Interview with Moo Niitani, founder of Compile

[Aggro Sky]

Hello all. I wanted to mention that I will be interviewing Moo Niitani next week, founder of the game company Compile. I'm sure I don't have to explain to anyone on these forums why Compile is an incredibly important company in the SHMUP genre. So I won't

What I will do though, is ask you all, the community, if you have any questions you'd like me to ask him about Compile or any of the shooters they released. Mr. Niitani oversaw pretty much every classic Compile game from Guardic, to Gun Nac to MUSHA. Japanese developer interviews from the 80s/90s are few and far between online and there is a major lack of information on the development process of these games. So I am seriously excited that this kind man agreed to talk to me. I will have a friend of mine translating from Japanese if need be (although Mr. Niitani does speak some English).

I should point out though that the main topic of this interview will be The Guardian Legend (Guardic Gaiden). It is probably my favorite game of all time and I've had questions since I was a kid that I've wanted to know about this game. So a lot of the interview will be about that specific game. However, I would like to make the first part of the interview about other aspects of Compile and the games they released.

So PLEASE, if you have questions you'd like me to ask, drop them here in this thread and I'll do my best to get them answered if I can.

[d0s]

I'd like to know how the Crush pinball games came about and any stories or anything he can tell about those games. Would also like to know about the computer/programming references in things like the Jaki Crush high score table and Gun-Nac CONFIG.SYS, was it one guy slipping that stuff in?

It may not be possible/necessary but I'd really appreciate it if you could tell him that his company was the biggest influence on making me a real fan of games in general as a kid and appreciating them on a deep level, thanks to Blazing Lazers and Devil's Crush brought to the US on the TG16. They seemed on a different level than anything else released on home systems at the time to me.

e: also can you ask if compile had anything to do on yuureikun (幽霊君) on MSX2? there are rumors that they worked on it, but it's not listed in the Complete Compile book.

[Herr Schatten]

I'd like to know how Power Strike II (SMS) came about. The game is probably the most technically advanced one on the Sega Master System. The amount of skill on show is stunning. It seems that Compile really went all out on this one, yet it was released in Europe only, and in limited quantity. I'd like to know if they were aware of this at the time of development and simply thought 'fuck em' and decided to leave the system with a bang or if they were disappointed that such a masterpiece got such a comparatively small audience and wasn't even appreciated much by reviewers at the time.

[MathU]

Curious about his thoughts on the formation of MileStone from unhappy Compile employees that joined the company thinking they were going to make shooters when the company was making a radical shift towards other types of games.

[d0s]

I'd like to know how Power Strike II (SMS) came about. The game is probably the most technically advanced one on the Sega Master System. The amount of skill on show is stunning. It seems that Compile really went all out on this one, yet it was released in Europe only, and in limited quantity. I'd like to know if they were aware of this at the time of development and simply thought 'fuck em' and decided to leave the system with a bang or if they were disappointed that such a masterpiece got such a comparatively small audience and wasn't even appreciated much by reviewers at the time.

Along these lines, ask if there was any stated goal or ethos in the company to push limits of systems, many of their games are almost like demoscene productions where they're showing off their skill.

Curious about his thoughts on the formation of MileStone from unhappy Compile employees that joined the company thinking they were going to make shooters when the company was making a radical shift towards other types of games.

Also this, anything about the formation of Milestone would be interesting. Also anything about Zanac X Zanac after a long hiatus of Puyo domination at Compile, what lead to it's creation?

[Tatsuya79]

Ask him if he can update Aleste 2 on MSX2 to make weapons a bit more powerful.
I still have to succeed finishing that game.

[KAI]

Yep, those milestone questions would be great.

[BulletMagnet]

Super Aleste is one of the games that got me into shmups proper, and still one of my personal favorites, so I'd be interested to hear if he has any insight on how the development team managed to overcome the Super Famicom's relatively slow processor and create such a "busy" shooter with so little slowdown on a system not known for its shmup-friendliness.

I'm also kind of curious if there were any concrete plans to speak of for Aiky post-Pochi to Nyaa before it went under; was he planning to keep the company puzzle-centric, or delve back into shooters, or something else entirely?

Actually, if you want to keep it Guardian Legend-centric, was it ever his desire to make a sequel or otherwise return to the general concept? It's still a pretty unique mashup even today, and pretty well-regarded, I wonder why it was never followed up.

[Aggro Sky]

Wow! Thanks for the questions guys! Keep them coming! I will do my best to ask as many as I can, most of these are really great questions. And from what my friend has told me, he is giving us 4 hours on Wed morning. So we will hopefully have plenty of time!

[Koa Zo]

It would be neat to hear about the relationship with Sega. Does he have any interesting memories about their SG-1000 work like C-SO!, Champion Billiards, Gulcave, etc, then the Power Strike and GG Aleste games on the later 8-bit Sega units. In regards to the Aleste games on Sega, did Sega contract Compile specifically to provide STG product for their hardware?

How did Ghostbusters on Mega Drive come to be? I think that's their only traditional platformer and it was an unusual (in a good way) application of the Ghostbusters franchise. Was it initially planned to be an original Compile game that was then rebranded with the Ghostbusters characters?

You can also add my voice to the thanks for Zanac and Super Aleste!
I don't know if you would be able to relate this to him, but as kids in the West it was so confusing to us not knowing the difference between developers and publishers. We could not understand why Space Megaforce had such similar weapons and characteristics of Zanac, and then Robo Aleste on Sega-CD. It was like a great riddle had been solved when we realized they had all been made by the same developer, Compile.

Heck that just reminded me of Randar, you've gotta ask him about Randar! That secret character was one of the keys that led us to know those games had all been made by the same developer. Whose idea was that? What is the origin or backstory for Randar?
edit: well gee, I just searched and found there is a good bit of reading I can do about Randar. Like there was an MSX game called Adventures of Randar III. Man, Compile's history is deep. ...which brings me to a basic question, what was Mr Niitani's backgroumd before computers and gaming? What led or inspired him to program and make games?


also here's a link to a Randar discussion
and a mention of Randar's first appearance reportedly detailed from Discstation#0, in a game commonly known as "Swing".

[BrianC]

I wonder what he thought of the gameboy and why Compile made no shmups for the system. I'm also curious about Compile's Game Gear shmups. I wonder if they were made becuase of the similarities to SMS.

[d0s]

I don't know if you would be able to relate this to him, but as kids in the West it was so confusing to us not knowing the difference between developers and publishers. We could not understand why Space Megaforce had such similar weapons and characteristics of Zanac, and then Robo Aleste on Sega-CD. It was like a great riddle had been solved when we realized they had all been made by the same developer, Compile.

You know, this is weird because yeah when I first saw Space Megaforce years after having grown up with Blazing Lazers (I had a SNES copier in the mid-late 90's) I was like "holy shit, this has to be by the same people as my favorite TG16 game!" and couldn't understand why Blazing Lazers said "Hudson" at the title screen and Space Megaforce said "Toho/Compile".

As a kid we could tell the difference between developers, I grew up knowing what a Capcom game was and what a Konami game was, etc. But for some games and some devs it was kind of a mystery and Compile was one of those devs where it wouldn't click until way later that for example Devil's Crush was also by those guys (even though that game shows Naxat/RED at the title). Maybe a good question is, why didn't Compile try to have that kind of presence as a Konami where you damn well knew exactly who was making this game, their games seemed too high quality and distinctive for them to be kind of hiding it behind publishers particularly in the west. Why no consistent "Compile" screen before the games or big logo on the packages?

What I don't understand for your particular question Koa, is that Zanac has "Designed by Compile" in the title screen and Space Megaforce and Robo Aleste have the compile logo as well. I never had a NES as a kid so my first exposure to them was Blazing Lazers which makes no mention of them, so I had to piece it together by going backwards and finding those other games after seeing the "compile" on Space Megaforce which might as well be Blazing Lazers II. Was it just that they weren't really advertised on the packages the way a Konami (etc) game would be?

[BulletMagnet]

What I don't understand for your particular question Koa, is that Zanac has "Designed by Compile" in the title screen and Space Megaforce and Robo Aleste have the compile logo as well.

Speaking only for myself, I'm not sure how old I was when I first played it, but years later I could still recall that opening voice sample: "SPACE! MEGAFORCE! Presented by Toho." As such I always associated it with Toho; I'm sure Compile was mentioned in there someplace, but I didn't take much note of it, especially since in my case it was the first title from them I'd played, not to mention that the Aleste character artwork and other such stuff was edited out.

[reversi]

You can find a few infos on his background or especially his start in programming in this interview: https://www.msx-center.com/articles/9/i ... ni-compile
He seems to get interviewed quite frequently lately. Anyway, I am very interested and happy you get to meet the man.
I would like to know how they came up with this weird plant-computer storyline in Aleste 1 & 2. The DIA51 thing. What was their inspiration for this strange setting? Generally I am interested to learn about the character Ellinor of Aleste 2 and later Musha & GG Aleste. Was it a conscious decision to use such a cool and tomboyish female main character?
When Power Strike 2 for the SMS came out in 1993 it had another strange setting, taking place in Italy in the early 30ies, where it is your job to hunt down sky pirates. Very, very Similar to the plot of Miyazaki's Film "Porco Rosso", that came out a year earlier. Probably not a coincidence, right?

[Koa Zo]

What I don't understand for your particular question Koa, is that Zanac has "Designed by Compile" in the title screen and Space Megaforce and Robo Aleste have the compile logo as well.

Speaking only for myself, I'm not sure how old I was when I first played it, but years later I could still recall that opening voice sample: "SPACE! MEGAFORCE! Presented by Toho." As such I always associated it with Toho; I'm sure Compile was mentioned in there someplace, but I didn't take much note of it, especially since in my case it was the first title from them I'd played, not to mention that the Aleste character artwork and other such stuff was edited out.

Likewise. It was the "Presented by Toho" voice that really threw us off.
And you're right d0s, I probably had it figured out by the time I played Robo Aleste ..though I was still perplexed at the disparate settings between the games, yet strikingly similar gameplay ...and then add-in the fact that these games were on so many different consoles, it didn't make sence (to us as kids) in light of what was known about Nintendo's exclusivity at the time.
I'm glad you mentioned Konami amd Capcom, that was exactly the root of our misconceptions = there were Konami, Capcom, Nintendo, etc published games. We knew the difference of course. However it led us to think that whatever company name was on the box was who "made" the game. It was beyond our reasoning to know that there were different developers who could be contracted to work for different publishers.

[BrianC]

I'm curious how Toaplan ended up publishing Musha Aleste in Japan.

[Aggro Sky]

You can find a few infos on his background or especially his start in programming in this interview: https://www.msx-center.com/articles/9/i ... ni-compile
He seems to get interviewed quite frequently lately. Anyway, I am very interested and happy you get to meet the man.
I would like to know how they came up with this weird plant-computer storyline in Aleste 1 & 2. The DIA51 thing. What was their inspiration for this strange setting? Generally I am interested to learn about the character Ellinor of Aleste 2 and later Musha & GG Aleste. Was it a conscious decision to use such a cool and tomboyish female main character?
When Power Strike 2 for the SMS came out in 1993 it had another strange setting, taking place in Italy in the early 30ies, where it is your job to hunt down sky pirates. Very, very Similar to the plot of Miyazaki's Film "Porco Rosso", that came out a year earlier. Probably not a coincidence, right?

Yep. I've read every interview I could find from him. There are a couple, a few from recently, mostly about the MSX. And a few from longer ago. There is a pretty extensive one about the formation of Compile which is also a good read. You can find that one here: http://shmuplations.com/compile/

But I'm going to avoid questions that have already been asked for obvious reasons. Many of the questions I'm getting here and on Twitter are great. I'm about to start going through them now and "compiling" the best ones. But I'll include as many as I can.

How did Ghostbusters on Mega Drive come to be? I think that's their only traditional platformer and it was an unusual (in a good way) application of the Ghostbusters franchise. Was it initially planned to be an original Compile game that was then rebranded with the Ghostbusters characters?

I've actually had a lot of people asking about the Ghostbusters Genesis/Mega Drive game. People are curious as to why there is no mention of Compile anywhere in the game, box or manual. This same phenomenon is also true of Godzilla: Monster of Monsters on the NES. There is no mention of Compile anywhere in the game. I LOVED both Guardian Legend and Godzilla as a kid (and still do to this day) and never knew until recently that they were both done by Compile. From the sounds of it, Blazing Lasers also falls into this category. So perhaps I can find out why certain games they released were not credited to Compile.

[TransatlanticFoe]

What were the reasons behind the differences between the MSX and SMS versions of Aleste? The MSX version has opening cutscenes, two extra levels and a couple of the weapons are different. Both were released quite close together, so it'd be interesting to hear a bit more about their respective development process and which is considered by Compile to be the definitive version.

[Deadliar]

explain

[d0s]

I've actually had a lot of people asking about the Ghostbusters Genesis/Mega Drive game. People are curious as to why there is no mention of Compile anywhere in the game, box or manual. This same phenomenon is also true of Godzilla: Monster of Monsters on the NES. There is no mention of Compile anywhere in the game. I LOVED both Guardian Legend and Godzilla as a kid (and still do to this day) and never knew until recently that they were both done by Compile. From the sounds of it, Blazing Lasers also falls into this category. So perhaps I can find out why certain games they released were not credited to Compile.

This is also true for all of the Crush pinball games, and to this day people insist that they were made by Naxat or RED, but all three games are in Complete Compile and when you look at them they're obviously by the same guys. One thing I would like to know is what exactly their connection with RED was. You can see that, of all things, the "Act against AIDS" message from the start of Puyo Puyo is credited to RED:

[Aggro Sky]

I'd like to know how the Crush pinball games came about and any stories or anything he can tell about those games. Would also like to know about the computer/programming references in things like the Jaki Crush high score table and Gun-Nac CONFIG.SYS, was it one guy slipping that stuff in?

What exactly do you mean about programming references? This sounds like an interesting question but you'll have to be a bit more specific as I am not sure about the references you are referring to.

[Aggro Sky]

Curious about his thoughts on the formation of MileStone from unhappy Compile employees that joined the company thinking they were going to make shooters when the company was making a radical shift towards other types of games.

I've searched to see if I can find anything about Milestone but all that comes up is another game company from Italy that looks like they mostly make sports and racing games.. Know where I can find some info on the company?

[BulletMagnet]

Here's their Wikipedia entry, hopefully you can branch out from there a bit.

[d0s]

I'd like to know how the Crush pinball games came about and any stories or anything he can tell about those games. Would also like to know about the computer/programming references in things like the Jaki Crush high score table and Gun-Nac CONFIG.SYS, was it one guy slipping that stuff in?

What exactly do you mean about programming references? This sounds like an interesting question but you'll have to be a bit more specific as I am not sure about the references you are referring to.

The default names for the Jaki Crush high score table:



The options screen on Gun-Nac is called CONFIG.SYS:

[d0s]

Also since you're talking about TGL, can you find out how much input Irem had or what their role was? Just a publisher?

[BrianC]

This same phenomenon is also true of Godzilla: Monster of Monsters on the NES. There is no mention of Compile anywhere in the game. I LOVED both Guardian Legend and Godzilla as a kid (and still do to this day) and never knew until recently that they were both done by Compile. From the sounds of it, Blazing Lasers also falls into this category. So perhaps I can find out why certain games they released were not credited to Compile.

The odd thing is that "Game Designed by Compile" appears right before the title screen in the JP version.

[Aggro Sky]

This same phenomenon is also true of Godzilla: Monster of Monsters on the NES. There is no mention of Compile anywhere in the game. I LOVED both Guardian Legend and Godzilla as a kid (and still do to this day) and never knew until recently that they were both done by Compile. From the sounds of it, Blazing Lasers also falls into this category. So perhaps I can find out why certain games they released were not credited to Compile.

The odd thing is that "Game Designed by Compile" appears right before the title screen in the JP version.

And yet no mention of it at all in the NA release... I checked the manual, box, everything. It's strange.

[Aggro Sky]

I'd like to know how the Crush pinball games came about and any stories or anything he can tell about those games. Would also like to know about the computer/programming references in things like the Jaki Crush high score table and Gun-Nac CONFIG.SYS, was it one guy slipping that stuff in?

What exactly do you mean about programming references? This sounds like an interesting question but you'll have to be a bit more specific as I am not sure about the references you are referring to.

The default names for the Jaki Crush high score table:



The options screen on Gun-Nac is called CONFIG.SYS:

Got it. Thanks

[GSK]

Nice get!

Compile announced three Aleste games that were never released, perhaps you could ask about those?

Dennin Aleste 2: this was announced as a 10th anniversary title and was to be an Edo-era game starring a kunoichi, and I think they said it'd go horizontal for the bosses?

"Aleste vs. Kaiju": an announced followup to Super Aleste that never materialized

Aleste X: an arcade game using PSX-based hardware; it's been said that the cancellation of this game led to the staff exodus to Raizing

I will say that you shouldn't go in thinking he'll be able to go deep on each and every topic you mention--not only are these decades-old games but he wasn't the driving force behind most of them, even the ones that credit him as director.

[xxx1993]

Is the shrine maiden in the Japanese version of Gun Nac the true hero of the story?

Spoiler

Why don’t we fight Oda Nobunaga, the true villain of Robo Aleste, as the final boss?