Puyo Puyo series, a franchise that began as a spin-off of their Japan-only
Madou Monogatari series of (mostly) dungeon-crawling RPGs and gone on to weather just about all the ups and downs gaming can throw at it – not just surviving the demise of Compile itself in 2003, but arguably becoming stronger than ever, if Sega s most recent quirky collaboration,
Puyo Puyo Tetris 2, is anything to go by. But there was always another side to Compile far away from squishy puyos, colourful mazes and magic; a world of sleek spaceships and nonstop arcade-like vertical shmup action – the world of
Aleste.
The Aleste series debuted on Sega s Master System back in 1988 and was surprisingly released in all three major territories in the same year, although the US version was apparently mail order only in the beginning (as if being a Master System game in the land of the NES wasn t difficult enough already). It reviewed and sold well enough to justify the release of a rebalanced and slightly