Perhaps not compression as we see it today. But one could argue that tile based graphics and code based music is a form of compression. Old games used a myriad of cool tricks to get around their limitations.
Modern coders will probably never experience the fun of rewriting the same thing endlessly only to discover how good some early version really was. Then some time after giving up someone else would make a similar thing go 20 times faster.
Perhaps not compression as we see it today. But one could argue that tile based graphics and code based music is a form of compression. Old games used a myriad of cool tricks to get around their limitations.