Retro spotlight: MUSHA

The Aleste series of shooters wasn’t actually named such in North America, not until near the very end of its time in the shoot ‘em up space. Most of the time, that led to annoying changes: Aleste to “Power Strike,” Super Aleste to the highly generic “Space Megaforce,” things of that nature. With the overseas release of Musha Aleste in 1991, however, a positive change was finally made: in North America, the game was known as “MUSHA” (sometimes stylized as “M.U.S.H.A”), with it standing for “Metallic Uniframe Super Hybrid Armor.” Since MUSHA is a game where you pilot a mech instead of a space fighter of some kind, that’s not only a change that fits, but it’s also one that’s pretty sick. Especially in comparison to “Space Megaforce.”

The Musha in Musha Aleste didn’t have anything to do with the mech, either, so this was a matter of a clever backcronym by North American publishers Seismic Software: the word musha means “warrior” in Japanese, making the title of the game basically Warrior Aleste. And the warrior bit had more to do with the setting than the mech, too, as MUSHA takes place in what appears to be a futuristic Japan that, visually, leans heavily on the appearance of feudal — or Edo era — Japan. The first boss of the game is a mechanized pagoda with tank treads and cannons, and when you fly inside of it for the second stage, there is a midboss wearing a Noh mask, and another later on that commits to that styling even further with a more detailed mask. Mech styled as samurai wielding futuristic katana are a constant foe, as are other mech “throwing” spread shots like a handful of shuriken, and it’s clear that the mech you’re piloting — especially in the art of it on the game’s box — is also samurai-influenced in its design and aesthetic. Combined with a soundtrack that was referred to as “Edo metal” in the notes for the game, and you get a perfect and then-unique setting for an STG.

It was also a massive change in direction for Aleste, which had been sci-fi from the start but without anything like this aesthetic. Designer and illustrator Kazuyuki Nakashima blamed this decision on the youth of the team: Compile had seen an infusion of new developers in the year-plus leading up to MUSHA’s release, as it had lost quite a few of them in 1989, to the formation of Sting, and these new developers wanted to make their mark. “Perhaps because of the youth of the development team, everyone shared this resistance to the idea of just regurgitating that world,” Nakashima explained in the liner notes of the Naxat STG Collection OST, which is the same place where he explains writing “Edo metal” in MUSHA’s planning notes. Sheepishly, Nakashima also shared that, “I’m not sure why I didn’t just write ‘heavy metal with some Japanese aesthetic elements’”.

There were two other major changes to MUSHA compared to existing Aleste titles, as well. For one, this game is a lot shorter: most Compile shooters, as they were developed for home consoles rather than arcades, tended to clock in around an hour. MUSHA is more like half-an-hour long, however, which fits well with the actual pacing of the levels: MUSHA’s soundtrack — the “Edo metal” — often veers into speed metal territory, moving as quickly as the game itself is, and this wouldn’t all work as well together if the levels and music were comparatively fast but the actual game length just kept on and on.

The weapons are also pared down a bit: Compile shooters tend to have not only multiple power-ups to consider, but a plethora of weapons. Even the first Aleste, released on 8-bit systems, featured eight different subweapons to go along with the primary shot. MUSHA has just the three, though: blue, rotating shields that act as both an offense and a defense around your mech, red explosives, and green lasers. You have option drones that fly along with your mech — these look like tiny starfighters — that you earn in the same way you power up your main gun: through Power Chips. Collect Power Chips to upgrade your primary shot, and add an additional drone for every three P-chips collected. While you can only deploy two drones at a time, the others are stored in reserve, to replace the ones you have as they are destroyed in battle. Which is going to happen, given that your mech is huge and the options make for an even larger target, and you have the ability to send the drones out on their own, increasing the likelihood that they go down, but not until they’ve inflicted some up-close damage. These drones actually have six different configurations, which you can run through by pressing the A button: forward, 3-way, reverse (of the direction your mech is moving in), backward, roll (in rotation around your mech), and as said, free.

As with Aleste, you can fire your standard shot and your secondary one at the same time. While the rotating shield mostly works on its own by orbiting your mech automatically, the piercing laser and explosive bombs have to be fired manually. You have infinite shots for these, so fire away and also simultaneously in order to inflict the most damage possible on your many foes. These weapons are upgraded in a different way than your main gun, as you instead boost the level of them by picking up the same weapon that you already have equipped. This doesn’t mean you’re locked into, say, the laser if you already upgraded it a bunch — switching to another weapon keeps your existing weapon level, but doesn’t boost it further until you pick up another one of the same type. You will want to focus on upgrading, however, not just randomly switching between subweapons, as the fully upgraded versions of these three attacks are substantially more powerful. The fully upgraded laser splits into multiple beams instead of the one, the bombs turn into black holes when they explode, and the orbiting shield can fire off shots in addition to its defensive capabilities.

It’s also important to have a powered-up secondary weapon because it will keep you alive longer in even more direct ways than the strong attack. In MUSHA, you won’t die when you’re struck by enemy attacks so long as you have a subweapon equipped. First, you lose a level on the weapon, but if it doesn’t have a level it will simply be destroyed. If you’re hit while you don’t have a subweapon, then you die. That might make MUSHA seem easy — and it is a bit easy, compared to many of Compile’s non-portable STG — but this is also a game with loads of enemies and shots to dodge, and a comparatively massive mech with a large hit box to maneuver. If it was simply get hit and die, MUSHA as designed would go from a bit easy to overly frustrating.

That’s not the vibe of MUSHA, however. You’re supposed to feel like a powered-up badass headbanging to speed metal while you cruise through a futuristic feudal setting featuring samurai mech hurling laser shuriken at you. Dying all the time would interrupt the flow of all this, and the vibes are paramount in MUSHA. If you want a more difficult version of the game, it’s in there, too, since there’s a hard mode you can switch to. Again, it’s not about to feel like the notoriously difficult Aleste 2 for MSX2 when you switch that on, but it’s also not meant to be. This is not a game with a highly complicated rank system a la Zanac and earlier Aleste, but is supposed to overwhelm the senses with its sheer speed and intensity, all programmed to happen to you in a set fashion. It’s very unlike Compile’s output in many ways, but still manages to fit in with the studio’s overall oeuvre without feeling out of place.

For one, MUSHA, like Compile’s overall STG library, isn’t about scoring for any other reason than for earning the occasional extend. Compile shooters are skewed heavily toward the survival end of the survival vs. scoring spectrum; you can play for more scoring, sure, but your goal is to get to the end, not to rack up the most points possible before dying, and the games are designed with this distinction in mind. Getting a 1CC in a Compile shooter is still an impressive feat and all, but the games are also designed with you being able to eventually pull that off more than an arcade game, where a 1CC is certainly a possibility for someone dedicated to making it happen, but also the games there are designed to separate you from more of your money. Not in a nefarious way, but arcade operators aren’t going to buy your cabinet if someone can toss in a quarter and experience it all in one go, you know? So, MUSHA, while being shorter and faster, still fits right alongside the likes of Blazing Lasers and Super Aleste/Space Megaforce and Gun-Nac, as well as games that came out after, such as Power Strike II and Seirei Senshin Spriggan. And, of course, the Sega CD sequel to MUSHA, Robo Aleste, the only one to actually don the Aleste moniker upon its North American release.

There are a surprising number of skull-based enemies in MUSHA, considering that’s not really an artistic direction that Compile went with for its shooters at this time, but maybe, he jokes, that explains why Toaplan decided to publish Musha Aleste in Japan — one of just two games Toaplan ever published, the other the NES port of Snow Bros. that was developed by Soft House rather than in-house. Regardless of what drew Toaplan to publish the only game it didn’t already have a connection to, though, this partnership likely ending up mattering later on, when developers from Compile intent on continuing to make shooting games even as the company changed direction to focus on a strategy built primarily around Puyo Puyo. A not-insignificant number of Compile developers left the studio to form Raizing and Eighting in March 1993, with most of the rest of the staff later filled out by — drumroll — ex-Toaplan developers when that studio went under the next March. Among those who founded Raizing/Eighting were a few of those younger Compile staff that worked on MUSHA, such as Nakashima and designer and planner Yuichi Toyama, and also artist, writer, and designer Kenichi Yokoo, who cited MUSHA as part of the reason he joined Compile in 1991 in the first place.

As has already been mentioned, Compile was a console and computer developer, not an arcade one, but Raizing/Eighting wanted to make arcade STG. Before Toaplan dissolved and its employees scattered to the winds, Raizing, likely through the existing partnership from the publishing of Musha Aleste in Japan, got its hands on Toaplan PCBs to release its first game, Sorcer Striker. The proof is in the hardware itself, as Nicole Express documented in 2025: the veteran company licensed the Toaplan “v2” PCB to the fledgling Raizing, and then, in turn, when Toaplan went bankrupt and split, some of its devs ended up joining the same team it had a licensing deal with. The circle of STG life in the 90s.

And while both Compile and Toaplan ended up shutting down, Raizing/Eighting is still around, now with nearly 300 employees, though it’s been known as just Eighting since 2000 when the two halves of a whole merged into one entity.

You wouldn’t have known that MUSHA would have this kind of legacy when it hit, however. Contemporary reviews were not particularly excited by the release of MUSHA, with the most common thread being that there were a lot of STG on the Genesis/Mega Drive already by the time Musha Aleste/MUSHA arrived on the scene, and this one wasn’t even particularly difficult or challenging. That focus on challenge misses what this game does best, though: sensory overload. Mechs don’t have an accelerator pedal, and yet your foot is flooring one the whole time you’re playing, anyway. MUSHA was less well-received at the time of its release than Space Megaforce was, which is a bit fascinating since the two are basically the opposite extremes of Compile, and also representative of the system that they released on.

As I wrote for Paste in 2023 when ranking the 20 best Compile STG, “MUSHA and Super Aleste both play heavily into the specific strengths of their respective consoles. MUSHA goes a million miles per hour, trading in difficult patterns for pure reflex and a white-knuckle ride powered by a synthesized speed metal soundtrack, all perfect for the Genesis hardware. Super Aleste is slower-paced, playing to what the SNES did better: there’s often tons happening on screen, but it’s all at a slower and easier to process speed than in MUSHA, which also happens to be a speed the SNES is better at processing it all. The bosses are huge, sprite-scaling is used to great effect, and everything is more methodical in Super Aleste, whereas MUSHA is explosions and sensory overload. They’re both excellent shoot ’em ups, the peak of what Compile had going on in their specific style, and among the best of the 16-bit era.”

What can’t be denied, though, regardless of your preference for Musha Aleste or Super Aleste, is that MUSHA looks and sounds incredible. Compile took advantage of the ability of the Genesis/Mega Drive to perform parallax scrolling, and used that to full effect in the canyon stage of MUSHA, in which the ground falls away to reveal a deep valley below, with defeated enemies falling down below while reinforcements rise up, all while multiple scrolling speeds are deployed. Compile also engineered the sound so that the Doppler effect was utilized in this area, so that you would hear the enemies closer to you differently than those further away in the valley below. As Toyama explained it in those Naxat liner notes:

Tskukamoto was also responsible for the sound effects in another visually stunning stage, in which enemies emerge from beneath the clouds of a thunderstorm, and lightning crashes underneath the clouds and causes the screen to flash. In those same Naxat liner notes, MATS explained that it took three days just to get that sound for the lightning bolt just right, and it mostly had to do with the hardware working in ways counter to the goal of having this sound effect alongside the music and other sound effects in the first place. It’s tough to argue with the end result, however, as this is another one of those stages that just sticks out both for its visuals and its sound, and is a significant part of why MUSHA is so memorable now, 36 years after it first released, despite it being comparatively ignored at the time due to being unremarkable.

MUSHA is arguably Compile’s greatest achievement in the shooting space in terms of just how enjoyable it is to play, and then you can combine its importance to the genre to that, since it helped to give rise to not just the formation of Raizing but also its final form with ex-Toaplan developers joining ex-Compile ones, which eventually led to the creation of masterpieces like Battle Garegga. And unlike some of Compile’s great titles — including much of their shoot ‘em ups — MUSHA is available to play in the present. It was released by Naxat Soft on the Wii Virtual Console back in 2009, and is also available via Nintendo Switch Online through the Genesis channel on the Switch and Switch 2. Good thing, too, because a copy of MUSHA for Genesis will run you $850 as of this writing, and even if you forego the box and manual, you’re still maybe better off, economically speaking, just buying a Switch to play it.

Whether you have a Switch or not, though, MUSHA is worth your time — find a way to play it, so you can experience one of Compile’s finest (half) hours.

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