Interview: Estique's Takayuki Komabayashi

Any shooter fan should give Changeable Guardian Estique some attention. That’s not merely because it’s technically astounding for something running on an actual Famicom or NES. And it’s not just because the staff includes luminaries from Compile’s best years as a shooter developer: Jemini Hirono, Daigattai Kodama, and Pac Fujishama, to use their pen names. It’s really because Estique is an impressive shooter. 

Numerous retro-styled shooters have blatant connections to genre classics, but Estique is harder to pin down. There are traces of Compile’s history about it, but other influeces lurk below the surface, from that Changeable ship itself to the simplified weapons to the game’s two diverging storylines across the Famicom and NES versions. There’s a lot going on here.

Estique debuted on modern platforms last month, with a physical release planned and Broke Studio still listing the NES and Famicom cartridges. That's why I decided to ask director Takayuki Komabayashi about just what went into Estique.

How did you initially come up with Estique?

I thought that my company should create an original game, and I wanted it to be a shooting game that was easy to play without those brutal surprises for first-time players.

And how did you become a fan of Compile?

When I played games on the Sega Mark III, the one I enjoyed the most was Maou Golvellius [aka Golvellius: The Valley of Doom].

Several former Compile staffers worked on Estique, but it also seems inspired by other games besides Compile shooters. The transforming robot is similar to the mecha in Thexder and its sequel Fire Hawk, which you’ve mentioned as favorite games of yours. What do you like about the transforming concept?

I like robot shooting games, but I thought the gameplay might not work if the robot’s hitbox was always taller than a ship, so I decided to go with a transformation system.

 

The title Estique is an anagram of Equites, an Alpha Denshi arcade game that you have also mentioned as a favorite. Equites is somewhat obscure compared to Thexder and other classic shooters, and Equites is also a vertical shooter instead of a horizontal shooter like Estique. Can you tell us a little about why you like Equites? And how did it inspire the gameplay of Estique?

Equites is highly praised for its heavy, rich sound as well as its responsive gameplay and tight feel. Since Equites is a vertical shooter, that aspect didn’t really influence the gameplay itself in Estique, but it still has a connection to the NES version's settings.

Estique's method of briefly powering up the ship or robot’s weapons is interesting. What was your inspiration for that?

Is it because there’s no step-by-step power system? I don’t like step-by-step power-ups in shooting games.

There are lots of nostalgic references in Estique, especially in the soundtrack. For example, why did you include the Gunkan March?

I like the Gunkan March from Parodius Da! so I asked Satoshi Fujishima [aka "Pac"] to make it the first track in the prototype version’s sound production. Regarding the ported version, our company suggested playing it when the game language is set to Japanese, but it was removed based on the publisher's decision.

By the way, our adventure game Hyper Euphoria, which recreates the style of 80s Japanese PC games and was released by a different publisher, does play the Gunkan March too.

On that note, Hyper Euphoria is currently available on Steam in Japanese. Are there any plans to translate it?

The Japanese text is highly idiosyncratic and filled with inside jokes. Due to the high cost of translation, I do not think an English version will be released.

What inspired Mary and Kanon, the pilots drawn by Daigattai Kodama? Are their names references to anything in particular?

We didn’t specifically decide on any references in the character designs or the names, so they’re supposed to be original characters.

Estique sends Mary and Kanon around the world, complete with vacation photos after each stage. How did you choose the cities they visit? 

Japan, the U.S., and the U.K. are major places. I like Hong Kong, and Germany was chosen because there was a possibility of developing it for a German publisher.

Why do the Famicom and NES versions of the game have different cutscenes and, in essence, different storylines? For example, the ending to the Famicom version implies some romantic attraction between Mary and Kanon, but that does not come up in the NES version. Was that a joke about how NES games were sometimes censored compared to Famicom games?

I thought the NES version had to give the impression of "English written by Japanese people doing their best" as well as a different story and setting. Also, since I know there are people who don’t like silly stories, I wanted to provide a version with a relatively serious story as an option.

Regarding NES and Famicom games, there are examples like Power Blade being overwhelmingly better as an action game [than Power Blazer], or The Adventure of Link being harder but more complete, but we didn’t touch any of the core parts of the game like its difficulty or design.

Is it true that the physical special edition of Estique for the Switch will include an exclusive "score attack" level? What inspired that stage?

It was originally planned to be included in the ported version, but the publisher decided not to include it. So the score attack version comes as a cartridge in the Nintendo Switch special edition package. You can consider the content to be equivalent to the Gunhed Special Version [a rare score-attack version of Gunhed, aka Blazing Lazers].

You recently announced Estique 2 and showed some preview footage of a level set in Giza in 1235 B.C. Will the sequel involve time travel?

We're imagining an atmosphere similar to Time Soldiers or the anime series Yattodetaman.

Will Estique 2 carry over characters from the original game? Some of the bosses and supporting cast are seen very seldom in the first Estique.

Some minor enemies and the basic system will be reused, but bosses and stages will be new.

What was the inspiration for the name of Cat Hui Trading?

From the film director and actor Michael Hui.

Is the cat mascot, Maruino, meant to look like Randar from Compile games?

I asked Satoshi Fujishima, who created Randar, to "draw a 1UP character for a certain game," and what he came up with ended up unused, so we just repurposed it for our company.

You’re a devoted collector of old games, and you worked at the retailer Beep Shop for many years. What changes have you seen in game collecting over the last 10 to 15 years? What do you think of prices going up on rare games?

As for arcade boards, overall prices peaked in 2024 and have dropped a bit since, so I don’t think they’ll just keep going up. If prices get too high, fewer people will buy, so the market price will likely drop to some extent.

What is your favorite old-school Compile shooter?

Gun-Nac.

Little Things: Changeable Guardian Estique

Changeable Guardian Estique took an interesting path. It’s now available on all modern systems, but it came out in 2024 as an actual Famicom and NES game. It was engineered to run on that ancient console at the back of your closet (or perhaps the one still parked under your TV), and for that alone its intense bullet storms and pixel backdrops were visually impressive. Yet beyond that it’s a great little shooter, and my review says as much.

    

I’ll also talk a little about Estique’s story, what basic material it is. Yes, I am one of those nerds who takes every narrative at least a little seriously, even if it’s the plot of an MST3K-featured movie or a single sentence in a video game, and Estique has at least a few sentences and some characters. 

The pilots of the world-saving Estique mecha are Mary and Kanon, both designed with modern anime flourishes. Kanon wears maidlike attire and Mary prefers a sparing getup similar to Rika’s in Phantasy Star IV, with neither outfit seeming practical for extended time in a robot’s cockpit. Such realism is hardly the point, of course, so I initially wrote off the characters as pandering decor for Estique’s side-scrolling shooter spectacle. Hey, you gotta sell your game. 

Yet they won me over. Estique’s creators, including director Takayuki Komabayashi and Compile veteran Dagattai Kodama, wanted their shooter to make impressions across the board, and there’s a little joke in its plot. The NES version has deliberately awkward English text and a simplified plot about alien invasions, while the Famicom version gets into slightly more detail with Mary and Kanon, particularly in an ending with some romantic tension between them. How Estique would have scandalized the Nintendo censors of 1991.

The plot variations are a cute extra, but I was more amused by the images that pop up between levels. Each stage takes place in a different city, and after defeating the resident giant mechanical boss, Mary and Kanon enjoy the local sights and fashions. While I have no doubt that this was motivated by some desire to dress the heroines as biergarten waitresses, it’s surprisingly innocuous overall, as though Mary and Kanon are sharing their vacation photos.

They sometimes even hang out with the enemy pilots of the giant mecha they face. Heck, everyone shows up at the end of the game for a party, apparently freed from whatever evil forces were possessing then. I trust I’m not spoiling anything. Estique isn’t that sort of game.

It’s a soundly charming detail, though I admit some disappointment that the New York level had Mary and Kanon cavorting at the beach. It’s perhaps a reference to GG Aleste 3’s endings, but I had hoped the game would trot out stereotypical Americanisms with the two pilots wearing football uniforms, serving up giant cheeseburgers, and voting against their best interests. New York City isn’t really known for its beaches, either.

Then again, Estique also shows New York City with spacious canyons and prairie sunsets in its background, so perhaps this is a world radically altered. 

Anyway, I recommend Changeable Guardian Estique to anyone who enjoys shooters. I also recommend buying it legitimately. That should go without saying, but the developers were concerned enough to make this.

So I think it bears emphasizing.