Switch just got Compile's goofy 1989 cooking RPG Super Cooks

D4 Enterprise has released Compile's 1989 MSX2 action RPG Super Cooks on the Nintendo Switch. The game is available now on the eShop for $6.49 as part of the publisher's ongoing EGG Console series, which ports classic Japanese microcomputer titles to modern hardware.

Originally released on floppy disk, Super Cooks follows a protagonist named Kereshis who embarks on a culinary training journey to gain approval to marry his beloved. The gameplay splits its time between top-down exploration and side-scrolling action sequences. These stages culminate in battles against giant boss characters. I have to respect a game where the primary motivation for fighting monsters is just trying to prove you know your way around a kitchen.

Built on the Golvellius engine

If the name Kereshis sounds familiar, it is because Super Cooks is actually a direct parody of another Compile game. In 1987, the studio released the action RPG Golvellius for the MSX and Sega Master System. They followed it up a year later with an enhanced MSX2 remake called Shin Maou Golvellius (True Demon King Golvellius).

Super Cooks uses the exact same game engine as Shin Maou Golvellius, but swaps the dark fantasy tone for pure absurdity. Instead of hunting down ancient relics to defeat a demon lord, Kereshis is tracking down cookbooks and food ingredients. The structural bones of a serious action RPG are all still there, including the eight-way directional movement and the punishing difficulty spikes Compile was known for during this era.

Before they went bankrupt in 2003, Compile built a massive reputation in Japan. They created shoot-em-ups like Zanac, Blazing Lazers, and the Aleste series. They also created the puzzle juggernaut Puyo Puyo. Super Cooks is a weird, highly specific slice of their early experimental phase. The developer had a habit of treating their own lore as a joke, frequently turning their serious protagonists into punchlines in spin-off titles.

Distributed on a floppy disk magazine

The game originally launched as part of Disk Station SP2 in May 1989. Disk Station was a recurring disk magazine published by Compile. Instead of just printing articles on paper, the company mailed out actual floppy disks packed with game demos, developer interviews, and small original titles.

Disk Station ran for over a decade across various platforms, eventually moving to CD-ROMs in the 1990s. It was a brilliant marketing tool. Players bought the magazine to get the new Puyo Puyo demos, and Compile used the extra disk space to train new programmers by having them build small games like Super Cooks. Because these disk magazines had strict capacity limits, the games included on them were often short or built using recycled assets from larger retail releases.

The EGG Console project

D4 Enterprise has spent the last two decades operating Project EGG, a subscription service for Windows PCs that hosts thousands of emulated Japanese computer games. In 2023, they started bringing individual titles from that catalog to the Switch under the EGG Console banner.

The Switch lineup focuses heavily on the MSX2, PC-8801, and PC-9801 platforms. These systems dominated the Japanese PC gaming market in the 1980s and 1990s but saw almost no hardware releases in North America or Europe. The MSX2 in particular was a powerhouse for 2D gaming. Backed by Microsoft and ASCII Corporation, it hosted the original versions of franchises like Metal Gear and Puyo Puyo.

While the main game and gallery screen of Super Cooks are in Japanese, other menu screens and 'How to play' screens are in English. The Switch wrapper includes modern emulation conveniences like save states, button remapping, and a rewind feature, but the core ROM is untouched. If you do not read Japanese, you will need to rely on trial and error to figure out which cookbooks to buy.