Taito Milestones 3: The Definitive Review – Full Reviews of All 10 Included Games + Full Ranking of ALL Taito Milestones Games

From what I’ve seen, this is one of the most hyped releases of 2024 for my readers, and there are two main reasons: Bubble Bobble and Rastan. Over half the games in Taito Milestones 3 belong to those franchises (assuming you count Cadash as a Rastan spin-off, and I do). So, let’s get to this review. Taito Milestones 3 retails for $39.99 (digital pre-order price of $35.99) and contains ten games, and so it has to create $40 in value to get my seal of approval. Since all ten games are all sold separately for $7.99 via Arcade Archives, each YES! verdict has a fixed value of $8, meaning Taito Milestones 3 must score five YES! votes out of ten games to break-even and earn my seal. Following the ten games, I’ll tally-up the numbers and render my final verdict. Originally, I had plans for bonus reviews following the ten included games. I’m going to post those separately over the course of this week, including my review of ININ and Ratalaika Games’ re-release of Parasol Stars.

Update: At the time of Taito Milestone 3’s release, Dead Connection, Thunder Fox, and Warrior Blade were exclusive to this collection, but each game has since been released separately for $7.99 with all the bells & whistles of a solo Arcade Archives release. This development does NOT affect my ultimate verdict or the YES!/NO! status of any game in this feature.

EMULATION & FEATURES

Taito Milestones 3 is the latest collection of somewhat stripped-down versions of Arcade Archives releases from ININ and developer Hamster. The games themselves aren’t the stripped-down part, only the Arcade Archives side of things. If you buy these piece-by-piece, you get two extra modes with each game, at least with most of their releases. This is kind of a big deal, since Hi-Score Mode and Caravan Mode are cheating-proof. In those modes, if you so much as pause the game, the entire run is scrubbed. Taito Milestones 1 – 3 only includes the basic, normal mode for each game. While the games have the full assortment of dip-switches and difficulty settings, and also allow for gaming’s most roundabout save states, Taito 3’s online leaderboards don’t factor any of that stuff in. In my opinion, since the leaderboards never take into account how those scores came about, that makes them completely worthless.

I have already reviewed both Taito Milestones 1 and Taito Milestones 2, but this one feels different in terms of star power. Without exaggeration, I heard from some readers they were more excited for Taito 3 than they were Tetris Forever. Whoa. That speaks to how fondly these games are remembered. But, it’s 2024 and we’re still using the same outdated Arcade Archives emulator. There is NO rewind. There is NO quick save or quick load. The effort just isn’t here. I’m a big fan of the Taito Milestones franchise because of the convenience of having ten games in one package, most of which are under-the-radar stuff that you wouldn’t expect to be part of relatively small retro collections. For all my whining for the lack of features, I want to make it clear: I admire ININ’s lineups a hell of a lot more than I do Namco Museum with its endless recycling of Pac-Man and Galaxian. Seemingly no consideration is given for a game’s level of fame, and I admire that. It paid off, too. Volume 2’s most famous game was either Darius II or NewZealand Story, neither of which are exactly globally famous releases. The best game in that set, Liquid Kids, I’d never even heard of before, but it succeeded in being an anchor game good enough to be the star of a ten game coin-op collection. That’s how these things should work, right? Hidden gems become hidden no more if given the chance to shine in a collection. Taito Milestones excels at that idea, and Taito 3 is no different. The best game in THIS collection has never been in a globally-released retro set before. Neato.

But, given the fact that these are mostly under-the-radar games, you really want the publisher to put forth their best potential package. Games are NOT made to be timeless. They’re meant to commercially appeal to gamers at the time of release, and if they end up holding up to the test of time, that’s a bonus. But, things can be done to enhance their chances. Coin-ops are often brutally difficult, so giving options like save states or rewind take the edge off. Bubble Bobble doesn’t offer unlimited continues.. or ANY continues, in single player. There’s nothing inherently sacred about the decisions made regarding Bubble Bobble. It’s the way it is because it’s trying to earn $0.25 per play and it needs players to lose in five to ten minutes or less, in order to be profitable by the standards of 1986. But save states would fix that. Rewind would fix it better. But that’s not here. Hamster’s save state methodology is the worst I’ve ever seen, requiring you to exit the game entirely and return to the main Taito Milestones menu. It takes forever.

And the weird thing is, they’re NOT lazy! Some of the games have tons of features. I don’t always like using the dip-switch options in MAME, but the menus for what each option does are clear in Hamster’s emulators, so checking the options and applying them is super easy. But, because of the individual release nature of Arcade Archives, not every build in Taito Milestones 3 is given equal consideration. Even something like autofire isn’t consistently an option in every game. Most have it, but Bubble Bobble doesn’t, and I would have liked to have had it. Thankfully, most games do have all the options you absolutely need. Every game supports full button mapping and plenty of display options. This is especially important for a game many consider to be the true crown jewel of Taito Milestones 3, including myself. I’m talking about Warrior Blade: Rastan Saga III, a double-screened release.

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While not as impressive as the triple-screened Darius II from Volume 2, they included a ton of options unique to this title. Do you want arcade-like jankiness to the two-screen effect, which was done using mirrors? Or maybe you want one screen to have more color than the other? If that’s something you’re nostalgic for, you’re weird, but you can do that. It’s also the only game in Taito Milestones 3 that includes the original bezel. For $40, you’d really hope for more bezels than 1 out of 10 games. The wallpaper the other 9 games use is pathetic. Why is it barely better than no wallpaper at all? These games had art assets, flyers, and logos. Couldn’t you cobble something, ANYTHING together? In general, the quality of the options depends on how far back the original Arcade Archives title was released. Bubble Bobble was released way back in 2016, so it doesn’t get a very inspired set of options. However, Rainbow Islands just came out this year, and it’s loaded, and so are the three exclusives to Taito Milestones 3. This is why I’ve decided to note the original Arcade Archives release date of each game. It does matter.

For the price you’re paying and the fact that you’re getting significantly less content (a full two modes missing per release), would it have really killed Hamster to update the options for every game included for ININ’s compilations? Treat every game included like it’s a 2024 release! Either way, Taito Milestones continues to leave a LOT to be desired, but there are some quality of life options, so I’m awarding at least $5 in bonus value for all the options included, the most important of which is button mapping and the nearly full range of dip switches. That’s $0.50 per game, times ten games. That seems fair to me for what this offers. If any of these games offered quick save/quick load, I’d probably go $7.50 to the max $10. Taito Milestones 3 has a chance to earn a couple more bucks in bonus value via Rainbow Islands, which has a pretty impressive quality of life menu, including buffing up the game’s responsiveness over the arcade build. If the game gets a YES!, I will add more bonus value.

GAME REVIEWS

For those not familiar with my way of thinking of how retro games should be reviewed, I take NO historical context into account. I don’t care how important a game was to the industry, because that doesn’t make a game worth playing today. The test of time is the cruelest test of all, but every video game must face it. I might not be here if not for Pong’s success, but I wouldn’t want to play it today. Not when there’s better options. Therefore, when I review retro games, every game gets either a YES! or a NO!

YES! means the game is still fun and has actual gameplay value when played today and is worth seeking out.

NO! means the game didn’t age gracefully and is not worth seeking out, and certainly not worth spending money on.

IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER

Bubble Bobble
Platform: Arcade
Released June 16, 1986
Arcade Archives Debut: January 29, 2016
Designed by Fukio Mitsuji
Developed by Taito
Also Included in Bubble Bobble 4 Friends: The Baron is Back!

What is the second most famous Taito game? Obviously Space Invaders is first, but what’s #2? It’s probably either Arkanoid or Bubble Bobble, with Jungle Hunt, Darius, Rastan, or Elevator Action FAR behind them. Between Arkanoid and Bubble Bobble, I think the edge goes to Bubble Bobble, a game I’m declaring to be “King of the B-Listers.” It’s a game everyone knows in the same way everyone knows who Billy Zane or Kato Kaelin are. Were it a person, it’d be the biggest name on any given season of Dancing with the Stars, but it’s still only that famous. Center square on Hollywood Squares level of famous. The very definition of a gaming B-Lister. Games like that thrive on retro collections like Taito Milestone 3, because the unstated part of the classic gaming B-list is that their best days are behind them. Every Bubble Bobble game released in my gaming lifetime, IE 1998 onward? “Eh, it’s okay. I guess.” Yet, when Taito Milestones 3 was announced with Bubble Bobble being the anchor game? People got excited. Maybe Bubble Bobble is washed-up, but there’s still love for it out there. And yet, it didn’t take long for me to realize why Bubble Bobble never lasted as an elite gaming franchise.

I thought Bubble Bobble was held in high esteem in the same way Battletoads is: an impossibly difficult game built specifically for two players that’s legitimately fun when it’s still warming-up. But, once it gets warmed up, it actually becomes an actively bad game. At least when you’re playing by yourself. It turns out that, unlike Battletoads, co-op will save the day here, but I’m getting ahead of myself. The core gameplay is positively inspired. Spitting bubbles at enemies, then bursting them for the kill (presumably via decompression) is one of the most satisfying combat methods of the era. Moreover, Bubble Bobble does a fantastic job of incentivizing bursting enemies in clusters with the E-X-T-DIFFERENT E-N-D letters. When you actually spell EXTEND, the over-the-top animation that follows is nothing short of breathtaking.

Then you take into account how far ahead of its time Bubble Bobble is. Each room has its own “physics” for lack of a better term. There’s an invisible air current in every level that affects the drift of the bubbles. Being invisible, it’s something you have to discover and ultimately use. Your bubbles can act as platforms if you hold down the jump button, and about one-third of the way through Bubble Bobble, the game completely shifts in its tone and turns into a jumping puzzle/escape room game where the challenge isn’t generally the enemies, but rather how you reach them at all. The first stage indicative of tonal shift being level 35. It looks like this:

The stage only has a few of the most basic enemies, but they’re not the problem. Getting to them without accidentally jumping into them is. From this point onward, Bubble Bobble will regularly drop you off in stages that are genuine puzzles when it comes to how to make progress at all. And in those rare stages that are still entirely combat focused, the combat isn’t anything like how things were when the game started. In early stages, when you trapped enemies in bubbles, you had time to burst them before the enemies “hatched” and reemerged in ultra-fast “pissed-off mode.” But, that doesn’t last long.

For the midway point of the game to 99th and final “normal” level, most stages see the enemies almost immediately hatch from trapped bubbles. Most of my deaths were from attempting to burst an enemy I just caught, only the physics don’t cooperate. Instead of the bubbles reliably popping, they might recoil ever so slightly, which gives the baddie trapped within enough time to hatch, meaning I’m dead since I’m still mid-jump and right next to the bubble. That would be annoying enough, but combined with level design that feels optimized to kill you by either timing-out or funneling you directly into the bad guys, it sure seems like Bubble Bobble is done with the fun and is now doing everything in its power to get you off the machine so the next person drops a quarter in it. There are NO continues if you’re playing solo, meaning if you lose all your lives, it’s game over no matter how far you’ve made it.

Again, this would make for a great home game, but this Bubble Bobble isn’t a home game. In fact, the home games tried to copy the arcade design, so even most home versions aren’t much better. Eventually, Bubble Bobble’s level design and cheap tactics had almost completely drained the fun out of the experience. I think when people say they adore Bubble Bobble, they’re either talking about the first thirty stages or they played co-op. Famously, you can only get the “happy ending” in co-op, but I got it playing 100% solo just by hitting Player 2 start when I knew the death of the final boss was imminent. It worked, but the ending I got wasn’t even the legitimate real good ending. It turns out that Bubble Bobble shares a lot of DNA with Tower of Druaga and features tons of hidden secrets. Like, if you don’t die once for the first 20, 30, and finally 40 levels, the special items in those stages are replaced by doors that take you to hidden rooms. I didn’t get any in my first play-through, but I did during a second run.

But, I didn’t actually beat the game twice, at least by myself. Actually, I was pretty miserable by the time I finished the game for the first time. If Bubble Bobble had kept the same core gameplay from the first couple dozen levels but just upped the movement speed of the enemies, I probably would have liked the game a whole lot more. I probably rage quit a dozen times when I played with the attitude that Bubble Bobble ought to be a cutesy game about dinosaurs blowing spit bubbles at enemies. But, when I looked at the levels like 8-bit miniature escape rooms, well.. I won’t say I had more fun, because I wasn’t having any fun at all. Instead, I was less annoyed, mostly because I was too preoccupied with the escape room mentality to be annoyed. Even then, when I see levels like this one:

I think the line is crossed from “genuinely trying to be fun” to “trying to trigger a game over by any and all means necessary, including outright underhanded tactics.” By the time you reach the last ten levels, Bubble Bobble is one the most shamelessly money grubbing in terms of its level design and punishing anyone not playing with a second player. It’s actually not a surprise that the franchise didn’t have staying power given the shift from quirky, novel fun to wanton cruelty. The concept of Bubble Bobble works, but the game is so mean-spirited by the end. When the difficulty started ramping-up, I was cheering every time I beat a tough stage, but after a while, cheers were replaced with sighs of relief. 100 levels is too much, too, especially since the back half of them are so brutal that they feel like a sadistic ROM hack of the game you had been playing. Imagine Super Mario Bros. if the Lost Levels were just the back half of the game. Yea, you’re doubling the level content, but it’s not fun, so who cares? The most annoying thing of all is it didn’t have to be this way. EVERYTHING I’ve written about would have been fixed by modern emulation options. Quick save/quick load and/or rewind would have been transformative of Bubble Bobble while not in any way hurting it. Some games don’t need crutches, but Bubble Bobble does. Or, at least it does if you’re flying solo.

SPLIT DECISION – SINGLE PLAYER BUBBLE BOBBLE

Sadly, Taito 3’s inconvenient save state method means Bubble Bobble has to stand on its own, with no help. As a single player game, it doesn’t do it. And honestly, I think I’m the easiest game critic out there, because I have the lowest threshold to earn a positive review. The rule to getting a YES! is “I have to have more fun than not.” 50.01% fun to 49.99% awful? That’s a YES! Bubble Bobble wasn’t even close to the line. In my single-player run, it was about 30% lots of fun and 70% pain and suffering. Really, the only good thing I can say about Bubble Bobble’s endgame is the final boss is pretty dang good. It makes me wonder why they didn’t have more bosses? But, that was the lone shining highlight for the back half of the game. So, at this point, I’m going to do something unusual. I’m going to render two separate verdicts for one game. If you have NOBODY to play with..
Verdict: NO! But this review is not over.

SPLIT DECISION: CO-OP BUBBLE BOBBLE

Let’s talk about co-op. Bubble Bobble’s two player game is clearly its strongest aspect. How strong? I played three multiplayer sessions. In the first session, my playing partner was Sasha, my 9 year old niece who is not versed in classic gaming beyond what she’s seen me play. She’d never even heard of Bubble Bobble when I told her a few months ago I’d need someone to play this with. After giving me the runaround for a couple days, probably due to my annoyance at the single player experience, she finally sat down to play this with me and.. she loved it. Not only did she enjoy the game, but she became really excited when she found out there’s a bunch of Bubble Bobble games out there. “Are you doing those too? Can I play too?” And, even though I was “grouchy” while playing in single player, yeah, I had a great time too. My unofficial motto at IGC is “find the fun” and Bubble Bobble is one of those games where I absolutely NEEDED a second person to help me with that.

Even funnier is that once the rest of my family saw how much fun we were having, we started over and played a second time, where players who ate a game over passed the controller to the next in line in a way where everyone got paired with everyone else at least once. The last time we did that with a game in our house, it was Three Stooges on December 6 of last year, and it was one of the most memorable and joyous days of my gaming life. Almost exactly a year later, Bubble Bobble did that for us. Tis the season, I guess?! But, to be clear, everything I wrote above in the single player section is still true, with two exceptions. The first, and most important, is that you get unlimited continues in co-op, provided both players are on-the-ball and immediately come back to life upon dying. If you both game over at the same time, I’m pretty sure there’s no grace period and the game truly is over, so don’t mess around. If you want to be extra certain, just lay down save states once in a while between stages.

Like the single player game, the fun still has a chance of eventually trickling away, but there’s also a lot more moments that shine very bright thanks completely to co-op. Levels that I was breathing out a sigh of relief in single player saw us cheering and slapping high-fives in co-op. More often than not, it’s based on climbing. It’s hard to both spit a bubble, then turn around and climb it. It’s so much easier when one player is designated the jumper and the other is the bubble maker. There’s so much more flexibility you have, depending on the stage and the current. There’s also a LOT more stage-clearing items. It’s very noticeable and it absolutely made a difference for the first, oh, 90 levels in my run with Angela. But, the home stretch started giving us shoes or candy instead of the valuable bombs. We still got very frustrated on a few of the levels. The stage pictured above? #97? That took us about ten minutes by itself to get those last two enemies. We really thought we broke the game.

Bubble Bobble’s endgame isn’t cheerful or friendly at all, and that doesn’t change in co-op. BUT, without exaggeration, this feels completely different with a second player. Remember the family session I talked about above? That speaks to the greatest strength of the game: anyone can learn it really quick. Some players weren’t getting turns until we were dozens of levels into the game, but when it was their turn, they were up to speed and contributing REALLY fast. And that says it all. Usually, the only co-op games where someone can jump in with no experience and not be a drag are brawlers. Bubble Bobble is in a unique class. For all the sloppiness, and all the jank, its reputation as one of the greatest co-op games of all time is completely legit. So yea, if you’re playing by yourself and there’s little to no chance of finding a playing partner, I don’t recommend Bubble Bobble. It’s pure gaming agony solo. But in co-op? It’s easy now for me to understand why it’s considered one of the greats that came at the end of the Golden Age of Arcades. I don’t think it’s “great” and hell, I’d still call Bubble Bobble “overrated.” But, it’s still a solid co-op game nearly forty years later, and yes, still worth a look in 2024 and beyond.
Verdict: YES! – $8 in value added to Taito Milestones 3

Cadash
Platform: Arcade
Released September 4, 1989
Arcade Archives Debut: August 31, 2023
Directed by Hiroshi Tsujino
Developed by Taito

I was very skeptical of Cadash. Of all the coin-ops I’ve reviewed, or even console ports of coin-ops, it’s easily the one that goes the deepest into full-fledged RPG mechanics. Forget Tower of Druaga, which really isn’t an RPG anyway. THIS is the most RPG-like so far. Experience points? Check. Currency and shops? Check. Lots of NPCs to talk to, most of which have nothing of substance to say? Check. Having to purchase weapon upgrades? Check. Magic? Check. This isn’t something vaguely resembling an RPG. This is the real deal. Cadash’s closest kin is probably Zelda II or the Wonder Boy in Monster Land games that I’ve never played (except the third one, a home exclusive). So, how much fun did I have with Cadash? I had such a good time that I bought the Wonder Boy Anniversary Collection with the intention that it’ll get the full IGC Definitive Review treatment in 2025. I’d skipped it because I had no interest in arcade RPGs. I think the greatest possible compliment someone like me can give any game is that it stokes more than a passing interest in its genre. So yea, Cadash is pretty good. Sometimes. Other times, Cadash seems to be trying really hard to be unlikable.

Cadash is one of the more up and down games I’ve played. When it works the way you want it too, it’s undeniably fun. I’m playing this directly after finishing Rastan Saga II, aka the worst game in this set. THIS should have been Rastan Saga II. There’s four characters you can choose from, and if you play as the fighter, Cadash’s gameplay will feel VERY familiar if you play Rastan first. From the ropes to the stiff movement to the jumping physics and platforming, Cadash is basically Rastan, only with better combat and a better variety of enemies. Oh, it can be frustrating for sure. A lot of the enemies seem like some damage is unavoidable when dealing with them. This applies to indestructible background stuff, like giant hands that smash out of the floor. The safety zone for them is very small, but you simply don’t move fast enough to avoid them without a lot of luck. Later on in the graveyard, lightning strikes with almost no warning. When I fell into fire pits, I found the only way I could climb out was to turn the opposite direction and allow myself to keep getting knocked back from damage in the direction I wanted to go. I had to remind myself constantly that Cadash is trying to suck quarters, and more than a few times, it’s pretty shameless about it.

Thankfully, there’s unlimited continues. Plus, the downtime when you need to start a new life is as minimal as I’ve ever seen in a game like this. Almost instantaneous, though that comes at a big cost: no swapping characters between credits. A bigger problem is there’s no map, and I think you need one. There’s some backtracking, especially at the end of the game. I almost feel like I lucked into picking the correct directions more than once. I’m guessing NPCs were supposed to be more clear than they are about where to go. While I never came THAT close to timing-out (a timer is running the whole time, but it resets when you die and come back to life), the backtracking was the closest I came to being bored. Hell, I’m not embarrassed to admit that, even after beating the game with the “Fighter” (I kept calling it the Warrior), I still found myself going around in circles in some areas. Of course, that wasn’t entirely my fault. See, Cadash has a bit of a problem handling talking-based events, and it nearly ruins the entire game.

The timer never stops when you talk to NPCs, and near the end of my first playthrough, a couple different talking moments were supposed to trigger an event, but it didn’t happen the first time. At one point, I was stuck in a house for several minutes because I didn’t talk to the NPC the “correct way” I guess. I genuinely thought there was a chance I’d soft-locked the game, because I talked to the woman a few times, but it wouldn’t let me leave the house. After listening to her full dialog repeat multiple times, I finally was lined up with her in a way where I got an item that let me out of the house, but over two minutes had been eaten up. Later, it was a headstone that I had to talk to a couple times to activate. In my fourth and final playthrough, it was the gate after beating the first boss that wouldn’t activate, then later the gravestone glitch happened even worse than before. It played the “you got the item” music indicating I’d gotten the item that turns you into Dr. Doolittle. But, when I went to talk to the dog, it didn’t work. I thought I missed something and spent quite a long time going around in circles, talking and re-talking to every single person until I determined that the gravestone “moment” which had already f*cked up once on me had f*cked up again. And I was right. Had I not found a guide that told me I had to strike the grave a few times to force getting the pendant, I’d have never finished my final run.

What’s really infuriating about this is I believe these specific issues were deliberately left in the game in order to squeeze more quarters out of players. This feels like the type of thing that any amount of play testing would eliminate. They’re just too easy to trigger and happen constantly! There’s no way this was a simple oversight. But, it’s always the house that benefits from these “incidents” and I genuinely feel like someone in charge said “leave ’em in! Operators will love us for them!” They eat up time, cause people to run around trying to figure out what they missed, and ultimately shake the player down for more quarters. “You have to listen to ALL the dialog” isn’t good enough. I did listen to all the dialog! But maybe I wasn’t standing in the right spot or maybe I pressed the wrong button. I’ve been playing video games since I was 7 and I’ve never seen a game that f*cks up such a simple mechanic as handing you the key items when you talk to the right people like Cadash does.

Given the circumstances and Taito’s track record, yea, I think it’s deliberate. Just having unlimited quarters is the ultimate quality of life improvement. Had I been reviewing a game that cost $0.25 per life, I’d give Cadash the biggest NO! I’ve ever given. This is an arcade game that actively grifts players. But, removed from the arcade environment and given unlimited time and continues, these problems just become massive annoyances. It’s certainly not “charming” or homespun or anything like that. These aspects straight-up suck and there’s nothing redeeming about them. Cadash as a game in Taito Milestones 3 is a good game despite those things, and not because of it. Of all the games in this collection, this is the one I’d love to see a modern remake of the most. Everything that’s fun about Cadash would be more fun with modern gaming conveniences. Take casting spells, for example. In order to activate them with the wizard or priestess, you have to hold down the same button that’s a melee attack. A little word bubble pops up and begins cycling through the spells you’ve learned, and when you see one you want, you let go of the button. I’m sure in 1989 this was a pretty good solution, and I especially like that, the next time you cast a spell, it’s already on the same spell you last used. But, these days you’d have shoulder buttons to scroll with and more face buttons to activate.

And while I’m on the subject of magic, if you’re going to have a spell-casting character, making too many enemies immune to magic is just a prickish thing to do. I really enjoyed the combat of Cadash, but that’s entirely situational. I didn’t enjoy using the ninja or his throwing stars at all, and the wizard just isn’t fun to play as. If you’re going to try Cadash, and I’m giving it a YES! so obviously I think you should, I recommend you play as the fighter or priestess. With either of those characters, Cadash is a haphazard, deliberately sloppy action-RPG carried by some damn satisfying combat. It’s short. A full run through will take about an hour, even if you stop to grind-up a few levels. Since the combat is enjoyable enough, grinding never feels like a grind. The RPG notes it HAD to do right, IE the weapon upgrades and sense of progress, are well done. It doesn’t always play fair, but since you’re not ponying up a quarter a play, technically you aren’t either. So, Cadash is the rare game that’s better today than it was upon release. It doesn’t happen a lot, but it’s nice to see.
Verdict: YES! – $8 in value added to Taito Milestones 3
And no, you can’t do the linked-cabinet thing. Two players only. Sorry.

Champion Wrestler
Platform: Arcade
Released August, 1989
Arcade Archives Debut: September 8, 2022
Designed by Atsushi Iwaoka
Directed by Takeshi Murata
Developed by Taito

I think most wrestling fans my age or older will agree that games that used the AKI Engine, which started in America with WCW vs. nWo: World Tour in 1997 and ended with WWF No Mercy in 2000, was the height of video wrestling. I’ve met the occasional outlier who says Fire Pro Wrestling, but I never really liked those all that much, or really, any wrestling games except AKI developed ones. They felt like they best replicated the give-and-take nature of pro wrestling that makes you build up to the big, strong moves with striking and weaker grapple attacks, leading to matches that looked more like what you saw on TV than any other wrestling game. I bring this up because I suspect the team behind Champion Wrestler was trying really hard to get the little details right without consideration for the big picture. I was immediately amused by seeing wrestlers stomp the mat as they threw punches. I mean, come on! I’ve never seen a wrestling game do that before, and it has the right sound effect and everything! I think it’s safe to say that Taito deliberately leaned into the simulated violence aspect of pro wrestling, as you don’t have to make contact on punches and kicks at all, but in a good “yea, that’s wrestling!” type of way. Not only does it not feel like “bad collision” in the traditional sense, but it also never feels like it’s mocking the source material. To Champion Wrestler’s credit, it’s completely sincere. And it should be, because that’s what makes wrestling fun, right?

The in-ring action of Champion Wrestler probably does a better job of feeling like wrestling than any game had up to this point, but there’s still a big limit to that. You can run the ropes by tapping a direction twice, but you can only hit the ropes moving left and right. You can’t hit the ropes up and down, even though you can run up and down. Weird. You can climb the ropes, but in the entire time I was playing, I never hit a move off the top rope on a down opponent, and when I hit one on a standing opponent, it didn’t do enough damage to make it worth the risk. Actually, consistency was a big issue in general. Even with one of the best instruction manuals in Taito Milestones 3, I couldn’t really pull off any specific move with any consistency, including pinning. Sometimes I would just stutter-step around an opponent. Sometimes I instead attacked. Other times, I would perform a diving pinning attack only when the opponent got up. The same goes for grappling, or even just initiating the act of grappling. I ran through the game with each character, plus all the multiplayer we did, and I still never could do anything with any consistency except basic striking moves. The CPU was constantly able to switch from a front grapple to a rear grapple, but I don’t recall me or the kids ever doing that once. I was startled when I saw it was even possible.

So, what I’m saying is that my success or failure in Champion Wrestler came down to good ole’ fashioned button mashing. To my credit, Taito makes it clear this is the object. In addition to a normal health meter, you have a power meter that charges via movement of the stick (or d-pad) and button mashing that increases the damage done by all moves AND increases the likelihood of a pin or submission being successful. The submissions are the game’s weakness. You would think that if someone grabs a submission hold and it doesn’t work, the other person would at least get to stand up. That’s how the AKI games I was raised on work, and it makes sense because that’s proper risk/reward gameplay, right? It discourages spamming those moves, because if you don’t get a submission, your opponent gets a virtual reset and a chance to come back. Unfortunately, Champion Wrestler has no such buffer in place. You can put someone in the same hold three, four, or even more times in a row without giving them a chance to defend themselves. And it has nothing to do with how much life they have, either. It makes sense you can’t scrape yourself off the canvas if you’re completely drained of energy, but what if you still have most of it when this sequence of consecutive submission holds begins? In fact, this is how the CPU often beat me, not just when I had the game on the default difficulty setting, but even on the easy setting in later matches.

If all that sounds discouraging, don’t let it be, because honestly I had more fun with Champion Wrestler than I have in my limited experience with other 80s/90s arcade wrestling games. I did something a little different with Champion Wrestler than my normal review process. My nieces and nephew, ages 9 to 13, are all big wrestling fans and, the day I played this for review, their friends were coming over for a viewing party for the latest WWE event on Peacock. I thought “getting them to play Bubble Bobble might be like pulling teeth, but I bet they’re all primed for an old school wrestling game!” The kids agreed to give it a shot, and I just watched, curious to see how quickly they all wanted to quit, but that never happened. Instead, Champion Wrestler’s pick-up-and-play action meant that everyone could immediately have fun and not have to ease into the game. The learning curve is nearly non-existent, and at first, they only complained about the time limit after the first couple matches ended with time running out. Thankfully, not only can match time be increased via the dip switches, but the actual speed the clock counts down can be adjusted too. I highly recommend that players do not use the default settings with Champion Wrestler.

How did it go after I made the adjustments? Well, I asked the kids for “just a few minutes” and they kept playing it right up until the show started. Hell, their parents wanted to play too. And everyone had so much fun that they asked me to pencil-in doing reviews for other retro arcade wrestling games for Wrestlemania week this next year, even though I couldn’t promise they’d like them as much. “You know, if they’re bad, we still have to play them! That’s how reviews work!” They were down! So, yea, apparently they liked Champion Wrestler a lot, with my nephew saying he thought it was almost as fun as WWE 2K24. I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing for Champion Wrestler or a bad thing for WWE 2K24, and he told me that’s his favorite PS5 game. Mind you, none of these kids had EVER played a 2D wrestling game, but they really liked this one, and when I asked what was their favorite thing, they said they thought it was “like wrestling.” Apparently I wasn’t the only one who thought stomping while punching was a nice touch. “It’s funny” was another common complement, and indeed when any two players got into an extended sequence of missing pin attempts, everyone laughed. It looked exactly like a comedy wrestling match. We also were ALL freaked out by the twisted static screens between rounds, one of which has the words KILL YOU written in blood behind the wrestler, whose manager is handing him a gun. What the hell? Seriously, IS IT IMPLYING WHAT I THINK IT IS?

The complaints were also pretty universal, and besides the lack of tag team matches, the most common one was there was no finishing move meter. Each wrestler has unique moves, but they’re not necessarily devastating finishers. One of the wrestlers’ big moves is just a small package, which for the unwashed is a fancy type of pin that isn’t supposed to hurt at all. Another complaint was nobody could figure out how to throw a wrestler into the ropes. Not that it mattered, because the wrestler being whipped can still do their flying attack on the rebound. It also became clear really quick that Champion Wrestler doesn’t have the type of balance you want from a fighting game. The running attacks are the easiest to perform, and for one character in particular, the Samurai, the flying attack is a Liu Kang-like flying dropkick. It not only covers the full length of the ring if your power meter is fully charged but it’s also probably the fastest move in the game. It was so annoying that we agreed to ban the character because there’s really no way to block, and it was too easy for someone to spam that move. In general, the kids would have preferred a bigger roster and more ease of grappling, and I agree with all of that. But, we had so much fun that my nieces and nephew wanted to play it again the next day.

We didn’t have as much fun on the second day. To be clear, we still had fun, but we also were unable to get any better than we were the day before. After we all got sick of button mashing, we tried to actually be able to pull off moves with consistency, and none of us were able to. The two-button gameplay is just too limited and too inconsistent. Even when we played by ourselves against a standing-still second player, it still felt like pure luck when we pulled off a good move twice in a row. As fun as Champion Wrestler can be, you never forget that this was made to be just good enough to keep kids pumping quarters into it for fifteen minutes at an arcade in 1989/1990. It plays the way it does because it needs players to be able to walk up to the machine and play well enough to see moves right away, in your first match. It’s nothing short of remarkable that it holds up as much as it does in 2024. It aged well enough that kids who watch the modern wrestling product and play modern wrestling games couldn’t put it down. But, the lack of refined controls, inconsistent grappling system, and exploitable submission holds will eventually cause the fun to wear off. Champion Wrestler is the rare game where we didn’t have as much fun when we tried to play it “right.” But, in small doses with the right audience? You don’t need to know how to play it right to have a good time. If that’s not the mark of a solid arcade fighter, I don’t know what is.
Verdict: YES! – $8 in Value added to Taito Milestones 3

Dead Connection
Platform: Arcade
Released July/August, 1992
Arcade Archives Debut: February 27, 2025
Directed by Masaki Ogata, Ichiro Fujisue, and Hidehiro Fujiwara
Developed by Taito

I’ll give this to Dead Connection: at least it’s totally different from any other Taito coin-op I’ve reviewed so far, and I think that’s probably a good thing. It’s a single-screen at a time action game where you’re dropped off in the middle of the action and have to take out wave after wave of baddies. You really want this to be Taito’s answer to Robotron: 2084, Berzerk, or similar arena blasters. But, even if the core gameplay is like those games, it never feels like it belongs to the same genre. Hell, Dead Connection feels more like a light gun game without the light guns. Five years earlier, Taito had seen great success with Operation Wolf, and it’s a safe bet they always had their eye on further arcade shooters along those lines. I wouldn’t be surprised if Dead Connection started development with that intention, possibly as a hybrid game where you provided cover to the on-screen hero instead of having enemies attack you directly, only Taito abandoned the light guns to turn this into a 360° wave shooter. I hope so, at least. It would explain why this is so bland.

Dead Connection’s biggest problem is the action just isn’t very fun. It is incredibly busy, and while it’s satisfying to pick up a shotgun and blast a huge cluster of enemies, the fun doesn’t last. The presence of bosses who don’t look like gaming “big bosses” takes a tommy gun to immersion. Most enemies are dead in one shot.  You know, like how guns are supposed to work, but then guys who look almost indistinguishable from normal baddies will take a shotgun blast to the body. Then they get up and take another, and another, and another, and MAKE IT STOP! It’s ridiculous looking when it happens, too. It looks like the boss is doing the worm, but eventually they’ll get shots off too. In over half of the eight levels during my first playthrough, I died at the same time as the boss did and pressed start just in time to see the LEVEL CLEAR graphic. There wasn’t a single decent boss fight in this whole game. They’re all lame as hell, and all of them feel like spongy normal enemies.

Honestly, besides the immersion-busting bosses, Dead Connection doesn’t exactly do anything wrong. It even has some aspects I enjoy. The environments are interactive, so if there’s doors somewhere on the screen, you can walk into a building and open fire on any enemies hiding within. It doesn’t change the screen or anything like that when it happens. Actually, you can’t really see what you’re doing, but it’s still a neat idea. My father thinks that I’m wrong about the light gun thing and that the real inspiration was “that game show game.” He’s talking about Smash TV, and perhaps he’s right. But, that’s the thing, you see. That game is a twin stick shooter, and Dead Connection isn’t. If you want to aim, you have to move the way you’re aiming. It’s such an outdated way of handling this type of wave shooter.

I loves me some good twin stick shooting action. Who doesn’t? I think that if Dead Connection had gone that route but changed nothing else, it would have been just good enough to squeak by with a tiny YES! Without twin stick gameplay, Dead Connection is actually a stunningly bland game that relies too heavily on set pieces to make up for some of the most boring enemies I’ve ever seen. Pretty ho-hum weapons too, actually. The best part of its offensive game is a satisfying dodge maneuver, but even that was only really effective against bosses. Weirdly, Dead Connection is the simplest game in Taito Milestones 3, and that’s stunning because it’s the newest game on here, releasing a few months after Warrior Blade. I suspect that it’s a game Taito gave up on, but one that made it too far along in development to outright cancel. Whatever the reasons why this didn’t work, Dead Connection is just not that fun.
Verdict: NO!

Growl
aka Runark (its name in Taito Milestones 3)
Platform: Arcade
Released in 1990
Arcade Archives Debut: July 27, 2023
Directed by Hidehiro Fujiwara
Developed by Taito

Oh, thank God. Finally, a relatively uncomplicated review. Growl is a mostly boilerplate beat ’em up with the amount of moves and OOMPH you would expect from this era. The big twist is this one has an environmental theme about the evils of poaching attached to it. It’s also a game that I got a ton of potential epilepsy warnings about. Thankfully, the flashes are brief and usually predictable. In fact, the heroes of this game will literally duck and cover when an explosive is thrown. In terms of presentation, Growl/Runark has more personality than almost any brawler had up to this point. It’s genuinely laugh-out-loud funny at times, to the point that it feels like a deadpan satire. You know the trope of scrolling along while playing a brawler and someone breaks through a door to join the fray? When that happens in Growl, the baddie falls through the broken door. How can you not laugh? And then, right before I fought the final boss, get this, the game began to glitch out before freezing entirely. As far as comedic timing goes, it was perfect. For a second, I really thought I broke the.. game.. hey wait, that’s not a joke, is it?

What you’re not seeing after that clip is the game really was frozen solid, and my run was over literally right before the last boss. Couldn’t move. Couldn’t do anything except insert quarters. Actually, it caps you at nine credits, but when I froze the game, I could put in more. So yea, that part wasn’t so funny. Okay, it was a little funny. And, it only happened that one time (I beat it three times total), though that was my only session that would have cracked the leaderboard so I’m slightly annoyed. Otherwise, Runark is fine as a two button brawler that goes just a little beyond the extra mile. As you go along, you get a chance to directly save animals from poachers. If you do so, the animals will help you later on, and it’s genuinely thrilling when it happens. Runark has more enemies on screen than almost any brawler I’ve ever seen, but typically when the game goes nuts with enemies, it pays it off by sending in your animal friends to help. And it’s always exciting when it happens!

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Now, with all that said, the combat is really limited and basic, with all attacks mapped to one button, though this game does the “hit both buttons at the same time for a special move” thing. Is there a name for that? It doesn’t even cost you life to do it, either (apparently the Genesis version added that), but the catch is you have to be close. As long as there’s an ample supply of weapons, Growl’s combat doesn’t get boring, but it’s not amazing, either. The violence isn’t lightweight, but it’s also not always as impactful as it should be. There’s four characters to choose from, but really it feels like two characters who each have their own variant. However, each character has different jumping, strength, and health. You can swap between them each life, but in the case of one of the characters, I ate a game over in about ten seconds or less after using them. Health should not be something that has variables in a brawler. No matter who I was using, I found the jumping attacks to be ineffective and dull to use. The best thing I can say about the jumping is there’s a brief platforming level that comes out of nowhere near the end of Growl, and it’s better than the platforming bits in Double Dragon. Faint praise, perhaps, but it makes for a welcome break even if it just sort of ends unceremoniously.

Whether you call it Runark or Growl, full sessions take maybe thirty minutes, if that. So it doesn’t exactly have enough time to be boring. But, the game also doesn’t stick the landing. The difficulty suddenly spikes during the final level. Growls offers no buffer in the time between getting knocked down to getting back up. In multiple play sessions, this never factored-in until the final stretch, where every game except the one I crashed saw enemies counter every move I made and catch me in a cycle of knocking me down before I could even move. The second-to-last boss, the evil clown form of the alien worm you’re fighting, is one of the cheapest (and most boring) final bosses I’ve seen in a brawler. It’s a slow, tedious grind to get any damage at all on it. The entire final level cost Runark in my rankings, though I think what’s here is still barely good enough to get a YES! It’s not a spectacular game, but there’s just enough here to make it worth playing a couple times and enjoy the gags and some perfectly fine bland brawling.
Verdict: YES! – $8 in value added to Taito Milestones 3

Rainbow Islands: The Story of Bubble Bobble 2
Platform: Arcade
Released in 1987
Arcade Archives Debut: January 25, 2024
Designed by Fukio Mitsuji
Developed by Taito

In my first run on Rainbow Islands, I made it to the first boss and got a game over quickly. I lasted just a few seconds each life. In my second run I, um, beat the entire game without losing a single life, or using save states. I mean, I was laying down save states because I thought I could turn into a pumpkin any second, but it never happened. I couldn’t believe it. If you’re thinking there has to be a catch, well, define “catch.” I turned the setting down to EASY, but hell, I did that for games like Bubble Bobble and I couldn’t play the games perfectly. Maybe because Rainbow Islands offers to let you input cheat codes automatically. You just pick what you want from a menu, and there are some item-based ones. But, I used a code that allowed me to continue after the 5th level (or 8th, I’m hearing conflicting stuff on where is the normal point of no return) instead of permanently giving me a double or triple rainbow. I also toggled on “IMPROVE GAME OPERATION” which is basically “remove input lag” or at least I think it’s supposed to be. At first, I thought it worked, but when I replayed Rainbow Islands with it turned off, I honestly couldn’t tell the difference.

I don’t know if any of those things factored-in, but there was something in Taito Milestones 3 the original arcade version didn’t offer that was unquestionably responsible for my ability to cheese the game like I did: autofire. Well, autofire combined with a couple in-game items. For the Taito Milestones/Arcade Archives build, you can map jumping and rainbows to one button, then crank up the autofire to the max and basically fly straight up the center to the goal. Well, provided you pick up the wings, which are a permanent upgrade (as long as you don’t game over) that allow you to jump in mid-air. I also got a fairy that spins around you that was so effective. The collision isn’t pixel-perfect, but in a way that benefits you, and as I scrolled the screen up, my first sighting of enemies was often their now dead bodies flying from being hit by the fairy. Enemies were literally dying as soon as the stage turned-on. Who needs save states? This was a cinch!

I was curious if it was autofire or all the other options that Hamster/ININ included, so I took a scientific approach and started turning them off and restoring default settings. I *FINALLY* died on easy mode for the first time in the fourth world, and to my astonishment, I basically suffered no penalty at all. When I came back to life, I still had the wings and the fairy. The only penalty was my triple rainbow was downgraded to a double rainbow. After that slap on the wrist, I decided to abandon that run and restore all the default settings except the 10 figure cheat code (hell, if I’m going to keep playing this, I want to try for the leaderboard). Now on the default NORMAL setting with only three starting lives, surely the game will penalize me for dying. Nope. I only had one death going into world 6-4, when I dropped three consecutive lives. And there was no penalty beyond losing my triple rainbow the first time. I still had my shoes, double rainbow, fairy, and wings. Of course, I’d built up a stockpile of lives by this point (you get one every time you get a full set of diamonds, plus a couple scoring-based ones).

In my very first game, the one where Rainbow Islands annihilated me, what killed me more often than not was accidentally walking up a rainbow I just made that took me directly into an enemy. In my unexpected no-death run on EASY, my strategy was initially to keep my distance. Once I had the triple rainbow, I had enough reach to take out almost everything without getting close. Once I got a feel for how the fairy works, my strategy changed to stay low and let the fairy take care of the stuff above me, which changed to “stay high” on the bosses. I figured they would put up a fight, but I beat ALL of them in a few seconds, a feat I repeated once I switched over to the default settings, though in my NORMAL run I did die once. It was the 8th boss, fittingly a devil that spawned basically on top of me. I suppose they were fun while they lasted.

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Actually, that could be said about Rainbow Islands in general. For as breathtakingly overrated as Rainbow Islands difficulty is, I was never bored. There’s a lot of really fun set pieces, including four worlds themed after other Taito games. You know what’s weird? The only stage that didn’t “do it” for me was the one themed around Bubble Bobble that acts as the finale (provided you get the big diamonds in each of the first seven game worlds). The level design was a little too repetitive and boring in that one. Everything else flew by so fast I didn’t really have time to be bored by it. The combat is satisfying. The graphics are really nice and colorful. Collecting the diamonds added just the right amount of nuance, especially once I realized the screen was divided into seven columns. There’s obviously a lot of flexibility for different ways to tackle each stage. Rainbow Islands might be a little too easy with autofire, but it’s never really dull. My biggest complaint is that it feels like it gives you the bum’s rush. Too many stages give you the “hurry up” warning too quickly, which further compounds how difficult getting the diamonds in the correct order can be. Part of that is waiting for the right moment. Or maybe you have to wait for the wrong diamond to vanish, since if you come near it with a rainbow, even a broken and falling one, you collect it. Rainbow Islands might have taken the hidden content a little too far, but eh, I had fun. That’s all I’ve ever cared about.
Verdict: YES! – $8 in value added to Taito Milestones 3
And I’m awarding $2.50 in bonus value for all the extra options that go beyond common emulator options. More of this type of thing, please.

Rastan Saga
aka Rastan
Platform: Arcade
Released March, 1988
Arcade Archives Debut: May 2, 2024
Directed by Yoshinori Kobayashi
Developed by Taito

My friends and I determined that Conan the Barbarian was the property that has had its serial numbers filed off for purposes of gaming the most in the 80s and 90s. The shirtless, beefy barbarian was such a recognizable gaming staple that Ironsword: Wizards & Warriors II, a game based entirely around a fully-armored knight, put a shirtless barbarian beef boy on the cover. Someone at Acclaim’s marketing had to see the gameplay of Ironsword and say “yea, armor is great and all, but do you know what boys really want to see in their gaming heroes? Pecs and glam rock hair!” When I showed my family Ironsword’s cover, they were baffled, but while I played Rastan Saga today, they weren’t anymore. “Was this popular?” they asked. “It’s not NOT popular! Also, Rastan was never on the NES. It was exclusive to Sega’s platforms” was my reply. “That explains (Ironsword).” Hell though, Rastan isn’t even the first of its kind. Namco’s Dragon Buster came out over three years before it, and Rastan feels like it’s an attempt to improve upon that game specifically. Taito made the most of that three years, because Rastan is superior to Dragon Buster in every imaginable way.

I think that a lot of people expected Rastan to receive an easy NO! I think the reason so many people were eager for me to play it is because they expected it to be a prime example of games that were fine at the time but aged badly, probably due to cheap shots. After all the things I heard about it, I expected something much harder than this. But really, Bubble Bobble is far worse in terms of dirty pool from a coin-op. I went as far as to call Bubble Bobble “underhanded” and I stand by that, but Rastan is just good old fashioned cheap. Like with Bubble Bobble, after an initial run where I played on the default settings, I upped the lives to six per quarter and set the difficulty to the lowest setting. With that, Rastan was still cheap, BUT, it was cheap within the acceptable parameters.

It helps that Rastan only has a handful of tricks up its sleeve that it repeats constantly. For example, when there’s a slope, you’re almost certain to have either rocks falling down on you or instakill gaps with fireballs on the slope. Once I got the timing down (and once my muscle memory got used to holding UP when I jumped for added lift) I never died on another slope. The challenges based around the slopes were really predictable after a certain point, and it was just a matter of where the enemies would be when I got to the bottom. That’s the Rastan experience in a nutshell.

Needless to say, Rastan’s difficulty didn’t live up to expectations, but that’s a good thing. The ropes all behave with the same speed, so it’s just a matter of waiting and not rushing through them. The same goes for the fireballs that bounce up and down the fire pits. It’s the same pattern every time, and once you know it, you know when you can move or not. Hell, even the instakill spikes that pop out of the ground have consistent speeds and become predictable. You never feel like the rug is pulled out from underneath you in Rastan. If you pace yourself and don’t just stomp through the levels with reckless abandon, there’s really no GOTCHA! type of stuff. There’s no last-pixel jumps, not even with the ropes. There’s a couple nearly blind jumps, but none that I remember that were legitimately blind luck.

And the combat isn’t so tough either. Most enemies die in only a hit or two, and your jumping strike does three times the damage. There’s a decent variety of enemies that come out in seemingly random pairings, but they’re not too tough. A few have projectiles, while others are able to initially block you, but jumping attacks work on most the first time. Hell, one time there were so many enemies when I climbed a rope that I climbed down the way I came, then back up and they were gone. Scrolling is practically your secondary weapon in Rastan. Everyone warned me how hard the final level was, especially since the unlimited continues vanish on it. Die on level six, and it’s game over. But, Rastan had run out of ideas before the finale and, since it keeps going back to the same handful of predictable enemy patterns and obstacles, I ran through the final stage making save states I never needed. This isn’t THAT hard. Even better is that, while it does run out of ideas, it doesn’t overstay its welcome. The whole thing should only take you, even if you die a lot, under an hour.

Ultimately, Rastan was always going to live and die based on how well the combat was. I’d heard words like “rigid” or “stiff” and even “awkward” used to describe it. I’ll use a different word: ActRaiser. You know, the SNES game. That’s what Rastan reminded me of. If I asked you “what’s the first game you think of with a beefy dude using two-handed broadsword combat while making his way through basic set pieces that were cutting-edge for their time using stiff movement and heavy jumping while fighting a hodge-podge of assorted beasts taken from various mythologies from all around the globe?” what game would YOU think of? You know how I talk about some games sharing DNA? Well, this doesn’t just share. In the case of Rastan, it feels like ActRasier’s long lost gaming sibling. Not even a prototype, but rather a legit prequel. It’s that close, and if you’re a fan of ActRaiser’s 2D segments, I think there’s a chance you’ll really dig Rastan. I really thought I’d get annoyed that enemies chime when defeated (I think it’s supposed to sound like the clink of a sword), but the combat does have a weight to it. I wish it did more than it does. The best thing I can say about Rastan’s combat is they tailored the game to assure plenty of usage out of the vertical attacks, be it above or below you.

Okay, so Rastan is repetitive, lacks dazzling set pieces that I figured a game like this would absolutely need, and the gameplay is basic. But, it doesn’t matter, because I still have fun. Yea, it feels more antiquated than some games. Side scrolling sword & sorcery games have come a long way in the last thirty-five years. But, what makes Rastan work is it has the perfect tempo for a game like this. There’s no down time at all, but never in an overwhelming “this is TOO intense” type of way. Rastan’s greatest triumph isn’t anything it built, but rather the fine tuned balance. It’s equal parts platforming and combat, and the transition from one to the other is seamless. To steal a pinball term, it has good flow. And here’s why that matters: graphics can age badly and advancements in game design theory can turn a once elite game into something too basic to be enjoyable compared to modern games. But, flow is immune to any aging factors. Good flow in 1988 is good flow in 2024 and beyond. I thought Rastan would be lucky to squeak by with a YES! And I was wrong, because this verdict wasn’t even close.
Verdict: YES! – $8 in value added to Taito Milestones 3

Rastan Saga II
aka Nastar or Nastar Warrior
Platform: Arcade
Arcade Archives Debut: June 20, 2024
Released March, 1989
Designed by Hisaya Yabusaki
Developed by Taito

Holy moly, wow. Rastan Saga II is one of the worst sequels in gaming history. Despite having a similar control scheme, limited weapon upgrades, and nearly equal parts combat and platforming segments, it never feels like it’s tied to the first game. So bad is this that, if I didn’t know the story behind it, or its name, I’d think this was a rip-off of Rastan that mandated bigger character models. Instead of sharing DNA with the original, Rastan Saga II’s closest gaming cousin is Haunted Castle. You know, the Konami arcade version of Castlevania that overdid the character sprites, opting for big, detailed models at the cost of everything enjoyable about playing Castlevania. Rastan II is that for Rastan I.

The first game wasn’t exactly high art, even for its genre. But the combat and platforming bits were just good enough to let the sublime pacing carry it over the finish line with plenty of room to spare. Rastan II is “what if you did that again, only it’s shorter now. And the combat is flimsy and lightweight while being even more stiff than the original. And what if we made the platforming bits unworkable?” People think the first Rastan is stiff? Try this one. THIS is stiff! I think King Rastan lifted one too many weights, because the guy moves like he’s barefoot on a frozen kitchen floor. That doesn’t matter so much for the action bits, but the platforming wants to do things like ducking while jumping. The designers included plenty of tight squeezes to justify adding that mechanic, but they didn’t polish it at all and it’s awful.

But, it’s the combat that’s the deal breaker for me. While the character sprites are massive, they have limited movement and there’s no sense of weight or impact to anything done by heroes or enemies. Well, with one possible exception. Inexplicably, Rastan II replaced the axe and the mace weapons with Wolverine-like claws. As silly as that is, it’s the only attack that feels like it has OOMPH to it, but not much more. Since there’s limited animation, it doesn’t matter how imaginative things like war elephant-riding skeletons are. They all feel like cardboard cutouts. Even Haunted Castle didn’t have that problem. It’s so bad that all the sprites feel like they exist in their own dimension. I’ve never seen anything like that in a video game before. It’s so weird! Unlike Rastan Saga, the sequel feels stingy with the power-ups. In the entire play session, I got a flaming sword one time and lost it seconds later, while the worthless gigantic sword I got multiple times.

The only improvement over the first game is that Rastan Saga II has unlimited continues. There’s also a quality-of-life toggle that allows you to turn on the ability for enemies to continue to drop items in the fifth world, so hey, the effort was there. Not that it matters. There’s NOTHING fun about Rastan Saga II. Okay, so the first game didn’t exactly have amazing bosses, but I’d prefer flaying them in four seconds and cheering to myself over slashing mindlessly at one for a minute with no end in sight. Suddenly, I realize why Rastan died a miserable death as a franchise. The only value I see in Rastan II is to game design students. I’m not even joking when I say I think there’s value in having them play both games. Because the sequel really does hit most of the same beats as the original, and I’d even argue the pacing is spot-on. The problem is that, this go around, the individual components are terribly done. We need a destroyer for this barbarian.
Verdict: NO!

Thunder Fox
Platform: Arcade
Released June, 1990
Designed by Hiroyuki Maekawa
Arcade Archives Debut: January 30, 2025
Developed by Taito

Oof. This was so close to getting a YES! that it was right there, and the bosses threw it away. Thunder Fox is so generic that it feels like a joke. I kind of admire that they wanted to cram as many action tropes as possible into a relatively short game. There’s side-scrolling levels where you can hijack cars. There’s a brief side-shmup segment, and once it’s over, you can continue to ride your hovercraft into the normal part of the level until it’s too damaged to go on. There’s a Metroid-like “escape the base” segment in the middle of the game, and that’s followed by a jet skiing section that ends on a submarine and, Christ, this is starting to sound like a Fast & Furious movie. Thunder Fox is Generic Action Man’s Action Game, and it’s trying so damn hard, but it’s just not good. Like, come on, Taito! You went to all this effort and you couldn’t even include an upward attack?

If Thunder Fox had controlled more like Contra, it probably could have overcome the ruinous bosses and still squeaked by with a tepid YES! But, the combat is downright bizarre. This is the rare Taito Milestones release with three buttons. One is jump, naturally, while one is the knife/melee attack and the other is firing the guns you pick up. If you pick up a gun but want to save your ammo, you can beat people with the butt of the gun. However, this isn’t as fast as the default weapon: a Rambo-like knife that’s easily more effective than any gun except the flamethrower. I didn’t like using any of the bullet-based guns. Why? Because in Thunder Fox, firing a gun is a slower way of mowing down enemies than swiping with the knife, which allows you to cut through swarms of enemies. Whose bright idea was that?

And guns are spectacularly worthless against bosses, assuming you even have one when you enter the battles. A few of the bosses are armed themselves, and they literally hold their weapons as shields to block EVERY shot you fire. Not just some shots. ALL OF THEM. I never hit a single one with a bullet. Not even once. I had to use the knife and accept a ton of damage. That’s where the game falls apart. I’m pretty sure I spent more time fighting bosses than I did playing the game. One in particular was where I drew the line. It’s a wrecking ball where you have to hit a tiny gun that pokes out once in a while for about a second. While this is happening, two lasers shoot you from the ceiling. In previous stages, the same lasers could be destroyed with a few knife whacks, but these two are indestructible and move around, with the left one parking right under the thing you have to hit. And while this is happening, the wrecking ball drops, causing bits of the ceiling to cave in. You can’t get on the structure, then duck and hit it. Your knife goes right over the target, which is where immersion dies. I mean come on, the guy can’t aim a little lower? This is the worst boss I’ve ever seen in a game like this. Even with the game set to give me five lives per credit, I still had to reload five or six times playing this thing. The window to actually cause damage is so small and so covered by crap from all angles. This is a legit quarter shakedown at this point, and it’s beyond shameful.

Not that Generic Action Man was a great game up to this point, but it was okay. The enemies are a little too repetitive, and the guns weren’t worth using with the exception of the flamethrower, mostly because it had coverage and didn’t wear out too fast. I also liked that one boss and one mini-boss required you to use grenades dropped by enemies in order to damage them. There’s some legit good stuff here, but everything that comes after the jet ski section is a slog, especially the bosses. A few of them barely move. They just wait for you to attack so they can counter attack. And hell, if you don’t beat the last boss fast enough, you have to start the fight over from the beginning. When I finally beat him, I did it by dropping any effort at elegance and finesse and just spamming the attack button, hoping to do more damage than he did, and it worked. A lot of times, I get frustrated with bosses but I can look the other way if getting to them is good, but in the case of Thunder Fox, they just took the shameless money grubbing too far. If Taito hadn’t been so f*cking greedy, maybe they would have had their own version of Contra and Thunder Fox would be remembered as one of the more decent games in this oversaturated genre. But, they just had to make the bosses so cheap and boring that it ruins the whole game.
Verdict: NO!

Warrior Blade: Rastan Saga Episode III
Platform: Arcade
Released May, 1992
Arcade Archives Debut:  December 19, 2024
Directed by Kenji Kaido
Developed by Taito
NEVER RELEASED OUTSIDE OF JAPAN

Note: I wrote this review before the Arcade Archives release, which happened ten days after the publication of this review.

If I were ININ, I’d fight tooth and nail to keep Warrior Blade from getting an Arcade Archives release. Not only is it the killer app of Taito Milestones 3, but it’s the best game in the entire Taito Milestones franchise. I assume at some point they’re going to do a Taito box set, and this right here is your anchor game. As much fun as I had with Liquid Kids in Volume 2, that had several moments of brutal difficulty spikes. I’m not quite sure that Warrior Blade ever reaches the peaks of Liquid Kids, but I give it the trophy for “best game ever in Taito Milestones” by a pretty big margin because there’s no down time at all. Warrior Blade is always fun, from start to finish. It’s seriously one of the best arcade brawlers I’ve played, and I’ve done quite a few. For a while, Indie Gamer Chick was practically a brawler review-centric website. What can I say? I love a good ole fashioned brawler that puts the focus on wacky fun. Warrior Blade does exactly that. Best of all, the difficulty settings in the dip switches are, you know, accurate! Often, “EASY” in coin-ops means “still so brutal that it’s practically hateful” but not Warrior Blade. In fact, I recommend that beat ’em up veterans leave it on NORMAL, only adjusting to EASY when you play with newcomers to the genre. Even on NORMAL, this is never unfair. No cheap shots. No GOTCHAs. No sponge. I literally can’t believe this is a Taito arcade game.

On the plus side, each character feels COMPLETELY different from the others. It’s not simply a few sliders being adjusted, like with Growl/Runark. I’d go so far as to say they all three characters radically change the feel of the game. Sophia, who uses a whip, was my least favorite of the three. Whips are a brawler stalwart, but they’re usually temporary weapons that you pick up and eventually lose. That’s fine, by the way, because it becomes a big deal when you get one. Sophia’s whip is permanent, and it’s oddly not very satisfying. Either Rastan or the ridiculously named Dewey are much more fun to use. But, even the worst character in Warrior Blade has value. I played with Sasha, who is still getting used to brawlers. Sasha tried playing as both Rastan and Dewey, but she was much more effective with Sophia. That character is excellent for beginners because she has range, making it much easier for a novice to contribute without having to directly enter the mob. And by the way, my biggest knock is that this is a two player game. There’s three characters and a HUGE playfield, but only two players? Lame.

Rastan himself is the typical side-scrolling beat ’em up character. Cut and paste from any game, really, but obviously the closest comparison is Golden Axe’s main character. Dewey, meanwhile, is like a cross between a Ninja Turtle and a tweaker. He moves super fast and does flippy moves and feels so completely out of place in this sword & sorcery setting, and I love it. I thought I’d hate playing as a ninja in this game and instead I ran through Warrior Blade twice with him, once solo and once in co-op. You can also swap characters between lives. There’s one unique setting I should note: Warrior Blade is normally a branching-paths game. When a game is this good, I hate that. I want to experience EVERYTHING in a single playthrough. When I reviewed Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse, I used a ROM hack that had every level. I suspect I would get along just fine with the original developers of Warrior Blade, because they actually have a toggle that lets players go through all 14 stages in every session. Turn it on! As soon as you boot it up, go to the options and set “Total Stage No.” to “14.” You’re only adding a couple minutes to the overall runtime, but every single minute of Warrior Blade is sublime, and you don’t want to miss it.

I was stunned by how much action they squeezed out of two buttons. The attacks feel nice and OOMPHful, though not quite Capcom-levels of impact. But, there’s lots of little details to make up the difference and some of the best animation I’ve seen for a game from this era. The character models are especially impressive, and even normally generic baddies have attention to detail. During the horseback set piece, I was pretty impressed that they even took the care to have the horses collapse the right way. It’s a violent game, but that’s what I want from this genre anyway. If I’m disappointed about anything, it’s that almost every basic enemy has the same tiny, subtle blood-swipe effect when they blink out of existence. I’d prefer if they collapsed first, then vanished. It’s nit-picky, but it stood out to me. Hey, don’t look at me like that! The game calls attention to it! When most enemies die and vanish, they let out a scream that sounds exactly like Cobra Commander if he stepped on a tack. You think I’m joking, but listen to it!

I seriously looked up to see if it really was Chris Latta‘s voice! I don’t care what anyone says: that is definitely Starscream, and it gets a little distracting that one specific “YAAAHHHH” is heard pretty much continuously throughout the entire game. Well, provided you actually fight the enemies. Yea, that’s Warrior Blade’s big twist: combat is optional. I mean, you have to fight the bosses of course, but before them? If you want to lay waste to their minions, have at it! If not, run! Unlike most brawlers, there’s no invisible crosswalk light that activates as soon as you beat the latest wave of enemies. If you want to just ignore the baddies, you can. And you won’t even have to run that far to get to the boss. Levels are very short. The first stage is maybe thirty seconds long. Forty seconds. Somewhere in that ballpark. In my first couple sessions, I was always caught off guard by how soon bosses appeared in levels. This is one of the fastest-paced brawlers I’ve ever played, easily.

So, why even engage at all? Well, because enemies drop items and currency that you automatically cash in after every stage for a health boost. I’ve never seen a brawler structured like Warrior Blade, but it speaks volumes to how solid the combat is that I never wanted to skip it. It’s fun, plain and simple. Nothing too spongy. Nothing overwhelmingly dangerous. But, if you’re going for a high score (and points don’t carry over between credits), the fight or flight option adds strategic flexibility, which means this is the rare brawler where you can develop your own game plan. Hell, after the quick intro stage, you can even take the four main three-part levels in any order, and each offers a pair of unique permanent buffs for completing. My longtime readers know that, when it comes to coin-ops, I put a LOT of stock in being able to come up with your own strategies. This is the rare brawler that leans heavily into that. It’s refreshing!

The weakest link in the game is easily the magic. It’s also the strangest way of handling it I’ve ever experienced. You don’t cast spells yourself. An NPC wizard waddles behind you, sometimes. Actually, it’s even weirder because this is a dip switch setting, where you can make the wizard an item that’s found via a crystal or just have him automatically show up at the beginning of stages. I played most games with him as a crystal because the thought of having him around full-time was nuts to me. When you want to cast a spell you, ahem, hit the wizard. I’m not joking.

It’s so weird, and it gets weirder. For the most part, Warrior Blade isn’t one of those brawlers where the main challenge is getting yourself on the same plane as the enemies. One boss is like that, but otherwise, lining-up with your foes isn’t an issue. But, it is for the wizard. Half the time, when I really needed a spell to bail me out, I swung and missed for my first several attempts at smacking the guy. Even though the same strikes would have hit an enemy with the same alignment, I totally whiffed the wizard. Maybe it’s for the best. His spells are so far beyond over-indulgent. There’s a couple that don’t pause the game, and I only saw him actually hit one of those once. Usually when he shot those, he was facing the wrong direction. But, if you have plenty of magic, he casts spells that come complete with a lingering title card and a dramatic special effect. It’s going to be several seconds before you get to resume playing the game. It’s awful.

I’d be fine with these spells if they ate up the entire magic bar. That’s how it should be, because they’re basically bombs, right? That’s another brawling staple that’s time-tested, and the reason they work is they’re used sparingly. But, these big spells might only take a quarter of your magic bar, and refills are all over the place. So, when the wizard is around, the game is constantly pausing for the same two or three spells cast over and over. That’s fine, though, right? Just don’t cast spe….. oh wait, that’s right. It’s not a button. It’s a dude in the middle of a battlefield that does this. While I was constantly struggling to hit the guy on purpose in two or fewer swings, the wizard was constantly getting hit by accident, especially in co-op. It’s the worst, and I wish they’d done anything else because it absolutely murders the pace of the game. What were they thinking? Tone back the casting phase, which takes quite a while, to a second or so and this wouldn’t be so bad. Hell, if it was nearly instantaneous, I’d probably have done a paragraph on how much I loved the wizard and what a great idea it was. Instead, it’s the one blemish on an otherwise genuine beat ’em up masterpiece.

Again, I think Liquid Kids’ highest highs were greater than Warrior Blade’s. But, few games are as consistently good as it. Remove the wizard and I think we’d be talking “greatest arcade brawler of its time” here. It’s a damn shame this never came out in America. Do you know what’s really funny? The Taito collections of MY childhood were Taito Legends. There were two of them plus another for the PSP, over seventy total Taito games, and Warrior Blade wasn’t one of them. Wild! People are going to be buying Taito Milestones 3 for Bubble Bobble and Rastan, but I really think this is the one that they’ll keep coming back to. I think this is the one they’ll show friends. It’s fantastic. Yea, it’s probably just a more souped-up version of Golden Axe and now I have to review all those in 2025 now to keep the cosmic scales balanced. But, this was the last game I played in Taito Milestones 3, and I couldn’t put it down for a full day. Great controls. Awesome combat. Varied combat, which really surprised me. Tons of personality. It’s a damn good looking game too. Warrior Blade should not be a lost treasure. It should not be a hidden gem. Maybe now, it’ll finally get its due, because folks, this was a truly great video game.
Verdict: YES! – $8 in value added to Taito Milestones 3
Winner: Best game in Taito Milestones 3
And I’ll throw in a $1 bonus for all the video options.

FINAL TALLY

YES! – 7 games totaling $56 in value.
NO! – 3 games
Bonus Value: $8.50
Goal: $40 in value
Actual value of Taito Milestones 3 – $64.50
$39.99 smacked a wizard in the making of this review.
A review copy was supplied by ININ for this feature so it could be up before the release date. I’ve purchased a full physical copy which I’m giving to my niece.

COMPLETE TAITO MILESTONES RANKINGS

1. Warrior Blade (Taito Milestones 3)
2. Liquid Kids (Taito Milestones 2)
3. Metal Black (Taito Milestones 2)
4. Darius II (Taito Milestones 2)
5. Elevator Action (Taito Milestones 1)
6. Rastan (Taito Milestones 3)
7. Bubble Bobble* (Taito Milestones 3)
8. Qix (Taito Milestones 1)
9. Rainbow Island (Taito Milestones 3)
10. Cadash (Taito Milestones 3)
11. Kiki KaiKai (Taito Milestones 2)
12. Champion Wrestler (Taito Milestones 3)
13. Legend of Kage (Taito Milestones 2)
14. Runark/Growl (Taito Milestones 3)
15. Halley’s Comet (Taito Milestones 1)
16. Alpine Ski (Taito Milestones 1)
    TERMINATOR LINE
17. Thunder Fox (Taito Milestones 3)
18. The NewZealand Story (Taito Milestones 2)
    *Single Player Bubble Bobble goes here.
19. Dead Connection (Taito Milestones 3)
20. Gun & Frontier (Taito Milestones 2)
21. The Fairyland Story (Taito Milestones 1)
22. Chack’n Pop (Taito Milestones 1)
23. Space Seeker (Taito Milestones 1)
24. Front Line (Taito Milestones 1)
25. Rastan Saga II (Taito Milestones 3)
26. Ben Bero Beh (Taito Milestones 2)
27. Wild Western (Taito Milestones 1)
28. Dino Rex (Taito Milestones 2)
29. The Ninja Warriors (Taito Milestones 1)
30. Solitary Fighter (Taito Milestones 2)

What is the best Taito Milestones set?
Here are the average rankings for each set!
Taito Milestones 1: 19.0
Taito Milestones 2: 15.5
Taito Milestones 3: 12.0