Zanac — stories left

The same magazine's special supplement "Famicom Disk Card All Catalog" (1991-5-24 issue) pointed to its high difficulty, calling it "the hardest of the few shooting games on Disk", while also saying "there are all sorts of areas along the way, and some places where the scrolling is fast, so you would hardly think it was a single-sided title.

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.

Frank Provo of GameSpot lauded Zanac for its difficulty level, its ability to handle many sprites on the screen without slowdown or other glitches, and its unique AI, which placed this game in a subgenre of its own.

In the "Cross Review" feature of the magazine Famitsu, the four reviewers gave 9, 7, 7, and 8, for a total of 31 out of 40, earning a place in the Silver Hall of Fame.

In the "Game Report Card" reader poll run by the magazine Family Computer Magazine,it scored 16.67 out of 25, as shown below.

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.

Brett Alan Weiss of Allgame praised Zanac, calling it an extremely fast-paced shooter in which the player is almost completely surrounded by enemy ships and bullets.

Compile had originally been making games in partnership with Sega, but voices within Compile were calling for titles of its own.

Zanac was developed by main core developers of Compile, including Masamitsu "Moo" Niitani, Koji "Janus" Teramoto, and Takayuki "Jemini" Hirono.

Frank Provo of GameSpot lauded Zanac for its difficulty level, its ability to handle many sprites on the screen without slowdown or other glitches, and its unique AI, which placed this game in a subgenre of its own.