Remembering Compile: Seirei Senshi Spriggan
A partnership with Hudson Soft's rival in the shoot 'em up space resulted in one of Compile's finest contributions to the genre.
Compile, founded in the early 1980s, was a standout developer in its day. That day is long past now, however: as of November 2023, it’s already been 20 years since the studio closed its doors. In its over two decades, though, Compile showed off influential talent, and became the start of a family tree of developers across multiple genres that’s still growing today. Throughout November, the focus will be on Compile’s games, its series, its influence, and the studios that were born from this developer. Previous entries in this series can be found through this link.
It’s 1991. Compile’s place as one of the top developers of shoot ‘em ups feels pretty secure at this point, given that, by this point, they’ve already developed Zanac, a slew of high-quality Aleste titles on multiple platforms, and Blazing Lazers among others. The last of those — known as Gunhed in Japan — was made in collaboration with Hudson Soft for their PC Engine and Turbografx-16 consoles. Hudson Soft was so taken with the direction of the title that they reshaped their Star Soldier series to be more like a Compile-style shooter, although not with Compile themselves doing any of the development.
Blazing Lazers was one of Hudson’s caravan games, their entry for the 1989 summer caravan, specifically. The caravans had begun in 1984 as a way to promote Hudson’s games, beginning with their port of Tecmo’s Star Force, which would end up being the inspiration for the initial Star Soldier. These caravans, yellow Hudson-branded bus included, would drive around Japanese cities giving people a chance to check out the game being promoted, and to watch Takahashi Meijin, he of the 16 shots per second, play the games, too. After Star Force, Star Soldier became the focus, with that game the feature attraction in 1986, and its spin-off Starship Hector 1987’s caravan game.
Caravans weren’t just a tour on a bus, but also a game mode. Designed specifically for quick play and posting high scores, caravan modes were two- or five-minute versions of a game, often designed specifically for scoring in a way the main campaigns were not. Plenty of enemies, yes, but also lots of destructible environments and hidden bonuses to achieve, in order to differentiate scores. Two versions of Gunhed were released in Japan: the standard edition, and a special version that was specifically the caravan mode. Yes, the caravans were a big enough deal at the time that Hudson could try to get away with that sort of thing. (Later caravan entries would mercifully have the mode included, however, instead of creating hard-to-find collector’s items.)
Hudson was alone in the caravan space for some time, but others would want in on the phenomenon, as well. Naxat Soft became Hudson’s competition there, which is kind of funny since they were releasing their shooters on Hudson’s console, anyway, but still. While Compile and Hudson wouldn’t work together again like they had for Blazing Lazers and the All-Japan Caravan Festival, Compile would end up partnering with Naxat Soft to develop another caravan title — Naxat’s first but certainly not their last — for their Summer Carnival event and promotion. That game would be Seirei Senshi Spriggan.
It’s not quite as well-known as some of Compile’s other shooters, owing to it being a PC Engine CD-ROM release exclusive to Japan. It’s up there with the company’s best work on the shoot ‘em up side, however, and while it’s very obviously a Compile-style shooter, it also features them experimenting with some gameplay mechanics that weren’t found in any of the Aleste titles or one-offs they had created to that point, or even afterward. This gives it a bit of a feeling of uniqueness within their catalog, and without sacrificing what makes Compile’s shooters as compelling and replayable as they are, to boot.
Seirei Senshi Spriggan started out as an Aleste title, another mech-based shooter like Aleste Gaiden and MUSHA, with the name Seirei Senshi Aleste. This changed during development, however — as Kurt Kalata noted at Hardcore Gaming 101, this was likely due to Naxat wanting to have a series to call their own, rather than just getting a one-off they couldn’t leverage for themselves in the future. As Spriggan became something of a short-lived brand for them — between the horizontal shooter Compile followed this one up with, and then the third forgettable entry made without Compile’s input — that educated guess makes a lot of sense.
It might have also been Naxat’s influence that put the game on the PC Engine CD instead of on the Sega Genesis, like MUSHA had been. Yuichi Toyama, the programmer for Seirei Senshi Spriggan, hinted at as much in an interview for the liner notes in the Naxat STG Collection OST (translation by Shmuplations): “We loved Sega and wanted our next title to be on the Megadrive again, but due to various circumstances we switched to the PC Engine.” Those circumstances aren’t named, but “our publisher who also switched this from being an Aleste title for rights purposes” seems likely. And it was a sensible and defensible move in 1991, as well. The Mega Drive was selling outside of Japan, but not at the levels it would after Sonic the Hedgehog and its sequels would release, and also it wasn’t selling in Japan like the PC Engine and its variants. Compile might have loved working with Sega, and were happy to make the games they wanted to make on the platforms they wanted to make them on (which had always been their way), but with Naxat the partner and publisher, putting a shoot ‘em up on the more popular PC Engine as a showcase for what the PC Engine CD could do made far more sense.
The calculus for all of this would change after Spriggan’s release, of course, with the Genesis ending up extremely popular basically everywhere besides Japan. In 1991, pre-Sonic, though? When an add-on and expensive combination console, the PC Engine Duo, were outselling the base Mega Drive in Japan? When a game could be made featuring CD-quality audio, voiced cutscenes, and on the console Japanese gamers were buying in many cases in order to play shoot ‘em ups at home? It all made more sense at the time than what came after suggests. If the Genesis had already been a huge hit in North America by the summer of 1991 instead of it being an open question about which would come out on top, that or Nintendo’s SNES, maybe Naxat would have thought through things a little differently in order to take advantage of the international market. The Genesis had a two-year head start on the SNES in North America, and was outsold by it in 1991 even with Sonic’s debut, so again, the calculus for it all was very different after Spriggan than it was before, even taking into account the potential for an international release and whether it should be a consideration.
As for what Seirei Senshi Spriggan even is: it’s a vertical STG where you pilot a mech, and while it’s obviously a Compile game to anyone familiar with their particular style, it’s also largely different in that the focus is on experimentation with weapons rather than settling in with one that you like and holding onto it for as long as possible. The driving force behind the experimentation is in how the weapon types are delivered to you, and their secondary function: they are also bombs. You can collect up to three orbs at a time, and fire off one of those orbs as a bomb that’ll do major damage or even clear the screen out entirely, at any time. So long as you’ve got one in your possession, you can turn it into a bomb.
A run through Seirei Senshi Spriggan’s two-minute caravan mode
There is a price, though, and that’s the fact that these orbs, of which there are four types, determine what kind of primary weapon you’re firing as well as its strength. Each of the four colors has a different primary attribute. The yellow, for instance, is a multi-shot. One yellow orb in your possession is just a normal forward shot, while two is split wide multi, and a third also fires a multi-shot behind you. If you add another color instead, though — like red — suddenly you have multi of that kind of shot, which in this case is big fireballs. Add in a third, like green, and you have a multi-fireball shot on the sides with a wave beam middle shot that will cover more ground than another fireball or standard yellow multi-shot would have. Blue and yellow would combine for a homing multi-shot, red and blue an orbiting set of blue shots protecting your ship while a fire beam shoots forward, and so on. It's all a lot of fun to play with to figure out what your preferences are, to adjust to various situations, or just to keep things varied, and you'll get the chance for plenty of experimenting and switching up if you keep firing off bombs to pick up orbs.
The orbs are plentiful, which makes you think that maybe things would be a little easy in Spriggan, since you’re basically always in a position to fire off a bomb to help thin out enemy waves or weaken bosses. The game is designed with this ability in mind, though, so it’s very regularly putting you in a position where you are really going to want to think about using a bomb, if the short-term save is worth the weaker weapon you’ll have to carry until the next orb, if the weapon combination you currently have is absolutely the best for the current situation, etc. And orbs are common, but they’re not so common that you can always use an orb to clear the screen. There are limits to this system to keep you on your toes and thinking, and it’s not like you’ll always have three orbs in your possession at all times, either.
The whole orb/bomb/combination power-up system reminds me of how Success’ Cotton series works, to a degree. And in a fun coincidence, the first Cotton came out just a few months before Spriggan did, meaning these two studios arrived at this moment in time together but separate. Like with Cotton, it’s on you rather than the game to recall what combinations of specific colored collectibles will do for your loadout. Which can be a bit annoying at first, but you’ll figure out your favorites before too long, and aim to have some form of those. Or you can just go with the flow and use whatever’s at hand and be fine with it.
There’s actually a fifth orb, but it’s not a weapon. At least, not one you hold on to. There’s a flashing orb that, when touched, destroys all enemies on screen. This sort of thing is in a number of Compile’s other shooters, as well, but in Seirei Senshi Spriggan, it also gives your mech a shield that'll block a single shot. And you’ll need it, too, as there's no weapon downgrade system in Spriggan like in MUSHA or Space Megaforce. When you're shot in Spriggan, you die. Simple as. You restart right where your mech exploded, but you have your loadout removed and have to start over from scratch at least in that way. Orbs do drop during boss fights, so you can build back up if you die in one of those, but you're obviously more of a threat and in less danger when fully armed than when working your way there, and the lack of defensive capabilities means you’re always one hit away from starting over your loadout yet again.
Seirei Senshi Spriggan’s stages are sometimes long, but those lengthier ones have distinct midpoints broken up by both a mid-boss and a change in the music after you defeat said mid-boss. That helps with the pacing, and to help you feel like you’ve accomplished something even if there’s still plenty of stage left to go. And hey, even with the lengthy stages, it's all still noticeably shorter than the arguably-too-long Space Megaforce, also by Compile (which is an excellent game despite that potential argument).
Rather than the sci-fi feudal Japan elements of MUSHA, Seirei Senshi Spriggan has more of a fantasy twist — hence the sword-wielding protagonist on the front, in a game where you fly around in a mech. It’s very sci-fi and space influenced, but you’ll see lots of castles and more medieval/fantasy approaches to background and stage design here. It’s not quite at Sylphia (Sylphia being another Compile shoot ‘em up for the PC Engine CD, set in ancient Greece) levels of that sort of thing, since the sci-fi influence is very much still a huge consideration given, again, you fly around in a mech. But still, there’s a noticeable difference in design between Spriggan, MUSHA, and the even more feudal Japan Robo Aleste, released for the Sega CD one year after Spriggan.
The locations of each Spriggan stage don't feel totally random — there’s no, “hey wouldn't it be cool to set a level in [environment?]” feel to it all — with the choices making more narrative sense. In stage 4, you've infiltrated a castle full of technomages. The castle begins to fall apart, with a giant hole opening in its bottom, after defeating the boss. You're sucked through this hole — you’re in a castle, but the castle is floating out there in space and all — and end up flying the next stage, stage 5, backwards. Debris from the castle is falling down toward you as you flee, and your orientation is the same, but it feels markedly different design-wise from the rest of the game, and ends with you fighting a giant mecha dragon. Then it's back on the attack for the final stage, still in space, but no longer fleeing from debris or flying backward.
These kinds of details to give you a sense of the world are all over Spriggan. On a few occasions, you can see people running around on the ground, and they’re just so tiny! You have no real detail to go with on them other than recognizing that those shapes sure are people-shaped, and seeing them gives you a sense of how huge the mech you're flying is supposed to be. And, in turn, how absolutely enormous some of these bosses are, like when you see an image of Jupiter next to the Earth and then that same image of Jupiter is put next to the sun.
Spriggan’s soundtrack is very good, even when it sounds quite different from what Compile had put together to that point for its other shooters. It has moments where it’s a little more laid back, where it lets its foot off the gas in a way its predecessor, MUSHA, never did, but it picks up steam as the game goes, and by the end Compile is right back to the speed metal. Even when more laid back, however, it’s because it’s driven by synth being synths rather than synths pretending to be another instrument. And it still goes hard when it wants to, like in stage 6:
You know you’re heading for the final assault here, the screen is getting to the point of being overwhelmingly overloaded with enemies and projectiles, you are going to have to fire off bombs to get through it all unscathed, and this shredding track plays while it’s all happening. A thing of beauty, really. My only real complaint about Spriggan’s soundtrack is that it isn’t at the forefront enough, volume-wise. MUSHA’s whole deal was being designed to overload your senses, but Spriggan often makes the music take a backseat to sound effects and the action, which is why it feels so comparatively laid back even when it has a constant and incessant beat to it. Someone should have cranked the levels a little bit, just, you know. In a smart way that doesn’t then make it all sound bad.
Seirei Senshi Spriggan was originally supposed to come over to North America despite the smaller market for shooters and the Turbografx CD, with the localization coming by way of Working Designs. It was announced and everything! That didn’t end up happening, for one reason or another — maybe Working Designs wanted to do more than just localize the text and the voicework (as they so often did in a meddlesome way) and Naxat balked, or maybe they decided it wasn’t going to be worth the resources when there were Genesis and Sega CD games to focus on instead. It’s a shame that priorities shifted, for whatever reason they did, because Spriggan is one of Compile’s best shoot ‘em ups. Not the best, but it’s at least in the conversation and part of a wild stretch (Blazing Lazers, MUSHA, Robo Aleste, the Master System Power Strike II, Gun-Nac) that seems pretty impossible to have occurred over just four years.
Luckily, Seirei Senshi Spriggan eventually released on the Turbografx-16 Mini in 2020, so North Americans do have at least the one legal way to play it. Of course, that console was never super easy to find, and has become less easy (and absurdly pricier) in the years since it released exclusively on Amazon in partnership with Konami, so most people are probably back to either finding a different way to experience Spriggan, or not bothering to at all. If you’re into Compile’s shooters, though, and want something that’s very much them but also charting some new territory, then you should seek Seirei Senshi Spriggan out, as it’s some of their finest work despite the lack of worldwide recognition.
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