This is the third of these Taito Milestones collections and the third I’ve reviewed, and I’m increasingly of the opinion that for these we need to focus more on value over the quality, variety, nostalgia or discovery that I generally also look for in a compilation. Ironically, quality is the reason why, with the prominent “Powered by Arcade Archives” logo highlighting the involvement of Hamster Corporation here, who are behind the enormous lineup of thoughtfully curated and lovingly presented weekly retro arcade game releases on Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4… I’ll come back to that in a sec but despite what I just said, we can also quickly tick all these boxes while we’re here! There’s no denying the quality of a lot of what’s included, with ten Taito arcade titles, two of which are arguably among the greatest ever, plus a couple more at the top of their respective genres. The rest also represent decent variety and, for me at least, there’s plenty of nostalgia here with some of the classics too, as well as four games to discover that I’ve never played before.

All sounds good but here’s the thing – apart from three of them, the rest already had standalone Arcade Archives releases, and I assume these will also follow suit at some point. They’re typically £6.99 a pop, and this compilation is £34.99, so if you’ve already bought some of them, or are only interested in a few of them, then you need to do your sums and work out if there’s any value here for you, or if you’re better off picking up what you want elsewhere. If you desperately want all ten though, then at half the price of buying them individually it’s a no-brainer! As a related aside though, these compilations have now put me right off buying any new Arcade Archives releases of Taito stuff! Which I must admit is partly down to the publisher, ININ Games, kindly providing me with a review code for this, but all the same, something else to keep in mind. Right, with that out of the way, I’ll quickly run through each of the games included one at a time, but a word on how you get at them first, which is via a game art menu on a single screen that could really do some words under each piece of game art to help old eyes identify what you’re loading! Not the end of the world though, and once you’re in, you’ve got a handy summary of controls before entering the original arcade title screens and attract modes. Under the hood, there’s also some very stuffy “interrupt save data” options as well as loads of display settings (although they’re equally stuffy), button mapping and all the DIP-switch settings you could ever wish for. And there’s a functional manual for each game but nothing to particularly excite you, and also no sign of any bonus content whatsoever, as expected.

Let’s now have a look at each game in turn, starting with Bubble Bobble, all the way from 1986. I’m not sure there’s much more I can say about this one that I haven’t many times before (see my deep-dive here for the final word) but interestingly, someone recently asked me about the perfect game, and after I initially gave my standard response of Tetris, I thought about this game as one more to consider because there ain’t a lot wrong with it! Whatever, Bub and Bob have been transformed into dinosaurs by the evil wizard who’s also kidnapped their girlfriends, and they’re imprisoned over one hundred fiendish single-screen platform-based levels away! Blow bubbles to catch his monsters then burst them with your spine is seemingly all there is to this near-enough arcade perfection, but its wonderfully unbearable cuteness, iconic soundtrack and general simplicity also hide insane depth if you want to go there. You can also just stick with the pure, undiluted fun version instead though, but however you play, it’s one of the greats, and certainly the headline act in this lineup, albeit one you’ve probably got in a dozen other places already!

Aside from anything else, what with this and Bubble Bobble, I reckon at the very least this has got to be the happiest pair of games to ever open any compilation ever! Rainbow Islands: The Story of Bubble Bobble 2 is, of course, the non-numbered sequel (despite the number) to Bubble Bobble, although it then kind of spawned versions and sequels in its own right… I’m not going there! This is more or less the original version from 1987, minus the much-missed rendition of Somewhere Over The Rainbow, which has been the case all the way back to ancient PlayStation 2 compilations with it on, so also not unexpected, but the now-familiar and admittedly very jolly – not to mention very Taito – music that replaced it is like listening to Marillion after Fish left! Anyway, you’re trying to get Bubby and Bobby (as they’re known in their human forms) to the top of loads of stages across seven different islands before the sea swallows them up, using a combination of jumping and magical rainbows, which can be used as platforms, weapons and all sorts. Like its predecessor, there’s insane hidden depth if you want it but there’s also one of the most immediate, boldly cute and ridiculously addictive masterpieces in gaming history waiting for you here even if not! And likewise, you’ve probably already got it elsewhere but games like these deserve to be everywhere.

We’ve had platforming royalty, and now we’ve also got some fantasy hack and slash royalty from 1987, in the form of Rastan Saga, or just Rastan, with you jumping around and killing everything in sight in a quest to deliver the kingdom from a dragon in return for some treasure. First and foremost I’ve always considered this to be beautiful, from its smoothly scrolling, evocatively lit backdrops to the detail and creativity behind every nasty thing you come across. The fast-paced and relentless gameplay is punishing but fair, I begrudgingly suppose, and there’s a huge amount of all sorts of sword and sorcery nonsense to fight your way through. I love the sound design too, with this over the top “mysterious” music interspersed by the cheesiest, straight out of an eighties video rental sound effects! Another one I own all over the place but I’m glad to have it here now too.

If the first game was Conan the Barbarian then its 1988 (or possibly 1989) sequel was Thor the Conqueror… Look it up – you won’t regret it! I reckon there’s a place for both though, and despite the dreadful sampled speech, horrible music, slow pace, stiff animation, weird black lines around everything and pretty shocking gameplay, I quite like Rastan Saga II! Known as Nastar or Nastar Warrior outside Japan, it’s never gone down well with anyone else though, as your warrior tries to protect some magical shrine or other from hellish invaders in a similar hack and slash fashion to the first game. But bizarrely it’s worse in all respects, playing like a bad home port of Altered Beast meets any version of Sword of Sodan you fancy! All the sprites are bigger, I suppose, and some of the backgrounds are nice, and you get to fight a Medusa boss as you plod through its six stages, so it’s not all bad… Maybe! It’s not great but I don’t find it offensive either, and you might find an hour or two of enjoyment here too.

Champion Wrestler is the first of the games on here I’ve never played before, and while it doesn’t quite have the draw or the impact of the old WWF arcade games, this one from 1989 is a blast! You’ve got eight uniquely over the top wrestlers (including Rastan!) to play as or against, single or tag-team, each with their own move-sets to grapple with, then a couple of variations of them, and the idea is you need to make your way through all of them to get a title shot, and if you win, then defend it. Controls are all mapped to two buttons, where you punch and kick to lower your opponent’s life bar to give you a better chance of then combining controls and positioning to perform various grapples to cause bigger damage until you can pin your opponent. All the wrestling tropes are here, from jumping off the ropes to sneaking in weapons, and all the moves too, with an array of suplexes, slams, piledrivers, submissions and other forms of cartoon violence. Nice balance of depth and accessibility too, while everything moves great and looks authentic, and I really enjoyed the bonkers digitised speech. Really good find and one I can see myself properly rinsing now I have!

“Choose from fighter, mage, priest or ninja then embark on a quest to rescue Princess Sarasa from the evil Baarogue and bring peace to Deezar.” That’s Cadash, it’s from 1989, and it’s a side-scrolling fantasy action-platform RPG thing that’s like a weird mix of Castlevania II and Zelda II but nowhere near as convoluted as either, it being an arcade game after all, although it’s not much like an arcade game either! Whatever, demon wizard kidnaps princess and whisks her of to his underground castle, and you need to rescue her as one of four nicely varied characters over five nicely varied stages. Unlike some conceptually similar games in this collection though, it involves talking to people, finding money to buy better weapons, potions and more game time, levelling up, looking at statistics and all that nerdy stuff, on top of whacking monsters with your sword. And if that sounds like an arcade game you want to play then it does it fine, and actually, exploring its dungeons and various locations, and discovering new wacky enemies, is really cool. As is the pan-pipesy soundtrack and some really gorgeous, large-scale and very dynamic pixel art. None of it quite sits right for me though.

Thunder Fox is a 1990 run and gunner set a bit later in that decade, when the world has been gripped by terrorism on land, sea and air, and is far more sci-fi here than it turned out to be in reality, but it’s all the more fun for it! I’ve played the comparatively dull Mega Drive or Genesis version but as far as I know not this one (despite seemingly owning it on an old PS2 compilation). It’s very Ninja Warriors though, if more future(ish) military-themed than martial arts, but still with lots of close-up combat with endless streams of enemy goons coming from all directions, then there’s a boss fight, then you’ll be off side-scrolling shooting in the air or leaping about on jet skis before more of the same on a plane or a ship or somewhere else new and exotic. I prefer the stabbing and shooting but the vehicle bits do a lot to add to the blockbuster vibe, as do some stunning and surprising locations and fantastic weather effects, accompanied by spot-on sounds. Bit of an ear-worm of a backing track too – proper Rambo stuff! Assuming I really haven’t played it before, it’s another fantastic discovery!

If I had to name my top three side-scrolling beat ‘em ups, then 1990’s, Runark (or Growl as I know it better) might well be one of them! You’re the world’s most dangerous forest ranger, protecting the wildlife from the evil poachers driving them to extinction. There’s a real-world message here to be sure, but it’s also totally bonkers and I’ll never stop having fun with it, especially now I have a large-screen uncensored (I think) version of it for the first time! The massive crowds of enemies, the explosions, the brutality of some of the ground-pounds, the chaos of a load of rampaging deers, the even greater chaos of a gaggle of miniskirted enemies emerging from a tank, the attention to detail when you take down one of your miniskirted enemies… There’s so much going on and so many places to do it, with off the chart presentation and the craziest gameplay… Whether Runark or Growl, exploding bodies or not, this is awesome! By the way, I did a deep-dive here a while back if you want to find out more.

The last two games are definitely both new to me, starting with Warrior Blade, or Warrior Blade: Rastan Saga III as it’s also known, and it’s from 1991, and it’s way more Golden Axe than either of its predecessors! Never left Japan either, or had any ports as far as I know, although I think it’s been on other compilations previously, albeit not spread super-widescreen across what would have been two screens on the original cabinet like it is here. By the way, I should say that like most other things we’ve seen here so far, you can play two-player (and sometimes more) – sorry, because I’m not I haven’t always made that clear, and it’s so easy to chuck in another coin here that it compensates for the higher difficulty solo. Anyway, choose from Rastan with his big sword, a little thief guy with twin-blades, or a whip-wielding Amazon-type, then you can also choose your own path through castles, palaces, villages, towers, down mountains (literally!) and over the sea. It’s not sophisticated but it’s still loads of swashbuckling fun, with all sorts of crazy enemies and even more crazy digitised speech barking nonsense non-stop! Real looker too, and loads of special effects, and despite being Japanese only, it’s Japanese and English language throughout, with what I think is a bit of German being shouted out too! It’s not the best in the genre by any means but not everything can be, and at the very least you’ll probably like it more than Rastan II!

We finally made it all the way to Dead Connection, and while I didn’t really know what to expect, I really didn’t expect it to be what it was! It’s a very weird mix of single-screen, 2.5D arena shooter with kind of a gallery shooter vibe from 1992 but that’s not really doing it justice. I guess Cabal is the closest comparison I’ve got, as you set out to take down a bunch of 1950s (maybe?) mobsters through a series of miniature but intricately detailed and mostly spectacularly destructible film-noir inspired scenes. Starting in a very grand hotel, you need to shoot a certain number of heavily armed gangsters before a harder boss fella appears, then its on to the next of ten locations, which include junkyards, garden parties, city streets, restaurants and other such gangster hangouts. Tons of weapons to grab and other pickups too, as well as four characters to play as, each with their own weapon type and Untouchables-type trench coat. It’s full of humour too, like the almost naked couple trying to escape the carnage while also maintaining their modesty across the hotel’s sweeping staircase, but when you’ve seen it once you’ve seen it all, and unfortunately that’s also the case for the gameplay, which starts out so much fun but it quickly becomes repetitive and just a bit mundane. Everything’s in Japanese this time as well, so I assume it’s another that never got very far, but in this case I can see why.

When I reviewed Taito Milestones 2, I had a look back at what I was still playing from the original Taito Milestones at the time, so I reckon this time I’ll summarise by predicting what I’ll still be playing from this lot if there’s ever a Taito Milestones 4…  There’s no question I won’t stop dipping into Bubble Bobble, Rainbow Islands, Rastan and Growl now I also have them on Switch, although I do have them all over the place so I can’t really say I’d have bought this on the strength of them being here alone; if you don’t though, then I’d say you need them somewhere one way or another! Whether that’s here, then, depends on the mileage you’ll get out of the rest. I can take or leave Cadash, while Dead Connection and Warrior Blade are nice curios but certainly not essential. I’m probably alone in being glad I’ve now got somewhere to legitimately play Rastan Saga II, so that leaves Champion Wrestler and Thunder Fox as things I’ll definitely also be back for a lot more of. Meaning for me at least, the Arcade Archives individual release route might have made more sense, but as said at the start, that’s something you’ll have to judge for yourself when considering whether or not Taito Milestones 3 is worth it. Just like the two before it and, no doubt, the next one too!

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