Following the decent Taito Milestones release from last year, we now have a follow up collection with another ten classic Taito releases and it’s pretty great with it.
This new collection features ten new Taito games, that of The NewZealand Story, Kiki Kaikai, Darius 2 (Three Screen Arcade Version), Gun Frontier, Ben Bero Beh, The Legend of Kage, Liquid Kids, Solitary Fighter, Dinorex and Metal Black. This is a pretty hefty list of games, but it’s worth pointing out a few of note.
The main stand out is that of Darius II and its massive three screen version. I’ve played this game a lot in the arcades in Japan and it’s a shmup classic. A massive step-up from the first Darius, it laid the real foundation for the Darius series. With frenetic shooting action and vibrant backgrounds and enemies.
Following this will have the very influential Metal Black, which acted as one of the “beam battle” inspirations for games like G-Darius. It’s also one of the most fondly remember shmups from that era and having it included here is great.
You then get The NewZealand Story and Kiki Kaikai, these are both great games and having them under the banner of a single collection is definitely appreciated.
Backing up a bit, it’s also worth pointing out that this collection, while published by ININ games, is using the Arcade Archives releases from Hamster. These are all solid ports and Hamster have a very solid track record, not to mention a massive retro game library.
As for the price tag of $39.99, it is a lot and your mileage may vary on how value for money this collection really is. Personally, it has a lot of great games included, so the cost of buying all of these individually is definitely reduced in this neat little package.
Overall, Taito Milestones 2 follows nicely on from the first release. It includes even more excellent games and does a nice job of encapsulating Taito’s long and influential gaming history into one neat little package.
Taito Milestones 2
Platform: Nintendo Switch
Developer: ININ Games
Publisher: Hamster
Released: 31st August 2023
Price: $39.99
Score: 7.5/10
Disclosure: ININ Games sent me a copy of this game for the purposes of this review.
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