Zanac (1986)

Zanac (ザナック) is an arcade-style shoot 'em up video game designed by Compile and published in Japan by Pony Canyon and in North America by FCI. It was released for the MSX computer, the Family Computer Disk System, the Nintendo Entertainment System, and for the Virtual Console. It was reworked for the MSX2 computer as Zanac EX and for the PlayStation as Zanac X Zanac. Players fly a lone starfighter, dubbed the AFX-6502 Zanac, through twelve levels; their goal is to destroy the System—a part-organic, part-mechanical entity bent on destroying Mankind.

Zanac was developed by main core developers of Compile, including Masamitsu "Moo" Niitani, Koji "Janus" Teramoto, and Takayuki "Jemini" Hirono. All of these developers went on to make other popular similarly-based games such as The Guardian Legend, Blazing Lazers, and the Puyo Puyo series. The game is known for its intense and fast-paced gameplay, level of difficulty, and music which seems to match the pace of the game. It has been praised for its unique adaptive artificial intelligence, in which the game automatically adjusts the difficulty level according to the player's skill level, rate of fire and the ship's current defensive status/capability.