Taito Milestones 3 review – Rainbow Islands: Definitive Edition-GameCentral-Entertainment – Metro

Bubble Bobble – we love Taito (ININ Games)

GameCentral reviews two classic arcade games and eight others in Taito’s latest coin-op collection, featuring the best of Bubble Bobble and its sequel.

Taito has always been one of our favourite arcade makers. Even back in the day, they were never as well known as contemporaries such as Sega and Capcom, but while their portfolio is relatively small games like Space Invaders, Bubble Bobble, Qix, Arkanoid, Rainbow Islands, Dairus, The NewZealand Story, Chase H.Q., and Operation Wolf were amongst the best in their genre – genres which in many cases they helped create.

After being bought by Square Enix in 2005, Taito faded further from the public eye, although starting in 2019 they did begin to engineer something of a comeback, by reviving past franchises such as Darius, The Ninja Saviors (aka The Ninja Warriors), and Bubble Bobble. That movement seems to have faltered in recent years but in 2022 they released the marvellous Taito Egret II mini arcade console, which collected most of their best known titles in one place.

Clearly, a £165 mini-console is not going to do much for Taito’s mainstream recognition but, sadly, there’s not been no all-in-one retro collection to work as an alternative. Many of their games are available separately on the Switch, via the Arcade Archives label, but that also is not exactly high profile. The Milestone collections are basically just bundles of existing, and not yet released, Arcade Archives titles, which means no museum content of any kind, but since this volume contains some of our favourite games of all time, we’ll take it.

We didn’t review the previous collections because they were such a random hotchpotch of the iconic and the almost entirely unknown. The most famous games in the first one were Qix and The Ninja Warriors, while Taito Milestones 2 had The NewZealand Story and Darius 2, but not Darius 1. Whether that’s because of licensing issues or throwing darts at a dart board we’re not sure, but the end results were wildly inconsistent in terms of the quality and prominence of individual titles.

By luck or judgement, Taito Milestones 3 is a notable improvement, so we’re going to give this a full review, although we’ll leave the crown jewels, of Bubble Bubble and its sequel, until last. Besides, the franchise that has the most entries in this collection is Rastan Saga, which started with a well-regarded side-scrolling hack ‘n’ slash in 1987 and was converted to almost all 8-bit home systems of the day, except, surprisingly, the NES.

To be honest, it’s still probably best of the trilogy as, like most Taito games, there’s slightly more to it than any of its peers, with optional weapons, alternative routes, and some very nice sound and visuals for the day. It’s difficult and unfair but less so than most similar arcades of the time, with useful checkpoints that make progress – via the unlimited credits a home version offers – surprisingly enjoyable.

Rastan Saga – the original is the best (ININ Games)

1989 sequel Rastan Saga 2 is technically more adept, but its more cartoonish visuals and terrible animation lose a lot of the charm of the original, which was clearly channelling the Arnold Schwarzenegger Conan movies. The level design is also notably worse, making it the only genuinely bad game in the collection. It does introduce a two-player co-op mode though, which is carried through to pseudo sequel Warrior Blade: Rastan Saga Episode 3.

One of the pleasures of a good retro compilation is not only classics you remember but ones you’ve never heard of before and we had no idea there was a Rastan Saga 3. Although, really, this has no gameplay connection to the first two games, as it’s a (very) simple scrolling beat ‘em-up, in the style of Streets Of Rage et al.

The game’s combat is absolutely mindless, with barely more than one attack for each of the three characters. Although there is an incorporeal wizard that follows you around sometimes and attacks enemies seemingly at his leisure. There’s also a few beast-riding mini-games, on horseback and flying on a dragon, which show off the game’s excellent graphics.

It may be dumber than rocks but the 1992 visuals, which must’ve been on one of Taito’s extra wide screens, to judge by the screen ratio, are fantastic, with some fun boss enemies and Rastan himself looking like he’s been cut out and pasted directly from a Frank Frazetta painting.

Another oddity we’d never heard of, and which was released the same year, is Dead Connection and it couldn’t be more different. It seems to be a pastiche of the The Untouchables movies, with each level taking place on a single screen, where you control a trench coat-wearing ‘detective’ as you, and ideally a pal, gun down everyone you see.

All the sprites are absolutely tiny, and the only controls are to shoot in the direction you’re facing and a rather theatrical dodge roll. With digital controls we expected the game to play like a dog but it’s actually really good, with some intelligent auto-aim that also allows you to shoot at elevated positions.

There’s lots of extra weapon types to collect and an impressive amount of destructible scenery, with chandeliers falling from the roof, cars bursting into flames, and bullet holes riddling walls. It reminded us slightly of Power Stone, in that it’s a sort of sandbox arcade game that encourages you to use the environment as much as your own attacks to take down enemies.

That makes it sound more impressive than it is but it’s still another hidden gem for the collection. We’re more familiar with 1991 scrolling beat ‘em-up Runark (aka Growl), which was also on the Egret II, as was the peculiarly complex 1989 action role-playing game Cadash.

Champion Wrestler – Rastan is in this too (ININ Games)

Arcade operators, who wanted you to die quickly and have to put in another 10p, must’ve hated this one because it’s a full-on role-player, featuring multiple player characters, some of which use magic; stats and levelling up; and multiple shops, with weapons, armour, and items to buy. There’s even Dark Souls style hidden areas, alternative routes, and almost Metroidvania style backtracking.

It’s not even that difficult, so you can keep playing for ages on a single credit. As such, it’s a shame that the combat is so clunky, and notably less fun than the otherwise much simpler Rastan Saga. Even the terrible translation is more entertaining than the fighting, with multiple allies congratulating you on ‘How well you came.’

Rounding out the collection is the rather good 1989 wrestling game Champion Wrestler which, as you’d expect from Taito, gets an impressive amount of moves out of its two button controls. It also features Rastan as one of the characters, which is a neat cameo.

And then there’s 1990 Rolling Thunder/Shinobi clone Thunder Fox, which does a decent job of trying to be an interactive 80s action movie, with a good amount of variety in its scrolling beat ‘em-up (stab and shoot ‘em-up, actually) sections and a number of brief vehicle-based interludes. There’s also a bit of Green Beret in there too, but unfortunately it has far more ideas borrowed from other games than it has of its own.

Rainbow Islands – game of the forever (ININ Games)

All of which brings us back to the stars of the collection: 1986’s Bubble Bobble and its 1987 sequel Rainbow Islands. We’ve spoken before, including in our Egret II review, about how we consider both games to be cast iron classics and we haven’t altered that opinion in the almost 40 years they’ve been around, so we’re certainly not going to now. Especially as this version of Rainbow Islands is superior to the one on the Egret II.

Bubble Bobble is still the same perfectly crafted single screen platformer as always, and really comes to life as a two-player co-op game. Rainbow Islands is a single-player game featuring one of the most versatile weapon systems in all gaming: a rainbow you can use to hit enemies with, trap them under it, drop on them, or use as a platform to reach higher ground. It’s wonderfully flexible and the game is stuffed to the gills with secrets and extra abilities, of the sort you’d never usually expect from an arcade game.

What’s great about this version of Rainbow Islands is that it has the same level and enemy progression as the original, rather than the remixed Rainbow Islands Extra, which we hate. Taito still can’t use the original soundtrack, because it sounds too much like Somewhere Over the Rainbow, but other than that this is almost exactly the same game we fell in love with on the Amiga 500 all those years ago.

We’re a bit stuck as to what to give this collection in terms of a score though, as zero effort has gone into padding it out from the individual Arcade Archives releases, which cost £6.29 each. In fact, these are slightly worse than the individual releases as they don’t feature the regional variation settings, which means Dead Connection is stuck with Japanese text during cut scenes and Runark can’t decide whether it’s called that or Growl. Although everyone speaking German is how it always was in Warrior Blade.

There’s absolutely no museum content at all, beyond a relatively in-depth manual for each game – including cheat codes were applicable. They are good emulations, with lots of control and difficulty settings (which is handy, because Rainbow Islands is very difficult), but apart from an online leaderboard there’s nothing here beyond the original arcade games.

That said, we can’t give a lower score than this to any collection which includes two of our favourite games, especially as one is as close to a definitive edition as you can get nowadays. A lot of the other games are also fun curios, but we don’t appreciate the scattershot approach to the collection’s contents and would much rather have seen a more complete compendium that celebrates the full glory of Taito’s arcade legacy.

Formats: Nintendo Switch
Price: £34.99
Publisher: ININ
Developer: Taito
Release Date: 10th December 2024
Age Rating: 12

Rastan Saga 2 – the worst of the batch (ININ Games)

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