Taito may be little more than a sub-brand owned by Square Enix these days, but once upon a time, this prolific Japanese company was one of the most active and influential in arcade gaming.
Everybody knows Space Invaders, of course, the 1978 hit that not only birthed the shmup genre but also boosted the popularity of coin-op gaming worldwide. However, Taito's history is peppered with smash hits, including Bubble Bobble, Rainbow Islands, Rastan, Elevator Action, Arkanoid, Operation Wolf and many, many more.
Evercade maker Blaze is paying tribute to this legacy with not one but two new cartridges. The topic of this review is the first collection, Taito Arcade 1, which includes Bubble Bobble, Chack'n Pop, Colony 7, Don Doko Don, Growl, Pirate Pete, Raimais, Space Invaders and The Legend of Kage.
The highlights here, at least for me personally, are Bubble Bobble, Don Doko Don, Growl, Space Invaders and The Legend of Kage. Those five games make this cartridge a solid purchase.
Bubble Bobble is the iconic single-screen action platformer which inspired a flood of clones (one of which is Don Doko Don, in fact). Growl is a belt-scrolling brawler with an amusing eco-friendly premise and wonderful music, while Space Invaders needs no introduction. Finally, The Legend of Kage is a neat side-scrolling action-adventure full of ninjas.
The other titles are perhaps less well-known, but are still interesting. 1984's Chack'n Pop is considered to be a spiritual ancestor to Bubble Bobble, and also adopts a single-screen approach. 1982's Pirate Pete, on the other hand, was originally released as Jungle Hunt (and contained some racial stereotypes which were troubling even in the '80s, never mind today). It's entertaining enough, and perhaps more notable from a historic perspective as being one of the first games to feature parallax scrolling.
The 1981 shooter Colony 7 is even more primitive, playing like a variation on Atari's Missile Command, while Raimais, released in 1988, plays a bit like Pac-Man, although in Taito's game, you can collect power-ups that increase your speed or even give you weapons to fight back. It's more fun than it looks, and has some nice music.
All in all, Taito Arcade 1 is a great collection of solid-gold coin-op hits mixed with some less-famous forgotten gems. The only problem staunch Evercade supporters will have with this package is that several of the games were included on the Taito edition of the Super Pocket handheld and the Evercade Alpha bartop arcade, so you'll be double-dipping here if you already own one of those (the Taito Super Pocket has Space Invaders, Bubble Bobble, Chack'n Pop, Don Doko Don, Growl and The Legend of Kage, while the Evercade Alpha Taito edition has Bubble Bobble, Growl, The Legend of Kage and Space Invaders).
Comments 6
Another great cart from Blaze. I'm really looking forward to getting into Don Doko Don as I haven't experienced it before.
@RossoftheRobots It's a great game - I have many fond memories of playing it on the PC Engine back in the day!
@Damo Leaving out The Fairyland Story which predated Bubble Bobble.
Also, the real reason Jungle Hunt got changed wasn't the racial stereotypes (that yes, were far culturally accepted in the '80s) but that they used the Tarzen yell without permission for which Taito was sued and they lost so they had to change it.
Also, I watch the LordBBH channel who absolutely praises the Japanese version of Raimais. I forgot the extent to which he said regional changes affected it but I just know it was significant. Enough that some of its content (including the best ending which apparently was bugged even in the original release and only the ACA fixed it) became inaccessible in the process. Sadly, I'm guessing this collection will only include the Overseas version.
I kind of regret picking up the Taito Super Pocket and should have known something like these collections would come to the Evercade. The Super Pocket is neat, but the screen is a bit too small for some of these arcade titles.
It's a shame that they left Jungle Hunt out as I grew up with the game. If they can change the music in Rainbow Islands they could change the Tarzan yell.
Im probably more a fan of their unusual choices like Codemasters, Gremlin and the Bitmap Brothers. While I certainly like a few of these games, I've got them on Arcade Achives on Switch.
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