Compile, they of Blazing Lazers and Spriggan fame on the PC Engine/Turbografx, are the mad geniuses behind this vertical shooter, MUSHA, a much-coveted piece of the well-received Aleste series.
Props to you if you understood the entirety of that sentence — you passed my old-school gamer test (not really, but that was a lot of dorkstore reference material, if we’re keeping it 100).
This is one of those games that was reviewed decently at the time, but it became somewhat rare/expensive on the secondhand market, and its reputation grew as a result over time. By the time it made it to virtual console, people were grateful to be able to play it at all.
I think where I fall on this is that I prefer Lazers and Spriggan, but not by much. Lazers feels the most culturally significant as one of the Turbografx-16’s most important early releases, Spriggan is the most chaotic and over-the-top fun (while somehow also being the most polished), and MUSHA is a good piece of Aleste (basically a bunch of vertical shooters that were locked to Sega) history with a robust, somewhat confusing weapons upgrade package and a stellar Genesis twangy-sounding score.
I’d recommend all three, to be honest.
