Taito Milestones Bundles an ’80s Arcade Library

Is a fancy Egret II mini-arcade a little rich for your blood? Thankfully, there are easier ways to play some Taito classics. Is Taito Milestones, out this week on Nintendo Switch, for you? We’re here to help you decide.

What games are included?

Taito Milestones bundles ten games from the company’s early arcade days: Qix, Space Seeker, Alpine Ski, Front Line, Wild Western, Chack’n Pop, Elevator Action, The FairyLand Story, Halley’s Comet, and The Ninja Warriors.

The Taito Milestones games are “powered by Arcade Archives,” which makes sense! The tireless team at Hamster has already released eight of these games on the eShop, so why reinvent the wheel? The two collection exclusives are Space Seeker and Chack’n Pop.

Hamster’s emulation approach is… fine? It ain’t M2-level, but the company’s work has sustained them since console standards for these things were much lower. If you’re looking for precision or particularly sharp visuals, it may not be what you want. Most players, though, will be more than fine.

How do they play in 2022?

The Taito of this era, much like its peers, focused heavily on score-chasing arcade action. All through this collection, the motivation to keep playing is mastery. Nothing here gets to the Gauntlet era of coin-munching, nor the Street Fighter 2 and Puyo Puyo phase of high-octane versus play.

The Arcade Archives system allows for a whole host of display customization, including a vertical mode configuration. (I’m sure Flip Grip owners are happy about that.) Display sizes and shapes were all over the place at the time, so the collection’s imprecise scaling approach does allow for flexibility. Weird games like The Ninja Warriors with its three-monitor-wide configuration? They blend in here.

Of the ten games in the collection, Qix feels the most timeless. The pack is full of nostalgic gameplay time capsules! And there’s value there. But while some new takes on the Qix formula have popped up over the years, none have made the controls or format of this original obsolete or outdated.

For most of the pack, the appeal lies in seeing some very early gameplay ideas. They’re in rougher packages, but you can see some of the signature styles that would later give Taito success. For example, The FairyLand Story builds the foundation for Bubble Bobble, and you can see what the developers got wrong — and right — in this previous attempt.

What’s the selling point for the collection?

That’s the question, isn’t it? After all, with no extras and almost all of the games long available individually with the same emulation and features, it’s not the most robust value proposition. For now? The two exclusives give it some special elements. But since Qix just saw a standalone release, the remaining two will likely come soon. The “extra content” here is a menu screen, which you can see above. That’s it!

So Taito Milestones? It’s a bulk discount. If you want all ten of the games, you can get them at half off. (You know, as long as you didn’t want any of them before now and already purchase some.) It ain’t flashy, but we suppose it’s a valid reason to exist. Our Taito nostalgia lies more with the company’s ’90s output than these earlier efforts. For the intended audience, though, the value proposition might be a easier sell.

Taito Milestones releases April 15, 2022 on the Nintendo Switch for $39.99. It’ll be available both on the eShop and as a physical cartridge.