I’m going to start this off by saying I am not a retro gamer, nor do I have any sort of nostalgia around retro games. However, Taito Milestones 4 is the fourth collection of games from Taito, compiling a bunch of quick arcade games into one collection. The other three collections are filled with some fantastic games from the history of this studio and this forth is more of a mix of a bunch of different games that haven’t been found in a collection yet.
There are quite a few games on Taito Milestones 4 that cover a variety of themes and styles in their gameplay. The only thing that seems to tie them together is the relation to Taito. All of the games are emulated well, their graphics are easy to see, and they work well on the device that I played them on. As someone who doesn’t have hugely strong ties to the retro community or this company, I did find checking out some of these older arcade games to be fun.
I failed quite badly at Water Ski, which is quite challenging — you need to glide through water behind a boat, avoiding various hazards in the water. I found the controls to not be as smooth as I wanted when playing, but it did feel like it was meant to be challenging. Typhoon Gal was a surprising one for me on Taito Milestones 4, as it had a female fighting main character, who took on a bunch of challengers one after another. This game took a bit of time to master when it came to the controls, but once I did, I quite liked kicking random challenger’s butts.
I feel a lot of these older arcade games are all about challenge and wanting you to spend more money for another go. However, being able to play them in a collection probably is cheaper in the long run, especially for someone like me that struggles a bit with understanding fully what to do on the first go. There are a bunch of other games in the Taito Milestones 4, bringing a well-rounded collection to explore.
Taito Milestones 4 is out on Nintendo Switch.
