Taito Milestones 2: The Definitive Review – Complete 10 Game Review + Ranking

Of all the collections I’ve reviewed so far, I was most worried about Taito Milestones 2 going into it. I really thought these would be middling games that would be tough for me to get interesting reviews out of. My fears were all for naught. Okay, yes, the fighting games were shallow enough I could barely squeeze them for a single paragraph each. But, the other eight games made for good review experiences, if not good games. The bad games were bad in ways that lent themselves to my review style, and the good games made me feel like I’d found buried treasures. Hell, if you had told me going into Taito Milestones 2 that I was about to play one of the best arcade games I’ve ever experienced, I’d not imagined it could be true. But it is. Seriously, don’t skip the Liquid Kids review, folks. The full game reviews are down below the ultimate verdict.

There is one big difference: three of the games in Taito Milestones 2, at least as of this writing, cannot be purchased separately as Arcade Archives titles. Those are Darius II, Dino Rex, and Solitary Fighter. Dino Rex and Solitary Fighter are two of the worst fighting games I’ve ever played. BUT, Darius II? REALLY good, folks. So, there’s some exclusives you can’t buy separately. At least for now.

I’m going to take the lazy way out and say that everything I said about Taito Milestones 1’s emulation applies to the second volume. You can read that review for my thoughts on the overall presentation, since it’s identical here. Taito Milestones 2 features ten games using the Arcade Archives emulator, minus the signature modes like Hi-Score or 5-Minute Caravan. The emulation is solid and allows for button remapping and autofire, but doesn’t have things like quick save, quick load, or rewind. I’m awarding no bonus and issuing no fines for this collection and setting a value of $8 per quality game because that’s the sold separately price on Arcade Archives. I’m not saying Capcom’s games are worth $3 less because I like Taito more than Capcom. I’m saying it because they cost $3 less to purchase separately.

THE ULTIMATE VERDICT ON THIS COLLECTION

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.

At a standard value of $8 per quality title, Taito Milestones 2 needs to score five YES! votes. The final tally is as follows:

YES!: 5 Games
NO!: 5 Games
Standard Price: $39.99
Total Value: $40

Taito Milestones is worth the MSRP on the merit of its games alone. It’s for sale digitally here.

And by the way, I can’t stress enough how much the top three games in particular I enjoyed. Darius II and Metal Black are above average shmups that should make fans of that genre very happy. And hey, if you’re REALLY into bullet hells, you’ll certainly enjoy Gun & Frontier more than I did. I just couldn’t take the punishment. Same with non-shmup NewZealand Story, though its difficulty wasn’t the only reason it got a NO! from me. Meanwhile, Kiki Kaikai and Legend of Kage provide solid b-list levels of enjoyment. So, why get this set? Two words: Liquid Kids. Simply put, it’s one of the best coin-ops I’ve played and probably the best arcade hidden gem I’ve ever found. This set looks like it just squeaks by with a victory, but those top three are worth buying a set for. I am recommending a purchase of this set and I’m seriously about to name a game as possibly my favorite arcade platformer ever. But, my readers are going to be like “yea, but $39.99 with almost no extra features?” Actually features missing from Arcade Archives. A $39.99 compilation made of sold-separately games should have MORE features, not less. It’s not wise to rely ONLY on having a better all-in-one value, especially since Inin insists on including games like Dino Rex or Solitary Fighter that nobody would want! Even as exclusive games, really? I’d of rather they just stuck Jungle Hunt or hey, Bubble Bobble on here.

FINAL RANKINGS

How I determined the rankings is simple: I took the full list of games, then I said “I’m forced to play one game. Pick the one I could play the most and not get bored with.” That goes on top of the list. Then I repeat the question again with the remaining games over and over until the list is complete. Based on that simple criteria, here are the final rankings. Games above the Terminator Line received a YES! Games below it received a NO!

1. Liquid Kids
2. Metal Black
3. Darius II
4. Kiki KaiKai
5. Legend of Kage
   **TERMINATOR LINE**
6. The NewZealand Story
7. Gun & Frontier
8. Ben Bero Beh
9. Dino Rex
10. Solitary Fighter

GAME REVIEWS

Ben Bero Beh
Arcade Release: November, 1984
Arcade Archives Release: October 1, 2020
Unknown Director

Did Taito ever once in their lives say “no” to a game? I ask because when their output is bad, it’s shockingly bad. In Ben Bero Beh, you play as a superhero who has to rescue a girl by making your way to the bottom of a screen as a building burns all around you. Wait, logically speaking, wouldn’t the point be to get to the TOP of the screen? If the girl is at the bottom, why can’t she just walk out of the building? Either way, you have to just make your way to her, avoiding obstacles and putting out the fires. You do this with stunningly sluggish, unresponsive controls and some of the most greedy quarter-thieving game design I’ve encountered, with gameplay that seems to consult with a magic eight ball on whether it will work the way it’s supposed to. “She wants to jump. Will we let her jump? OUTLOOK NOT SO GOOD!” Spraying the fire DIRECTLY with a hose? Maybe it’ll register, and maybe it won’t. I needed a whole day’s worth of gameplay just to be able to clear seven levels, though I did finish with one of the 40 highest scores ever recorded.

I literally can’t believe how bad Ben Bero Beh is. Bad in every way a video game can be. Controls? Horrible. Collision? Awful. Cheap deaths? You betcha. Even the act of walking down the stairs is unresponsive unless you line up perfectly with them, and then sometimes, the fire lingers right at the base of the stairs. I’d heard about people having conniptions before, but Ben Bero Beh actually set one off on me. I threw my controller into the corner of my couch and paced back and forth in my living room, screaming, cussing and swearing revenge. What happened? Well, I got to the very end of a level, made the last jump. As I did this, a door opened into me. There was zero way of anticipating this would happen. No visual cues. No warnings. Just BAM, GOTCHA, life lost, start over. This game does that a lot, and it doesn’t even have the benefit of being fun BEFORE it starts unfairly taking the lives from you. Ben Bero Beh? More like Bland Zero Meh.
Verdict: NO!

Darius II
Arcade Release: September, 1989
Unreleased on Arcade Archives
Directed by Hidehiro Fujiwara
Designed by Hidehiro Fujiwara and Takatsuna Senba

Call me a hypocrite, but I’m totally cool with shmups being brutally difficult, quarter thieving bastards. Well, within reason (see the Gun & Frontier review below for what isn’t “within reason”). Of course, when a platformer is unfair, it’s usually via janky controls and cheap GOTCHA deaths. When it comes to arcade shmups, as long as the controls are fine and I can come back to life where I died, I’m like “please sir, may I have some more?” regardless of how cheap it is. Darius II has more problems than an algebra textbook and cheapness is chief among them, but it controls nice and smoothly, so it’s free to kick the ever-loving stuffing out of me. It’s one of the most satisfying and unique arcade experiences I’ve had yet. It was so good that I think I’m going to check out the full Darius collection. I was only familiar with home ports on platforms like the SNES that didn’t utilize the arcade’s signature triple-wide screen (or is it “only” double wide? F’n thing is huge either way). While Taito Milestone 1’s Ninja Warriors doesn’t use it properly at all, Darius II justifies the existence of such a system. It works, and it’s AWESOME!

Awesome should not be mistaken as perfect. Darius II”s most frustrating problem is being very stingy with the power-ups. Like in Konami releases, you have to wipe-out an entire wave of enemies for them to drop an item. The only stage where it’s relatively simple to get your guns charged-up is the first level, where the enemies enter the screen in easy-to-peg patterns. From there out, the screen is so spammed with bullets and the enemies that drop the items are so erratic in their movement that I went the rest of the game from level two onward only getting maybe two guns, and I lost them quickly. Oh, I got more item drops than two. I’m not totally pathetic. But, the items drift upward, and wouldn’t you know it? Many of the enemies that drop items linger right at the very top of the screen, so as soon as the item drops, it vanishes. Pissed me off so badly. It’s worth noting that, when I played co-op, I noticed it was much easier to get items. They should have nerfed the requirement for solo play.

Darius II also has an on-again/off-again relationship with bullet visibility. In my first play-through, it wasn’t an issue. The specific path of levels I took never had any point where I couldn’t see what was happening. When I played co-op, it became an issue when I entered Zone E, we couldn’t keep track of anything. While that’s a rarity in Darius II, when it happens, it comes close to ruining the experience. On the other hand, the game actually feels like it utilizes the triple-wide screen to maximum effect. Whereas Milestone 1’s Ninja Warriors had no use for the super wide viewing angle and draw distance, Darius II thrives on it. I can see why this wasn’t a successful franchise for home ports. This isn’t just a matter of  adding “charm” to the experience, but rather genuine gameplay value. The sheer amount of stuff you have to keep track of is overwhelming, but in a good way.

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The extreme difficulty will probably be a turn-off to many gamers, but Darius II has unlimited continues, which takes the edge off. A complete circuit of seven levels only takes half-an-hour or so to finish. So, the experience is over and done with really quick. However, thanks to the branching paths, there’s actually over two dozen possible levels you can visit, and on levels 5 and 7, there’s even multiple different bosses. It’s really cool that even the final boss might change, depending on your course. Darius II being a tight-ass with the power-ups sucks, but the set-pieces are a lot of fun and the aquatic-themed boss fights I enjoyed the hell out of. Is Darius II too hard? Yep. Does it even matter? Not at all. I’ll confess: I didn’t think I’d have a LOT of fun with any game in Milestones 2. I was bracing myself for decent-at-best coin-ops. For Darius II, I replayed it three times after the first run. That says it all!
Verdict: YES!
$8 in Value added to Taito Milestones 2

Dino Rex
Arcade Release: November, 1992
Unreleased on Arcade Archives
Directed by Chiho Kimura and Takatsuna Senba
Designed by Naomitsu Abe, Yosuke Tsuda & Takaaki Tomita

Don’t mistake this as a rip-off of Primal Rage. This predates Atari Games’ dino fighter by nearly two years. I’ve never actually played Primal Rage (or if I have, I’m spacing it), but I have to believe it’ll be better than this. Dino Rex was probably the worst fighting game I’d played by a major developer until I played Solitary Fighter later in this very set. At least with Dino Rex, the concept seems fun. But the two-button gameplay is far too limited, and the “action” feels like a boxing match where the referee has to call for too many breaks. If the two dinosaurs occupy the same space for too long, the “trainers” come out with whips to separate them, and it takes FOREVER for this to happen. I played as a giant purple dinosaur.. insert obvious BARNEY joke here.. and one of my special moves appeared to be laying down and taking a nap. The only way I could beat the CPU, even on the easiest setting, is to spam one move over and over. Dino Rex held the position worst addition to the Taito Milestones lineup until Solitary Fighter. This is why the strict ten-game limit annoys me. It means stuff like this TAKES a spot, instead of just being a throw-in +1 game.
Verdict: NO!

Gun & Frontier
Arcade Release: January, 1991
Arcade Archives Release: August, 2022
Designed by Brody Tadashi, Takayuki Ogawa, and  Yasuhisa Watanabe

Hardcore shmup fans will probably have a coronary, because I admit that I’d never heard of Gun & Frontier before I fired up Milestones 2. I didn’t even know what the genre was going to be. Going off the name, I was under the assumption it was Taito’s answer to Capcom’s wild west shooter Gun.Smoke. But, it’s nothing like that. It’s a bullet hell type of shmup, and it’s awesome for two, maybe three stages. Awesome action. Awesome bosses. Awesome set pieces. I was dazzled and overjoyed, thinking this was going to be the secret killer app for the collection. But then, the game just goes completely nuts, spamming the full screen with enemies and projectiles. Since you don’t respawn instantly and instead reach checkpoints, you have to actually clear the sections on the game’s terms. When I reached the point where I spent two hours trying to clear a single check point, I decided I had better things to do with my time and started using the terrible interrupt save state feature.

I’ve said it a million times before: any idiot can make an insanely difficult game. It takes no effort and even less talent. Just spam the screen with projectiles and enemies. Look at Mario Maker or Little Big Planet’s user made levels. Playability and logical difficulty scaling take effort and a vision. I don’t see any of that here. It took me ten hours of gameplay to make what was probably twenty minutes of actual gameplay progress. The checkpoints on that last stage become too spread out and the screen becomes too spammed. Oddly enough, I then beat the second-to-last boss in just two attempts, and enjoyed it enough to be reminded of the potential Gun & Frontier had that it squandered. After a truly bizarre (albeit climatic-feeling) finale, the game gave me a bad ending for not hitting the last-last boss with one of the six shots I was given. So, why the NO!? Well, your plane moves too slow and has too big of a hit box, and the slowdown becomes BRUTAL about halfway through the experience. A bullet hell where you can’t even squeeze through the spammed screen because of ungenerous collision detection is just not exciting. If the collision had been better, I’d of spent a lot less time with this, but it would have been a better time. See how that works?
Verdict: NO!

Kiki Kaikai
Arcade Release: September 18, 1986
Arcade Archives Release: July, 2016
Directed by Mikio Hatano

I’ve never played Pocky & Rocky, the famous SNES game that’s actually the sequel to this very game. I’d never played Kiki KaiKai ever, or even heard of it. It makes sense, since this never came out in America. I’ve been calling it “Wacky Commando” because that’s essentially what the game is. You throw what I’m pretty sure are playing cards at a series of enemies in a top down shooter, while handfuls of enemies swam the screen. I’ve not had a ton of luck with such games, whether it be Capcom’s Gun.Smoke or Konami’s Gangbusters. So, imagine my surprise that I had a pretty decent time with Kiki’s Death Delivery Service.

What makes Kiki KaiKai work is having relatively short levels capped off by satisfying boss battles. If the stages had been even a little bit longer, I’m almost certain this would have gotten a NO! The loosey-goosey controls provide a constant annoyance, since you have to face the direction you shoot. It wouldn’t be SO annoying except for the fact that there’s no health and every bullet or single pixel of enemy contact is death. Even worse is that there’s instakill pitfalls or water hazards scattered throughout the levels, some of which barely give you a single character length of clearance, AND you still have to fight enemies around them by points (and thus walking) towards them to aim. While I still enjoyed Kiki KaiKai, that enjoyment is tempered by the fact that this was BEGGING for one more stick.

The weird thing is, when enemies attack you from all-sides, it sure seems like that’s exactly what Kiki KaiKai was meant to be. Taito were no strangers to unconventional shooting games, too. Look at the pioneering sorta-twin-stick-shooter Front Line. Just based on the enemy attack patterns and level layouts, along with how a couple of the boss fights play out, I’m convinced this started off as a twin stick shooter and it got changed at some point. Maybe it was a cost saving thing. I do know that, had this gone that route, this might have been their best game. Ever. Of all-time. Well, at least in arcades. However, the spectacular boss fights come close to making up for the lack of that second stick. All seven bosses feel unique, and while a couple of the battles are a bit too slow and spongy, they’re clearly the highlights of the game. So, go figure that Kiki Kaikai, FOR NO REASON, doesn’t even end in a boss fight. It ends with this:

In the final level, you play a relatively short battle sequence. Then, the playfield pictured above starts to loop. Since I used one of the enemy-freezing crystal balls to help me get past the combat portion of the stage, I genuinely thought I broke the game. The crystal ball seemed to work a lot longer than it normally did, and then I passed what looked like a graphical anomaly. I had been checking the statues for hidden items and didn’t find any. So, what happened? Well, I must not have checked the statues right the first time, because this sequence has three hidden scrolls. There’s no enemies or timer during this, which is the very final part of the game before you board a ship and the credits roll. Quite possibly the worst way I’ve ever seen a quality game end. This is the Game of Thrones Finale of video games where you say out loud “god damn WOW, holy crap, that was stupid and dumb and a major letdown.”
Verdict: YES! but god damn WOW, holy crap, that ending was stupid and dumb and a major letdown.
See, I told you so.
$8 in Value added to Taito Milestones 2

The Legend of Kage
Arcade Release: August 10, 1985
Arcade Archives Release: October, 2015
Unknown Director

I admit, this one shocked me. With comically high jumping, feathery combat, physics that see your player and enemies ricochet off each-other like pinballs, and game design that rewards avoiding conflict like you’ve assumed the role of the world’s most passive aggressive ninja, I kind of figured I’d be slamming Legend of Kage. How the hell was THIS such a successful release for Taito? But then, I realized I spent a full day trying to understand how such a stupid game could be so attractive, and I never got bored the whole time. It’s baffling, because this is a bad game, but I couldn’t put it down. There’s four levels that repeat endlessly, with each round having its own objective. In the first level, you have to defeat three blue monks and one red one. You can jump super high into the air, climb trees and hop from branch to branch if you wish, but this is needlessly risky. When I stopped trying to traverse the upper part of the level and just ran along the ground, I was a lot more successful. In fact, I dare say you never want to jump at all unless you’re forced to do so.

In the second section of the game, you just have to waste ten enemies. This can be more annoying than it seems, since any enemy that walks off the screen, even a single pixel in length, disappears. Like the trees in level one, you can interact with the environment. In this case, that means you can hop into the river, but there’s no benefit to doing so, adding lots of risk without balancing that risk with reward. The biggest problem.. by far.. with Legend of Kage is that it gave players all these different abilities and stages with scenery and interactive elements, but then created a game that actively punishes you for using them. Whether it’s hopping along treetops, jumping into the river, or especially grabbing the columns in the fourth stage, there’s really no practical reason to utilize the climbing mechanic. Or the sword for that matter, at least on the offensive end of the spectrum. Enemies who defend against the sword, which eventually is nearly all of them, clash off you with a dramatic recoil that typically makes you vulnerable to other enemies. Sometimes it’s funny. I cracked myself up seeing how long I could juggle a single baddie with it before one of us screwed up and lowered our guard. It was quite a while, too!

The third level is the only stage that requires jumping. You have to leap up a series of platforms to reach the final stage. Unless Kage requires you to use the sword, you’re better off with the throwing stars. You have an unlimited supply of them, which was probably a bad idea. You can toss them five directions, which turns into eight mid-air. They’re fast moving and cover the length of the screen, making it one of the most overpowered basic weapons in any platform arcader of the era. I have a theory that originally they were going to a limited pick-up, which would have given incentive to actually explore the trees and other elements of the game. Maybe they decided the sword combat wasn’t fun enough, or maybe it was too difficult the other way, but the level design makes much more logical sense when you imagine the throwing stars being pick-ups you have to actually explore the map for.

The final proper level has you running up flights of stairs. This is a level where you REALLY don’t want to jump if you can avoid it, since you stick to walls, land on unnecessary platforms, or end up behind the stairs. You can’t leap up the stairways and there’s really no way to take them faster. This is the one part of the game that I held my breath every time, since ninjas might appear and throw stars at you that you can’t really see since the stairway graphic covers them up. There were times where my character just keeled over, dead as Kelsey’s nuts, as if taken by natural causes. I had to check the replay to see the faint pixel of an enemy in its throwing motion. In theory, you can defend against the ninja stars (and seemingly ONLY the stars, no other projectiles) with your sword. In those rare instances where I pulled this off, it was awesome. But the timing never felt consistent.

After the fourth stage, you have a boss fight. Typically, I’d beat the first boss in the amount of time it takes to press a button, since one throwing star seems to do the trick, and it was rare that I needed to do anything else. The second boss usually puts up a better fight, but I’ve also had instances where I killed it instantly. Other times, it took me nearly a minute or longer, and it wasn’t rare for me to die in the battle. From here, the game recycles (although there’s still one new season left to see, winter, but you’ve already gotten the ending). From this point, your sword is basically worthless, since most enemies start throwing fireballs at you instead of stars. It takes maybe ten minutes each cycle. Maybe.

If the above review makes it sound like I hated Legend of Kage, I didn’t. This is one of those rare instances where I realized that I was having a good time despite the fact that this really isn’t a very structurally sound game. Even with absolutely baffling design choices that don’t benefit anyone, players OR arcade operators, I found myself having fun as I would bounce around like I just smoked a speedball and head-shot ninjas with a shurikens. It’s janky as all hell and I would scream in agony when I’d accidentally bind-myself to the climbing mechanism, a move you can do on the fourth stage for seemingly no reason besides killing you. But, I have to admit, I enjoyed Legend of Kage. Haphazard as it is, I loved using the throwing stars. Very satisfying they are, and I also enjoyed challenging for the high scores (I’m #48 globally as of this writing). Even if Legend of Kage is a bad game, I stand by my belief that it’s a fun game, too.
Verdict: YES!
$8 in Value added to Taito Milestones 2

Liquid Kids
Arcade Release: August, 1990
Arcade Archives Release: December, 2021
Directed by Toshiaki Matsumoto
Designed by Nobuhiro Hiramatsu

Where did THIS come from? Liquid Kids is the surprise star of Taito Milestones 2, going down as one of my favorite experiences since I started exploring retro gaming. Think of it as a close cousin of Bubble Bobble, only built around that franchise’s water bubbles. And, instead of a series of single-screen, combat-focused levels, it’s done as a side-scrolling platformer. The end result can throw its hat in the ring as perhaps the most underrated arcader EVER. It has to be in the conversation. The funny thing is, in my recent review of the Sega Genesis version of Castle of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse, I pointed out that the slow movement speed of the game is usually something that doesn’t appeal to me, but Castle of Illusion pulled it off. To my astonishment, Liquid Kids is even slower than Castle of Illusion, and I like it a lot more.

Liquid Kids is the poster child for my theory that “pace” and “tempo” aren’t the same thing. A game can be slower paced in movement, combat, or exploration, like Castle of Illusion. But, as long as the gameplay doesn’t let up and maintains consistent tempo of action beats or happenings, tempo will override pace every single time. That’s regardless of how slow a game paces itself, and no game demonstrates that more than Liquid Kids. While there’s power-ups that increase your movement speed, they work in a similar fashion to Bubble Bobble’s speed-up, which I always hated for its lack of smoothness. It’s not as bad as Bubble Bobble, but it’s not a highly desirable item, either. Of course, if you don’t like your speed, you can always collect a pig, which is the item that decreases your speed. Seriously, Liquid Kids leans heavily on the slower pace, and you have to admire the balls for an arcade game from 1990 going THAT direction. Actually my admiration comes from the fact it totally works. It’s ALWAYS exciting to play.

This really is “Taito Single-Screen Action Games: The Side-Scrolling Game” with just a hint of Super Mario Bros. thrown in for good measure. To attack enemies, you throw water balloons at them. The water balloons are functionally like the water bubbles from Bubble Bobble and will wash over the platform, knocking the enemies loopy. Any enemy who is stunned can be kicked like a Koopa shell in Mario, taking out a chain of enemies. The combat is shockingly flexible, as you can hold the attack button to charge-up larger balloons, which cover a bigger surface area and give you more (literal) splash damage, or you can throw smaller ones faster for more close-quarters combat. While there’s items that will increase the size of the water balloons, increase your rapid-fire ability, or speed-up your ability to make the larger balloons, you can’t really rely on them. You see, you’re going to die. Quite a lot, actually.

Even on the easy setting, Liquid Kids has punishing level design, brutal enemy placement, and some astonishingly hard final bosses. There’s a few points where I think maybe they went a little overboard. To Liquid Kids’ credit, it’s very generous with checkpoints. So are the bosses, come to think of it. All the bosses are hard, but Liquid Kids does take pity on players. Regardless of the difficulty (I think), whatever progress you make on the boss battle’s life bar carries over between lives and even continues. Even in the case when you’re fighting a mini-boss made up of three Orko looking things that rain rings of fire on you, once you kill one, it remains dead.

Of course, it took me FOREVER to kill just one, but once I did, the rest of the fight was a cinch. Oh, and for God’s sake: don’t let a battle end in a tie. I tied one boss, taking off its final tick of health at the exact moment I died. When I came back, it had a full health bar and I went full pony (I screamed myself until I was a little hoarse, DAMNIT, I’m getting “going full pony” into the lexicon if it kills me). The final boss does get a full bar every battle, but only on its final form, which took me probably a couple dozen tries to beat. By the way, every single boss is a joy to fight.. yes, even the last boss and those damn Okro things.

Liquid Kids will go down as one of my favorite games ever. It even has replay value a typical arcade game doesn’t offer. After beating bosses, you’re given branching paths, but don’t think of the paths as alternate levels. 5 out of 6 times, the left door is the “easy way” and the right side is the “hard way.” In my first play-through, I took the left path every time, then when I replayed the game, I took the right door every time. I found out the sixth and final option has it reversed, which feels like a bit of a GOTCHA! If you go right, you only fight one Orko. My first time, I took the left door, which eventually took me to the battle with three Orkos that had me ripping my hair out and screaming in frustration. In a good way. Liquid Kids never crosses that line. Oh, it leans right up to the line once or twice. Gives the line a good, hard look. But, nah, it never crosses it. In fact, of any arcade platformer I’ve played so far, I dare say it does the best job of balancing high difficulty with fairness. Sadly, the two player mode isn’t co-op. I normally would care, but in the case of Liquid Kids, I was actually a little excited for it.

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I never could have imagined a game in Taito Milestones 2 would be in the discussion for the best coin-op platformer I’ve ever played. Liquid Kids is up there, and if it’s not the king of the mountain, it’s close enough to cut off the king’s toes. Incredible look. Great play control. Memorable set pieces. Some of the best action game bosses ever made. Tons of secrets (I didn’t even mention the warp zones or the connection to NewZealand Story). And it’s even got a hidden gem quality about it, so you get to feel good about yourself for playing it. If this wasn’t sold separately on Arcade Archives, I’d award bonus value for it. This is easily a $20 game by itself. I don’t understand what the point of bundling games sold separately is. Don’t get me wrong: I think this is a $40 collection in value for an average gamer, but it would have been even more if you could ONLY get Liquid Kids from Taito 2. Here, it’s clearly THE game you buy Taito Milestones 2 for, and everything else is a bonus. This is the one, folks. It’s REALLY good.
Verdict: YES!
$8 in Value added to Taito Milestones 2

Metal Black
Arcade Release: November, 1991
Arcade Archives Release: November, 2022
Directed by Takatsuna Senba

Sometimes I have to do a deep dive into the nuts and bolts of a game, but my Metal Black review is going to be pretty dang simple: it’s just a really good shmup. Or, at least it becomes one after the first stage. I can totally get how this slipped through the cracks of history, because after one stage (which is followed by a historically bad bonus round), I was pretty bored. It’s not that it was bad, but it all had this “been there, done that” vibe that made it feel like a poor man’s Life Force (aka Salamander. For God’s sake, please just pick one name and stick with it!). That’s especially funny because Metal Black, at separate points during its development, was both a direct sequel to Darius II to Gun & Frontier. In fact, when you finish the game, it’s called “Project Gun and Frontier II, but it feels nothing like that game, and it barely fits in with Darius, either. This is the closest any other company has come to making a Konami shmup. As for calling this a “poor man’s Life Force”, well, that changes to a “solid alternative to Life Force” from level two onward.

Once Metal Black gets cooking, it’s a really nice shmup that goes quickly. I had been worried that the game would be impossibly hard due to the connection to Gun & Frontier. However, there’s no checkpoints, so when you die, you just come back to life. While the enemies are really well designed and the bosses are all very fun to do battle with, the standout mechanic is how power-ups are handled. At times, the screen is littered with little molecules (they’re called “NEWALONES”) that you have to pick up several of to increase the power of your gun. You also have a power shot that’s based on what level your primary gun is. The stronger the gun, the bigger the power shot. HOWEVER, once you fire the power shot, it cannot be stopped until all your energy is depleted and you’re returned to your base-level gun.

It’s a really novel “risk/reward” mechanic that also ties well to the game over system. Whatever strength your gun is at carries over between lives, BUT, not continues. If you game over, you have to collect molecules all over again. It works wonderfully, as a fully charged gun is powerful enough that it’s often preferable to the screen-clearing potential of the power shots. BUT, if you’re on your last life, a half-full power shot becomes mighty tempting. The whole system turns a basic shmup into one that’s unforgettable. My biggest gripe with Metal Black is how quickly it ends. The six stages fly right on by, with only the first one being tedious. Stages two through six are thoroughly enjoyable. Yea, the whole storyline is a little pretentious and over-the-top, but I kind of like it for that. This marks two straight Taito Milestone 2 games where I’m shaking my head and wondering why they’re not bigger deals in gaming’s collective memory, because damn yo, Metal Black is a lot of fun.
Verdict: YES!
$8 in Value added to Taito Milestones 2

The NewZealand Story
Arcade Release: 1988
Arcade Archives Release: January, 2023
Unknown Director

NewZealand Story is a genuine European gaming legend. I’ve had more than one friend compare it to the Super Mario series in terms of recognition. I’ll have to take their word for it. I played it in 2021, back when my retro gaming YES!/NO! system was based on sampling the games rather than deep diving them. Based on my one world sample, I gave it a YES! Games like this prove why my old system was deeply flawed. I didn’t put in enough time with NewZealand Story. Had I done so, I would have realized that, from world two onward, this isn’t so much a game as an armed robbery that gaslights you into believing you’re playing a video game.

Playing as a little kiwi that has an unlimited supply of arrows to fire at enemies, you have to make your way through massively sprawling levels to rescue your girlfriend. The combat is extraordinarily basic: your arrow essentially functions as a gun, with most enemies only needing a hit or two to kill. The big twist is the balloons: a lot of enemies show up in them, and if you shoot the balloon, the baddies die. BUT, if you shoot the enemy itself, you can steal their ride. This isn’t merely a power-up, either. The majority of the levels are designed around hijacking balloons. Or UFOs that shoot laser beams. Those are fun to use, and in fact, I beat the game when I snagged one right at the end. The UFOs have full range movement without needing to hold a button down and don’t have that “hockey puck” type of traction to them. Oh god, how I wish the whole game had been built around the UFOs.

To Kiwi’s credit, there’s a big variety of different balloons, which give the game a nice sense of variety. To its detriment, some of them are a pain in the butt to use, especially since most of the challenge is based around two concepts: spamming the screen with enemies and dickish placement of spikes. Lots and lots and lots of spikes, actually. Apparently NewZealand Story started life as a sequel to the reflex-tester Crazy Balloon. It often shows, with super tight squeezes that require absolute precision movement, in a game that provides you with incredibly imprecise tools. Situations like those in the following pictures spring to mind, where you literally have a character length to get past them with no wiggle room, even though you sort of bounce off the walls until you feather the controls enough:

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By the way, the balloon and the Kiwi are separate, which was pretty cutting-edge for 1988. Of course, that means if you touch the spike with the Kiwi, you die. If you touch it with the balloon, well, you’ll probably die. Or you’ll fall all the way to the bottom and have to restart, so you’ll only wish you were dead. My #1 problem by far with NewZealand Story are the absolutely massively sprawling levels usually range from tedious to infuriating. BUT, they’re almost never fun, at least past the first world, or perhaps ever so slightly into the second world. There’s a lack of elegance to the layouts. A sense that the designers created elaborate mazes, but ran out of gags or clever uses of the labyrinthine design and gave up, saying “eh, just stick a bunch of spikes there. It’ll be hard and players will die a lot and load another quarter.” Before the game’s second world is even halfway over, the fun has already ended, and the design becomes punishing. Tons of dead ends and random guesswork as to which direction is the correct one, with the punishment being “replay everything you already did, only you have to walk all the way back to it.” It got to the point that when I found it to be a blessing when an incorrect path was a complete circle that I didn’t have to backtrack. That was also around the time I realized I might need to reevaluate my original YES! I gave this.

And I’m really just getting started with my annoyances.

I typically like maze-like sprawling levels, but it’s not enough to just have layouts that twist and turn around. The stuff inside them has to be fun, or it’s just busy work for the sake of it. NewZealand Story’s levels, even if they weren’t designed for a high body count, are really just very boring. When the game relies on water, I never once felt the enemies within the water were tough to get past. Instead, the game tries to make you die by having you run out of air. Usually, the spots where you get air are spaced out so you just barely make it, even if you go the right direction and don’t mess around. Okay, that’s fine, right? That should make it exciting. Except, when you make it to the spot with the air, it doesn’t just instantly refill. You have to sit there and wait for the meter to slowly fill back up. Well, that’s just stupid. It totally kills the flow, and this in a game that has a strict timer with an instakill devil once you run out of time. It made my heart sink every time I had to jump in the water, because I knew the next section of gameplay was going to be really boring. And it always was. Every single time. It was like being in gaming hell. Apparently, the game agreed, too, because sometimes it mockingly sends you to heaven. Yes, really.

On some levels, if you lose your last life by being hit by a projectile, instead of getting a game over, you go to heaven with a chance to earn a free continue or something. Apparently there’s some kind of secret to how exactly you’re supposed to beat this, with a vague clue that you’re supposed to “go to the underworld” and OH, see, what did I tell you? This game knows. EVERYONE knows! Evil birds. Wretched creatures. It’s why I never call a person from New Zealand a “Kiwi.” They’re nice folks, and kiwis are evil, period. Taito understood that, hence this game. Anyway, I “beat” two of the heaven stages, which consisted of a series of narrow platforms that were absolutely punishing as all hell. Take a look at how narrow these jumps are:

But, I made it to the end. I reached the Virgin Mary, aka Mary with the Cherry.

I did it! That was INSANELY hard to reach her. Okay, what’s my reward?

After all that, you’re saying I played it wrong? Seriously, the heaven stages are maddeningly difficult, and you’re saying I did it wrong. You’re not telling me that, are you game? You can’t be.

The first time this happened, I was in a waiting room in a doctor’s office, and I think that’s the only thing that kept me from hurling my Switch through a window. It’s been a LONG time since a game pissed me off to the degree this did. That is so god tier GOTCHA bullcrap and some of the most shameful, soulless design EVER. The irony that such soulless game design is based around a literal heaven isn’t lost on me. The secret to how to benefit from these is completely abstract and arbitrary. You have to fall from the right piece of floor or something. And it gets even worse. One of the few positive things I could say about NewZealand Story (no, I have no clue why the game’s title has NEW ZEALAND as one word) is that it has a pretty generous checkpoint system. When you die, be it a life or a full game over, you typically restart close to where you perished. HOWEVER, if you go to heaven, which seems completely random when it happens (it certainly doesn’t happen EVERY time you game over), if you die OR EVEN IF YOU MAKE TO TO THE END APPARENTLY, you have to restart the stage from the very beginning. You lose whatever progress you made up to that point. So, naturally, all three times I went to heaven, it was when I was literally right by the goal for the stage, meaning I had to replay that stage from the beginning. I absolutely HATE this game.

Whatever. NewZealand Story had already lost me on the boringly long levels, cheap enemy placement, and overall dull design. The combat is nice, don’t get wrong. At least when you don’t pick up the bomb items, which makes hijacking balloons a lot harder. But, whatever lingering “look at the bright side” sympathy I felt for Kiwi ended when I played the final level. You know how EVERY platform game has to have an ice level where you slip and slide? It seems like it’s legally mandated or something. Yea, well, NewZealand Story has those stages too, and they saved them for the very end. I suppose at least it properly scaled the challenge, in that regard. Oh, and it’s not simply enough that you slip and slide. Oh no, it had to have design like this:

And, for this final stage only, there’s no checkpoints. So, when you die, you have to go back to the start of the most punishing stage in the game. Oh and the walls have a recoil to them and I kept hitting the jumps but bouncing off the walls and falling to my death. AND the game gets ultra cheap with the enemy placement here. At this point, it’s not even pretending to be anything but one final quarter shakedown. So, screw it! I used Taito Milestone 2’s Arcade Archives-based “Interrupt Save” system, which sucks. It meant that every time I died, I had to quit to the main menu of Taito Milestone 2, restart NewZealand Story, and be shown the control screen for it again. As bad as that sounds, trust me: it was preferable to starting over from the beginning of that stage. Funny enough, the bosses aren’t hard at all. I beat every one of them but one on my first try, and one of them I even seem to have glitched-out and beaten with a one-shot kill somehow. Or, actually apparently two shots, one while it was assembling and one when it finished.

How the hell is THIS game legendary? Well, I think the explanation might be that it was ported to just about every console, where presumably some of the hardness is eased off. As an arcade game, the first couple levels feel like a really talented carnival barker who invites you to “step right up” and test your skills. Those first few stages of NewZealand Story tease a game that is LOADED with personality, and that’s not all it has going for it. For all my bitching, I can’t stress enough: the combat is fun and the balloon hijacking system is fun. Oh, and the UFOs are awesome. If they ever remake this, base the game around those. NewZealand Story in Space? Sold. But, much like a carnival, that friendly barker actually hates you and only wants your money. NewZealand Story doesn’t cost a quarter a play anymore, so no worries there. But, that doesn’t help much, because the game still plays like it’s a lot more concerned with nabbing quarters than, you know, earning them.
Verdict: NO!

Solitary Fighter
Arcade Release: 1991
Unreleased on Arcade Archives
Designed by Masakazu Iwahashi

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 I don’t have a lot to say about Solitary Fighter, a sequel to a game called Violence Fight, itself the owner of the most redundant name in game history. “Violence Fight.” Doesn’t that go without saying, at least in the world of video games? “Violence Fight!” As opposed to what? Non Violent Aggression Fight? I don’t think that would be very exciting. I think Solitary Fighter is close to that, which is why it gets players to just mindlessly mash the two buttons of combat. The game seems to be based around hitting multiple shots in a row, and I say “seems” because, even on the easiest setting, I only won two matches and four total rounds my entire time playing. The AI is just too perfect. Why was this even included? Or Dino Rex for that matter? NOBODY would have asked for them, and Taito has done a bazillion games. These were two of the best “exclusives” you could pull out of your ass? Especially this steamer. At least Dino Rex had the novelty of fighting with dinosaurs. Solitary Fighter seems to have been a technical showpiece. “Hey Capcom, look how big OUR sprites are!” But half the time it felt like it wasn’t responding to my inputs. It’s also possible the perfect AI was single-frame countering everything I did. Eh, I put my time into the eight REAL attractions. Still, the two fighting games being included really puts a damper on the whole set. Hell, dig deep into the archives. Put Crazy Balloon on here. Put Space Dungeon on here. ANYTHING ELSE!
Verdict: NO!

A review copy was supplied for this feature.