An interview with Masamitsu “Moo” Niitani, founder of Compile game studio

[Aggro Sky]

Years ago, I asked the shmup forum what they wanted me to ask Niitani San when I interviewed him, and you guys gave me a list of questions. I ended up interviewing him in 2017. Then I had to get the interview translated, then I had to make subtitles by hand, hundreds of them (before we had this wild AI tech that would take seconds now), then covid happened and this interview got put on the back burner indefinitely. Well, in 2026 I re-launched my YT channel and finally decided to buckle down and finish the interview. And I did! And it's just as timely now as it was then. So here it FINALLY is, and thank you to the shmup forums for giving me specific questions to ask him. He is a super nice guy and loves talking about the games he and his studio created. I hope everyone here enjoys this glimpse into Japanese game development:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CL9P_OxGBLg

[BIL]

Thought this was a necrobump at first. Thanks again!

[PC Engine Fan X!]

Too bad that Niitani-san didn't talk about the PC Engine stg titles like the famous Gunhed/Blazing Lazers. Sure, the American NECHE subsidiary based out Illinois back in 1989 was the one whom handled the sales & distribution of both the TurboGrafx-16 Turbo Chip of Blazing Lazers and the TurboGrafx arcade pcb conversion kits as well.

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In fact, Blazing Lazers was officially released for the United Amusements' TurboGrafx arcade pcb kit to arcade operators/owners from September of 1989 to March of 1990 -- not much of an arcade distribution in that albeit short seven month span altogether in retrospect nowadays in 2026.

I had the uber-rare chance to try out/play Blazing Lazers running on the United Amusements' TurboGrafx-16 arcade hardware at a local arcade back in March of 1990 and have never seen it nor played it since then. So with that subtle clue, that already tells me that the UA's arcade TG-16 conversion kits weren't sold in high numbers to begin with in the first place.
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Why did Gunhed have 9 stages and could it have been shortened to say like 5 or 6 stages instead?

I understand that it was a joint effort between NEC, Toho Pictures and Compile (with Complie handling the actual development of it) -- still an impressive 2mb based Hu-Card based stg title in it's own right. Of course, Toho was the one responsible for the live-action sci-fi film of Gunhed itself (with the PC Engine release of the same name as a promotional tie-in to the movie).

Interesting to learn that Compile would print out actual code to spot the bugs and go back to fix them before actually releasing them on the major gaming consoles of the 1980s and into the 1990s.

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

[BulletMagnet]

Years ago, I asked the shmup forum what they wanted me to ask Niitani San when I interviewed him, and you guys gave me a list of questions.

Here's that thread for those who want to hop into their proverbial DeLorean; will need to watch the interview later, glad to hear it's finally out there!

[DMC]

Thanks for sharing, really cool initiative and persistence. Now that the language barrier is less of a problem than before, it would be amazing to see more of these!

[Princess]

Moo-san must be a god who only then could create Zanac (1986) on the Family Computer to operate faster than a PS6 (2030), and I wonder how he or his company can do that. There are like hundred(s) of things happening on the screen but Zero 0 slow down, how can that be? I simply cannot find another example on the same system. Congratulation for the interview. Guess it's too late to raise a question now.