Past meets present: Gulkave

Compile is one of the great shooting game developers, and a not-insignificant part of that legacy comes from their work in the 8-bit space. The small Japanese studio not only released one of the pillars of the era in Zanac — which is notable for not just presenting Compile’s house style with STG, but also thanks to its approach to the concept of “rank” in a shooter, with procedurally generated enemies determined by an “Automatic Level Control” system — but stuck around on 8-bit platforms for years following the rise of 16-bit games, pushing the Famicom and Master System and Game Gear to their limits.Compile also stands out for focusing primarily on the living room with its shooters: while so many of the greats in the genre at the time got their start in arcades and then were ported to consoles and computers, Masamitsu “Moo” Niitani’s crew focused on those who played at home. Which is how something like 1986’s Gulkave can be considered a technical achievement even coming out a year…