Taito Milestones 3 Review (Switch)

Taito Milestones 3 is a curious retro collection that will make you scratch your head as much as it will make you squeak with delight.

It’s a mixed bag. Ten ports from Taito’s Arcade Archives that run the gamut from stone-cold classics to strange curios and even the occasional hidden gem.

There’s a lot to get through, so rather than waxing lyrical on the benefits of game preservation, especially if the games are weird. I’ll start from the top.

First up are the first two adventures starring Bub and Bob, before they were busting a move, these adorable little dragons were capturing ghosts in bubbles and trying to spell extend in Bubble Bobble. It’s a simple but addictive single-screen coop platformer that remains a stone-cold classic to this day with one of the biggest earworms of a theme ever.

Bubble Bobble, along with its vertical-scrolling sequel Rainbow Islands, which has our now human heroes making rainbows to kill monsters and reach greater heights, are easily the highlight of the collection. For nostalgic old hacks or arcade game enthusiasts, these two near-perfect games make Taito Milestones 3 worth the price of admission alone.

Next up is Dead Connection, a single-screen shooter that sees four G men on a mission to wipe out an entire Italian American community. There is a story. If you can read Japanese really fast. It also stars a mob boss that we’re assured isn’t Marlon Brando, honest. It’s a fun little curio but not something you’re likely to return to after you’ve managed to slog your way through it once.

Then there’s The Rastan Saga trilogy, three sword and sorcery games starring a big angry barbarian fighting hordes of monsters while he tries to become king or steal everything that’s not nailed down.

The oddest thing about the Rastan games is how different each of them is. The first, Rastan Saga, is a side-scrolling platforming hack-and-slash that, although guaranteed to drain your wallet, is a pretty fun, competently made, fairly snappy, action platformer. Although, admittedly, you don’t jump during the platforming sections so much as fall with style. Still, it’s worth a punt.

Its sequel Rastan Saga 2 is an unresponsive, combat-heavy game that expands the range of weapons you can wield and renders everything with lovely chunky sprites, but feels incredibly clunky and slap-happy in the extreme. At least you start your next credit where you died instead of at the last checkpoint, several screens back, like the original.

Then there’s Warrior Blade: Rastan Saga 3, the real hidden gem of the whole collection. A non-linear, Golden Axe-style brawler with beautifully rendered, smoothly animated enemies, and some excellent scroller sections that see you riding dragons and barrelling down rapids.

On top of all of that, there are stacks of hidden levels and bonus content to find based on how well you perform during the main levels. It is easily one of the best games in the whole collection, after Bubble Bobble it was easily my favourite.

For all you rastling fans, there’s Championship Wrestler. A bog standard, slightly confusing, late 80s arcade wrestling game that I couldn’t really get to grips with, but you know the type. There are two buttons, a lot of meters, you’re never really sure how you pulled off that suplex and you inevitably take a beating from Rulk Rogan.

Once you’ve finished taking on the Company of Chaos, You should turn your attention to Cadash. This is probably the most interesting game in the collection, even if it isn’t necessarily the most fun. If you ever wondered what Dark Souls would be like as a 16-bit arcade game, Cadash is probably the closest you’ll get to it.

It’s a full-blown Action RPG. Complete with multiple classes, challenging boss fights, leveling, equipment–the works. But it’s been designed to be played by the credit. You’ll explore a sprawling world, open portals to distant lands, learn new moves and spells, and pick up quests while on your quest to save the princess.

I just can’t understand why it exists. It’s mad. One credit can last upwards of half an hour if you’re careful. As a game, it’s well worth a whirl, as a product, as what was once an arcade cabinet, it is mind-boggling.

Thunderfox takes the one-to-two-man army Rambo ideal to its logical conclusion by having your shirtless heroes of democracy take on what appears to be the combined armed forces of several South Pacific islands armed only with a bowie knife, for uh. Reasons. I think the president’s been kidnapped again but I’m not sure. Throughout this scrolling stab and shoot ’em up, you’ll get access to loads of lovely weaponry from machine guns to hand grenades to dispatch the enemy. However, you are limited by the amount of ammo each has, and in the end, I found myself trying to murder heavy machinery with a pen knife, which went about as well as you’d expect.

The best I must confess I have saved for last, ok by best, I mean bonkers, Enter stage left the environmentally conscious brawler Runark (Growl). A four-player, coop brawler in which (I kid you not) a roided up Indiana Jones along with his best mate Macho Man Randy Savage, murder several hundred people with their bare hands to free a group of circus animals. Oh, and the circus is run by weird aliens.

If this sounds like the kind of PETA-inspired fever dream you can get behind Runark will reward you with the sort of bewilderingly weird time Japanese brawlers of the very early 90s can deliver. Dozens of bad guys thrown at the screen each more culturally insensitive than the last, whips, bat snooker cues, tanks being rammed by elephants. Indy bare-chested, beating up a whole hen do. Killer clowns controlled by worm monsters. Kids don’t do drugs and make Video Games or you’ll end up with Runak.

Final Thoughts

Taito Milestones 3 is a collection in the closest sense of the word. There’s no real theming here, aside from that all of these games may have been found in a single arcade in Tokyo in the early 90s. There’s a little something for everyone and a lot for fans of bizarre brawlers and Bobble Bubble.

Those who like to have a big bank of artwork and extra features in their retro collections will be disappointed because there aren’t any. The most advanced emulation feature is a single save state that doesn’t always work properly.

However, if you have a soft spot for weird curios, hidden gems, and fond memories of playing strange arcade cabs in holiday resorts as a child. You’ll likely end up on one hell of a nostalgia trip playing Taito Milestones 3.