Taito Milestones: The Definitive Review – Complete 10 Game Review + Ranking

I was a little startled when I saw the lineup for Taito Milestones. Taito was the company behind Space Invaders, Bubble Bobble, and Arkanoid. What’s their first collection have? Two barely memorable “oh yea, I played that one! It was fun!” all-stars and eight other games that nobody could possibly get excited over. Compared to the Taito compilation of my childhood, Taito Legends, which had a whopping 29 games. The follow-up, Taito Legends 2, had an insane 39 games (43 if you bought every version!). This feels like the junior varsity team of classic collections.

I picked up the physical version of Taito Milestones last Christmas when it was on sale for $20. As of this writing, it’s only $11.80 on Amazon. The Milestones series uses the Arcade Archives builds of ten Taito coin-ops. Good deal, right? And, while I’ve not had great luck selecting Arcade Archives games, there’s no doubt they mostly have great emulation. The only time I can think of where I didn’t enjoy the actual technicalities of one of their releases was their port of the arcade Punch-Out!! Otherwise, Hamster knows what they’re doing.. even though they stubbornly refuse to add rewind. Logically, a set of ten games at $39.99 that uses their emulators is like getting ten Arcade Archives titles for the price of five, right? BUT, you’re not getting the full Arcade Archives packages here. The cheating-proof Hi-Score and 5 minute Caravan Modes that seem to be in every Arcade Archives release are not included with this set. So, what IS included?

EMULATION EXTRAS

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To repeat: there’s no rewind or quick save/load, so that’s annoying. There is a form of save states called “interrupt save state” that, when used, creates a save state that you have to quit the game and restart to activate. And that save state disappears when you game over. Why not just give us the option for normal, run-of-the-mill save states? What annoys me about Arcade Archives is that it has progressed very little over the last few years. Also, the save state feature they included can be used to cheat on the online leaderboards (check my review of Arcade Archives: Pinball for that) rendering those leaderboards functionally useless. Hi-Score mode and Caravan Mode in standard Arcade Archives releases end if you so much as pause the game, rendering cheating impossible. And frankly, the games included in this set could have used as much extra value as humanly possible.

What you DO get is clear, detailed instructions for each game. I always appreciated that Arcade Archives has some of the most well-written instructions in the retro gaming scene. They always include photos of the items and what they do. They also include all the dip switch options for each game, and again, they’re clearly labeled. Also, this is now the only way to get Hamster’s Arcade Archives build of Elevator Action on Switch, which was delisted on the eShop (still available on PSN). Finally, there’s a variety of screen options, including being able to turn the Switch into “tate mode” and turn it on its side for a more accurate arcade experience, at least when the games used vertical monitors. For all the emulation features, I’m awarding no bonus in value and I’m not issuing any fines for the set. Call it a wash!

THE ULTIMATE VERDICT ON THE COLLECTION

For those not familiar with my way of thinking of how retro games should be reviewed, I take NO historical context into account. I don’t care how important a game was to the industry, because that doesn’t make a game worth playing today. The test of time is the cruelest test of all, but every video game must face it. I might not be here if not for Pong’s success, but I wouldn’t want to play it today. Not when there’s better options. Therefore, when I review retro games, every game gets either a YES! or a NO!

YES! means the game is still fun and has actual gameplay value when played today and is worth seeking out.

NO! means the game didn’t age gracefully and is not worth seeking out, and certainly not worth spending money on.

I’m going off the standard set by Capcom Arcade Stadium 2: if the games are sold separately, the sales price for each individual game is the value for a quality game. Since all ten of these games are sold separately for $7.99, I’m rounding it up and setting a value of $8 per quality game. Taito Milestones has a standard suggested retail price of $39.99, which I’ll round-up and call $40. That makes the break even requirement 5 YES! votes. Though, keep in mind: nobody sells it for that, which is why I no longer award my Seal of Approval to classic collections. I set a value.

YES!: 4 GAMES
NO!: 6 GAMES
Standard Price: $39.99
Final Value: $32

Again, I bought this at $20, and right now, you can purchase Taito Milestones for $11.80 on Amazon. It’s easily worth that just to own Elevator Action and Qix, with any other enjoyment you get being a bonus.

FINAL RANKINGS

How I determined the rankings is simple: I took the full list of games, then I said “I’m forced to play one game. Pick the one I could play the most and not get bored with.” That goes on top of the list. Then I repeat the question again with the remaining games over and over until the list is complete. Based on that simple criteria, here are the final rankings. Games above the Terminator Line received a YES! Games below it received a NO!

1. Elevator Action
2. Qix
3. Halley’s Comet
4. Alpine Ski
   **TERMINATOR LINE**
5. The FairyLand Story
6. Chack’n Pop
7. Space Seeker
8. Front Line
9. Wild Western
10. The Ninja Warriors

GAME REVIEWS

Alpine Ski
Arcade Release: 1981
Unknown Designer

Ah, for the days of simple reflex-based coin-ops. In Alpine Ski, ski down a hill, pressing or alternately holding down the buttons to pick up speed while avoiding other skiers, trees, and rocks while scooping up points. Every time you crash, you lose ten seconds, and you keep playing until you run out of time. The game is divided into three segments, but really, the “ski slope course” and the “slalom course” are the same gameplay, with the only difference being you lose 100 points if you touch a flag in the slalom. The third segment, the ski jump, is the bonus stage. Here, you just have to time jumping at the end of the ramp, then not hit any trees using a radar. There is a novel twist: instead of reaching physical checkpoints on the levels, your time is reloaded when you reach scoring benchmarks. I’ve never seen a game like that, where the timer doesn’t just reload in intervals, but rather runs all the way out THEN reloads if you’ve earned it. So that’s something different!

Here’s my issue: nobody in their right mind expects a forty-year-old skiing game to hold up today, in the 2020s. The inclusion of Alpine Skiing in a Taito collection only really works if the set is aiming to be comprehensive. But, this Milestones series isn’t attempting that at all. Each release is staying firm at the ten games per set. Including a forty-year-old skiing game seems like it would just be bad for business. This is the type of game that probably should have been thrown in as a bonus +1 instead of being one of THE ten games. But, all I care about is whether or not I had fun. I found Alpine Skier to be somewhat cathartic in its simplicity. Wiggling back and forth, scooping up points wasn’t the worst use of time. I couldn’t get the hang of the bonus jump. Stuff like this is where going that extra mile and adding a rewind feature would have helped a lot, which would have allowed me to practice at it. I think it’s silly to have included this over more iconic games, but I had a mildly better time than I expected.
Verdict: YES!
$8 in value added to Taito Milestones

Chack’n Pop
Arcade Release: April, 1984
Designed by Hiroshi Sakai and Hiroyuki Sakô

The best thing I can say about Chack’n Pop is that it apparently led to the creation of Bubble Bobble. Of course, it’s one of those situations where it feels like they recognized one game wasn’t fun and set out to make a better game. Despite a couple enemies sharing nearly identical character sprites, this has nothing to do with Bubble Bobble. This is more like a side-scrolling Bomberman where you don’t have to eliminate ALL the enemies. Instead, the object is to cling to surfaces and eventually bomb all the cages that contain hearts that unlock each stage’s exit. The bombs sort of bounce a bit like baseballs during the Dead Ball Era. Planting one where you want it to go is a pain in the ass and never intuitive.

What kills Chack’n Pop for me is how badly done the movement is. There are times where I’ll hold UP to transfer to the ceiling, in a spot I’ve done it before, and it doesn’t work. I read the manual multiple times trying to figure out what I was doing wrong. It has something to do with whether your foot is hanging off a platform or not, I guess. But the issue was there regardless of where my feet were. I think the collision detection for the movement was just haphazardly done. I also can’t stand the combat. The enemies are the little floating whale head thingies from Bubble Bobble, but their behavior makes no sense. You have to try to bomb them, but because their behavior is apparently randomized (or possibly programmed to retreat from the bombs), they’re too hard to kill. Because your bombs take so long to explode, chances are by time they have their sights set on you, it’s too late to fight back. I hate Chack’n Pop. I’ve played it a variety of times, on a variety of platforms, and I’ve always found it to be one of Taito’s worst games. Astonishingly, it only fell to 6th place. Really tells you how terrible the bad games in this set are.
Verdict: NO!

Elevator Action
Arcade Release: May 23, 1983
Designed by Toshio Kono
Arcade Archives release on Switch Delisted

I’ve already reviewed the Arcade Archives port of Elevator Action. It got a YES! before, and it’s still getting one here. I have this game design theory: the best ideas for video games only need to accomplish the bare minimum playability to work. Elevator Action is my poster child for that. While its sequels eventually improved the core gameplay, Elevator Action Returns was really bad, but it also didn’t hit that “bare minimum playability” benchmark. Meanwhile, the original still gets the job done. A forty-year old, ultra-repetitive, sluggish-controlling action game is still damn fun after celebrating its fourth decade of existence. If that doesn’t prove my theory to be correct, I don’t know what would. Now, I find myself asking if Elevator Action really only does the bare minimum? Is it possible I got that part wrong? Yea, it is.

Hey, I’m not too big to admit when I’m wrong. Rolling Thunder? Now THERE’S a game that does the bare minimum. That’s probably why it sucks, while a game like Elevator Action overcomes some glaring issues with controls. It’s all about the little idiosyncrasies you barely even notice. Being able to dropkick enemies isn’t as satisfying as shooting them, but if the option wasn’t there, close quarter combat would be too unpredictable and chaotic. When you shoot out the lights on the upper floors, enemies react slower to you. Moreover, Toshio Kono proved he understood the value of good gameplay by the fact that a major gameplay mechanic was cut from the game. Originally, there would be barrels that enemies would hide in. I couldn’t find a reason why it was deleted, but I suspect it might have been too cheap. I once called Elevator Action a borderline bad game. I was just plain wrong. It’s a solid action game that does one bad thing, and many more good things.
Verdict: YES!
$8 in Value added to Taito Milestones
WINNER: Best in Set

The Fairyland Story
Arcade Release: July, 1985
Directed by Masaki Ogata and Mikio Hatano
Designed by Hiroshi Tsujino

If you were hoping for a signature Bubble Bobble-like “jump around and exterminate the baddies” experience, keep hoping. The FairyLand Story actually predates Bubble Bobble by nearly a full year. That explains why it feels like a proof of concept that hasn’t figured out how to make the whole extermination aspect fun. Here, you play as a witch who transforms enemies into.. uh.. cake? Why cake? You don’t even eat it, either! You can then destroy the cake by continuously shooting it with your magic, pushing it off a high enough ledge, or having an enemy land on it. Is it fun? Not at all.

I get the distinct impression that Taito understood they were onto something with the idea, but that they created some of the dullest combat mechanics in gaming history. It’s just not a fun way to defeat enemies. Occasionally, a worm pops out that might eat you, but it might also eat the enemies too. I think that is what the game should have been. Turning baddies into food that other baddies eat. Maybe a little macabre, but hey, so am I. However, the combat isn’t the only problem. Level design ranges from dull to annoying, with some levels having too high of barriers to cross over, forcing levels to end when the game declares a stalemate and moves you automatically to the next round. I’ve never been impressed with a game that’s so sloppy it has to give you a pity advancement. The FairyLand Story is an action-free action game, and it’s a total snoozer.
Verdict: NO!

Front Line
Arcade Release: November 10, 1982
Designed by Tetsuya Sasaki

CONTROLS ALTERED FROM ARCADE ORIGINAL

If Front Line wasn’t impossible, it might be a decent little game. This beat titles like Ikari Warriors or Commando to the market by several years, and the arcade version even had a dial to aim your gun, something many SNK games would later copy. Unfortunately, Front Line is so prohibitively difficult that I couldn’t make any progress. That’s not an exaggeration: I COULD NOT MAKE PROGRESS! Front Line isn’t my first rodeo. While I’m nowhere near a professional caliber gamer, I’m not too shabby, either. But I couldn’t even get past the first stage of Front Line, and I spent a whole day trying.

Like so many crap games, fans will say you need to “get to the good stuff.” In this case, the good stuff is being able to hop into tanks. Tanks where it’s still one shot and you’re dead. The thing is, when you die at the point where you reach the tanks, you respawn without a tank you can climb into near you, surrounded by enemy tanks. You might be able to take out one of them with a grenade, but the others move faster than you and dodge your grandees easily. So, once you that first life in the area with the tanks, you’re toast. For what it’s worth, I thought the dual-stick controls Hamster implemented worked better than the arcade dial. However, Front Line wasn’t even trying to be fun. One of those games so impossible it’s practically a quarter-shakedown scam. Sadly, this won’t be the last such game in this set.
Verdict: NO!

Halley’s Comet
Arcade Release: January, 1986
Designed by Fukio Mitsuji

In my first round of playing Halley’s Comet, I almost instantly became an unstoppable tank that was shredding through enemies with ease. It was quite empowering, but kind of awesome too. “Hey! This ain’t too shabby. Why isn’t this a more popular game? I’d literally never even heard of it before I started this set!” And then a wayward bullet blew me up, and my tank days were over. A few seconds later, so was my game. Yea, Halley’s Comet is one of those shmups where, when you lose your power-ups, the game doesn’t really feed you a chance at recovery and you’re pretty well screwed. Also, I now totally understand why other, better shmups give you a SPEED-UP item almost immediately.

The main problem is just don’t move fast enough to dodge all the crap Halley’s Comet throws at you. Since enemies (1) move faster than you (2) will hook right into you (3) completely fill the screen and (4) have some of the least visible bullets in the genre, when you lose that first, presumably most powerful life, the rest of the lives are certain to not be long for this world. When my GAME OVERS happened, they happened very quickly. While it lasts, Halley’s Comet is a fine generic shmup, I suppose. Even getting my ass kicked, I kept coming back, and enjoyed those early lives where my firepower could fill the screen. It’s not a total wash. But, again, I can’t help but feel this would have been a nicer game to have as part of a more comprehensive collection, like the Taito Legends games had been back in the day.
Verdict: YES!
$8 in Value added to Taito Milestones

The Ninja Warriors
Arcade Release: “Late” 1987
Directed by Masaki Ogata
Designed by Hiroshi Tsujino and Yukiwo Ishikawa

I have never seen the likes of Ninja Warriors. I mean, I have seen games with this play style. It’s a shallow rip-off of Kung Fu Master or Shinobi, only with the gimmick of having a triple-wide screen. The original arcade cabinet used mirrors so you couldn’t see it was really using three monitors instead of a single long one. Cool idea, but the gameplay is as lifeless and shallow as any I can remember. You walk right at a pace where you can practically feel yourself being lapped by snails and slice any enemy that walks by you, or throw your progressive less effective throwing stars at them. After you walk far enough, a boss shows up. The OOMPH is non-existent and the combat is terrible. Even if what happened to me in the second stage hadn’t happened, the Ninja Warriors would have been one of the most boring games I’ve done so far. Then, IT HAPPENED! What happened? The thing that compelled me to say “I have never seen the likes of Ninja Warriors.”

That is not hyperbole, because I’ve never seen anything like this: at the start of the second level, after you kill a small handful of baddies, you just blow you up from a tank that’s off-screen. Mind you, the screen is TRIPLE WIDE and you still can’t see the tank, and you can’t even see its projectiles it fires at you. Just BOOM, dead, pony-up more quarters, bitch! I legitimately laughed. It was just shameless about it. So flagrant. It then pulls the same crap again at the end of the stage. This sat in arcades and cost real quarters. Given the fact that an off-screen enemy shoots invisible projectiles that lead to a GAME OVER, I have to say that Ninja Warriors, as an arcade experience, is a scam. Just dying like that, from an off-screen enemy, with invisible projectiles? That’s a shakedown for quarters. Look, it’s not like Ninja Warriors was getting a YES! anyway. At its very, very best, it’s boring. But hell, I’ve dealt with boring games before. If I can’t deal with boredom, I might as well quit. What astonishes me is the game bored me to death AND THEN went that extra mile towards becoming one of the worst video games I’ve ever played. The determination to excel at being crappy is remarkable.
Verdict: NO!

And it wasn’t just the Taito Milestones build where I couldn’t see the projectiles.

Qix
Arcade Release: October, 1981
Designed by Randy Pfeiffer and Sandy Pfeiffer

Ah, Qix. Good ‘ole, reliable, dependable, durable Qix. Somehow both relaxing and tranquil while also lending itself to white-knuckle, edge-of-your-seat excitement. If you’re unfamiliar with the concept: you have a blank canvas with an evil screensaver bouncing around. The object is to leave the border and draw a line through the playfield. When you reach another border, the game fills in the area that doesn’t contain the “Qix” which is that aforementioned evil screensaver. You can either use a blue line, which is much faster and much lower scoring, or you can go for broke with the slower orange line and try to pile up points. The bigger the boxes you draw, the more points you score. When 75% of the playfield is covered, you move onto the next stage and score a bonus for every percentage point you go over. The Qix has no attack pattern and should not be mistaken for a chaser. It is just totally random in its movement. Less random are the fuses that crawl around the border, preventing you from lingering too long. It’s a simple premise, and it’s been copied for four decades now for a reason: it’s crazy fun.

The funny thing is, few games have been ripped-off as much as Qix, and yet, the original might be the hardest version to this day. Like so many other Taito arcade experiences from the 1980s, the biggest issue with Qix is it’s too damn difficult. Even on the EASY settings, the Qix Stick becomes too fast on the second level. Boldness? Hah. I feel like every big box I completed from level two onward happened because the Qix didn’t bounce my way. Sheer dumb luck. However, I’m still grateful that Qix exists. If anyone thinks I’m some kind of soft ass who can’t take a beating and whines too much about difficult games, look no further than Qix. I suck at it. I played this for hours and rarely even made it to the double Qix levels. And yet, I couldn’t put it down. Maybe the reason why this version.. specifically THIS version.. holds up to the test of time is that tough-as-nails gameplay, which makes those moments where you cut the screen in half SO satisfying. I love this one, folks.
Verdict: YES!
$8 in Value added to Taito Milestones

Space Seeker
Arcade Release: October, 1981
Unknown Designer

Combining a flagrant-yet-bad rip-off of Konami’s Scramble (which released seven months before this) with a flagrant-yet-bad rip-off of Atari’s Star Raiders, Space Seeker is a game that has no identity of its own. You’re given a world map and have to slowly crawl the cursor to one of three bases, trying to avoid the red dots. If you make contact with one of those dots, you enter the Star Raiders-like first person shooting sequence. The enemies don’t shoot at you and instead just try to suicide-bomb your guns. It makes literally no sense that it’s your guns you have to stop them from flying into. IT’S FIRST PERSON! Wouldn’t flying into literally any part of the ship do the trick? Either way, there’s no crosshairs, which makes aiming tough enough, but the upward and downward movement feels unresponsive and sluggish. Some rounds I only lasted literally a second or two before the first batch of enemies dived into my guns.

Assuming you don’t die on the map itself and reach a base, Space Seeker becomes a side-scrolling shmup where clusters of missiles attack in curvy or circular patterns.  Fly into the various jaggy mountains? You die. Fair enough. Fly into the clouds? Also death. Well, obviously. After all, being a ship capable of interstellar travel, condensed moisture would be lethal to you. On the plus side, the stages only have X amount of missiles, so if you keep returning to the same base, eventually you’ll get what’s essentially a free pass to that base’s goal, which ends in a speed tunnel that you can fly through for bonus points. So, there’s three play styles in one game, which yes, was ambitious for 1981, and I always admire ambition. But, forty-year-old ambition isn’t worth much today. Hell, judging by the fact that people who were around for arcades during the time haven’t heard of Space Seeker either, it doesn’t seem to have had contemporary value, either.
Verdict: NO!

Wild Western
Arcade Release: May, 1982
Unknown Designer

CONTROLS ALTERED FROM ARCADE ORIGINAL

Wild Western takes the rotary controls from Front Line and applies them to a game where you bobble back and forth on horseback shooting train robbers. The train is part of the playfield and bullets ricochet off it. That I was able to pull off, successfully angling bullets off the train and onto the baddies. It wasn’t remotely satisfying, but hey, it’s something. What I couldn’t do regularly was hop onto the train when the bandits boarded it. I kept.. well.. dying when my horse brained itself on it. When you clear the enemies out, you do the worst bonus stage I’ve ever played then start another stage. Unlike Front Line, I didn’t think the controls carried over well to the home port, and frankly, I don’t think Wild Western ever had potential as even a decent game. It’s actually stunning how little game is here, though at least the coin-op had the attraction of a novelty controller. That wasn’t part of the home version. Many of my lives in Wild Western lasted as long as it took for the enemy to fire their first bullet. As the final game in this set, Wild Western hammers home that Taito Milestones 1 is the collection of games not good enough to buy alone.
Verdict: NO!