Compile's 1983 MSX shooter Megalopolis SOS hits Nintendo Switch

D4 Enterprise has released the 1983 MSX fixed-screen shooter Megalopolis SOS on the Nintendo Switch eShop as part of its EGG Console line. First announced on October 14, the port launches today for $7.34 in North America and 1,200 yen on the Japanese storefront, accompanied by a gameplay video showing off its early 8-bit city defense loop.

Originally developed by Compile (the Japanese studio later known for Zanac, Aleste, and Puyo Puyo) and published in Japan by General under its Paxon brand, Megalopolis SOS arrived during the earliest days of the MSX1 computer standard. Before hitting the Switch, the game was re-released for Windows PCs through D4 Enterprise's Project EGG subscription service in July 2020 and made available via cloud streaming on Antstream Arcade.

Six skylines and a very busy crosshair

The setup owes a clear debt to Atari's Missile Command, though Compile's take puts a movable turret at the bottom of the screen instead of fixed missile batteries. Between your cannon and the descending alien saucers sit six international landmarks labeled by three-letter city codes: NYC, LON, TKY, MOW, PEK, and PAR. You slide the turret left and right while aiming a crosshair up into the sky, firing standard rounds and floating space mines to intercept UFOs and their falling ordnance.

Because the cities sit directly in front of your firing line, playing defensively doesn't work. Dodging an incoming bomb usually means letting Tokyo Tower or the Statue of Liberty eat the blast in your place. You have to play aggressively, pushing shots and mines high into the screen to split and clear enemy waves before they get low enough to level the buildings.

Destroying a set number of invaders clears the round and tallies bonus points for every surviving metropolis. The game ends when you run out of cannons or when all six skylines are reduced to rubble. You earn an extra turret at 30,000 points, which you'll need once later rounds start throwing faster red, green, and black spacecraft across the screen at the same time.

1,200 yen and no scene select

Most EGG Console releases on Switch include a Scene Select mode that lets players jump straight to specific stages or boss fights, a nice perk for unforgiving 1980s computer games. This port skips that feature entirely, likely because Megalopolis SOS is a pure single-screen score chaser with cycling arcade rounds rather than a multi-stage campaign.

What's harder to swallow is the price tag. At 1,200 yen (and $7.34 on the US eShop), this 38MB download costs noticeably more than standard 880-yen MSX entries in the EGG Console catalog, even though D4 Enterprise offers the exact same MSX ROM in Japan as part of its free tier for Project EGG subscribers on PC. Having an early piece of Compile's shooter history playable handheld on Switch is neat, and I'm glad those 1983 MSX releases aren't completely forgotten, but asking over seven bucks for a barebones single-screen score attack feels a bit optimistic.