Zanac & Lunar Pool retrospective: Greatest hits Compile-ation | NES Works #060

I'd have thought Lunar Pool would be best known in the West as "that game that's always on every Famiclone multi-cart ever made" that, and Circus Charlie.

Lunar Pool was my childhood. I always found the "twang!" sound the cue ball made when it fell down a hole hilarious as a kid, and still do to this day. 😂

An understated quality of Zanac is its ability to display so much stuff on screen without any horribly noticeable sprite flicker. If you compare this to anything Micronics put on the NES like, say, 1942 which they ported to Famicom/NES for Capcom, and the difference is staggering. I don't know how they did it, but seeing that amount of perfectly readable enemy sprites and bullets is a testament to Compile's prowess.

Zanac was such a masterpiece of its time. It blew away other early NES shmups and was still better than most later ones.

Zanac was definitely one of my favorite NES games. I started out absolutely terrible at it, but found the game so fun and fascinating that I became determined to beat it.. Which gave me not only my love for vertical shooters, but the skills to win top prize on a TurboGrafx Blazing Lazers tournament that NEC held a year or so later! It really helped to understand the groove of Compile shooters

Lunar ball was great, I played the hell out of it as a kid.

I look forward to the next installment in this series on an almost constant basis! Your narration and research ensure that this series will remain the premiere historical account of the NES library. I hope you can continue.

Lunar Pool is a nostalgic pleasure for me! I never finished it, but it was so catchy and had such a unique style!

Zanac is a clear example of not judging a game solely by its graphics. The speed of gameplay and the dynamic difficulty made this a lot more enjoyable than I expected. Also, the relative lack of slowdown is likewise impressive.

Lunar Pool is easily one of my most played games ever. Absolutely loved this video!

Jeremy, your voice is a place of comfort for me. Thanks for being you!

Omg taking me back to being 4 years old hearing those old Lunar Pool table songs.

Gotta say, that little bit of footage from Phantom Fighter looked like some remarkably fluid animation, especially for the NES.

I've only ever had a passing interest in space shooters, but videos like this are invaluable for enlightening me on what I've missed. Zanac seems fantastic.

I never got to play Zanac, but the machine-headed figure on the cover was always a subject of curiosity for me. After learning about the reactive AI system I finally get it. It’s funny how something that would become synonymous and celebrated with Resident Evil 4 decades later had a rudimentary forefather way back here.

I’ve been on an FCI kick lately; there’s something cathartic about building the party from the ground up and crushing baddies.

Zanac has always been relatively under the radar, but it probably gets my vote for best 8-bit shooter.

Zanac, a game I shoplifted from Sears, was epiphanous. So many secrets! Hit the Nintendo’s reset button fifteen times and you get a secret menu letting you choose stage or rock out to the background music .So many weird secrets did I learn just from playing. Shoot the first enemy you see in any stage with your secondary weapon and get a smiley face which will super power your both your primary and secondary weapon. Crash into a box containing a yellow circle without shooting it first and get auto fire. Shoot the office building looking towers enough times and get a screen clearing item that will float along until you use it. Shoot the towers that look like the have a face on them and get a stage warp. Power ups for secondary weapons are carried in by carrier dudes sequentially and regularly and in numeric order... oh man, such a good game that it was proof that crime DID pay

Every copy of Zanac is personalized

Apparently, Compile was also the studio who ported Makaijima (Capcom's Famicom sequel to Pirate Ship Higemaru) to the MSX. Kenji Shintani (Lunarian) worked on many Compile games.