All too aware.
I’m about to dig through more of Compile’s Disc Station releases, spanning the MSX2, PC-98, and early Windows9x eras. The developer’s mostly known for Puyo Puyo, Madou Monogatari, and their classic shooters, but most of the company’s experiments and smaller games featured exclusively in their Disc Station products.
Each Disc Station release came as a magazine (or book, starting in 1993), with either floppies or CD-DA disks depending on the era. The books contained both manual info re: using their disks, but also articles, interviews, and fan submissions revolving around Compile staff and the company’s games. It’s easy to get all the disks these days, but I haven’t had much luck finding scans of the magazines/books proper.
Examples of the Compile games unique to Disc Station:
Applesauce Sniper, the first Windows entry in a long line of casual puzzle-/quiz-centric, mouse-based game playgrounds:
Transborder, a small riff on Spy Hunter and similar start-to-finish arcade racers:
Windows installments of Disc Station are more accessible than ever, but I find it easiest to subscribe to Project EGG and then download the highlights off of Compile Station. (Many PC-98 Disc Station games are also available for free via the main EGG player service.)
It’s interesting to note that the earliest Disc Station releases also featured game/software previews for releases from other developers, like Game Arts and Namco. Compile would continue to leverage their connections forged during contract work days (as Programmers-3) to make themselves a pillar of the late MSXx and PC-98 software markets.
