Compile

History

Compile Co., Ltd. was founded on April 7, 1982 by Masamitsu Niitani, a programmer and game designer who had worked on early Japanese home computer games. The company's name was intended to evoke the programming concept of compiling code — transforming source into executable form — a signal of Niitani's technical orientation. Compile began as a developer of games for Japanese home computers including the MSX, MSX2, and NEC PC-8801, focusing primarily on shoot 'em ups and role-playing games. The company was small, regional, and technically proficient but not commercially prominent in its earliest years.

The first game to attract sustained attention was Zanac, released for MSX in 1986 and later ported to the Famicom Disk System. Zanac was a vertically scrolling shooter with a feature that distinguished it from every other game in the genre: an adaptive AI system that dynamically adjusted enemy behavior and spawn density based on the player's current weapon power and performance. No two playthroughs were identical. The system was conceptually ahead of its time; dynamic difficulty adjustment of this kind would not become commonplace in games for another decade. Zanac received a sequel, Zanac EX, and in 2001 Compile released an updated version for the PlayStation titled Zanac X Zanac, which included an original sequel called Zanac Neo.

Compile's shoot 'em up legacy continued with the Aleste series, which began on MSX2 and was ported to the Sega Master System. Aleste 2 was released for MSX2, and Musha Aleste (titled M.U.S.H.A. in the United States) appeared on the Mega Drive in 1990. The company also developed Madou Monogatari, a dungeon crawler role-playing franchise first released in 1990 for MSX2. Madou Monogatari was designed around a magic system and dungeon exploration, and would later serve as the narrative and character foundation for Puyo Puyo.

In 1991, Compile released Puyo Puyo for MSX2 and Famicom Disk System. The game was a falling-block puzzle game in which players cleared colored blobs ("Puyos") by arranging them in groups of four or more of the same color. The gameplay was simple to learn, difficult to master, and highly competitive in a two-player mode that allowed players to send "garbage" Puyos to their opponent's board. Puyo Puyo was ported to arcades in October 1992, and it became a phenomenon in Japan. After Puyo Puyo 2 dominated Japanese arcades in late 1994, Compile rapidly expanded its workforce and invested in ventures beyond game development, including expansion into South Korea and excessive advertising expenditures.

Almost everything Compile attempted outside of the Puyo Puyo franchise failed commercially. The company's staff ballooned as it took on more projects, but salaries could not be sustained by revenue. By 1998, Compile had accumulated more debt than any other Japanese gaming company at the time. To pay part of that debt, Niitani sold the Puyo Puyo intellectual property rights to Sega in 1998. The sale was not enough. Development on Puyo Dungeon for the Sega Saturn was delayed a year due to financial constraints, resulting in a further commercial blow. Niitani himself ended with a 700 million yen debt in credits trying to keep Compile running.

On November 6, 2003, Compile Co., Ltd. shut down amid bankruptcy. The company that had pioneered adaptive AI in shooters and created one of the most recognized puzzle franchises in Japan had collapsed under the weight of its own over-expansion. After bankruptcy, a new company called Aiky took over much of what had been Compile's assets, including founder Masamitsu Niitani and the rights to many of Compile's non-Puyo games. Key staff moved to Compile Heart (the company's spiritual successor, though not a direct continuation) and MileStone Inc. (which absorbed the shoot 'em up development team). Sega has owned the Puyo Puyo franchise since 1998 and continues to publish new entries in the series.