power-up system – which
Compile would return to and refine in
its later games – Zanac’s difficulty also
shifted depending on the player’s skill;
the more efficiently the player collected
power-ups and slaughtered enemies, the
more brutally the game would respond.
The NES port, released one year after