Taito Milestones 3 For Switch Locks In Japanese Release, Here Are The 10 Games Included

Surprising it took them this long to get to Bubble Bobble and Rastan. But that's a good selection of games. My highlights would be Bubble Bobble, Rainbow Islands, Rastan III and Dead Connection.

Also, Runark is known as Growl here in the West if anyone's curious.

To me it sounds like this is the last of a trilogy. No Milestone 4

Stick everything from these collections so far on 1 game for £10 and call it a day, this is a riot.

Really looking forward to this one. Dead Connection is a great game!

November 28 is still autumn, Taito. It just feels like winter… But this is a good collection.

@Krull They didn't say November 28th is Winter. That's the Japanese release date. Winter 2024 is the western release window.

Best one yet and will be the first one I get.

Still can't believe there's so many arcade games ported to switch but my retro fav "Tumble pop" still not seen any love. Love these collections and archival projects though.

I think once you've sunken your standards low enough to buy Taito Milestones 1, anything after that is kinda in 'obligatory purchase' territory. Bring it on!

A good collection just for the Rastan games, especially Rastan 3.

@Ironcore

They're 6.50 each as Arcade Archive titles.....

Am I the only one who thinks that these collections are cash grab? Like, why not to make a one big collection of games with the 40-50$ price tag?

That’s a quality mix of arcade games! All 3 Rastan games in a physical collection will probably get me to buy. I just have to see what Taito includes in the Egret II Mini expansion allegedly coming this year before deciding.

80's this is era that i can remember well, pinball machines from Taito,
About arcade games, they have only a poor games.

Wow, 10 games? I'd give them the proverbial "three-fiddy" for it, but not what they are asking.

Recently played Rastan 3, it's pretty great. I really just can't get over how small these collections are compared to a few console generations ago. Taito Legends 1 and 2 had more than 3 times as many games each.

I am rose, and jack is my Chase Hq. I will see you again one day xxx

@Ironcore @SpringDivorce Plus, Arcade Archives are digital only.

I sure hope my Arcade Archives purchases carry forward to Switch 2.0. 🤞

Whoever wrote the press release buried the lead.

RASTAN SAGA III FIRST EVER PORT!!!!!!!!!!! WE WINNING BOYS!!!!!

Good selection of games, but as usual with Taito Milestones, there's a fair amount of titles that I already have on the Egret II Mini or on Switch itself, or that I'll have in a future Taito Arcade Memories volume 3 (or 4) for the aforementioned mini cabinet.

Too bad they're the Hamster releases but stripped off the addictive Hi-Score and Caravan modes.

Congratulations to both Dead Connection fans out there. Your game is so obscure it wasn't on my spreadsheet. I'll fix that later tonight

@gcunit Lol, well said. Will try to hold off till it’s discounted, but my retro addiction will make it tough.

old games are supposed to get less expensive over time, not more.

Taito Legends came out for PS2 on the early 00s and features TWENTY NINE games, many of them bangers, including a few of the highlights on this compilation. I'm glad I still have my copy, but if they made a comp for switch that was close to that value I'd buy it just for the convenience. ✌️

Again, a bit pricey for what you get. Sadly, I'll probably support their bad behavior by buying it.

I hope Dead Connection makes it off the collection. Otherwise this might be the first one I buy (waiting for a sale to get around the Taito tax)

As much as Taito is probably going to charge an arm and a leg for it, it's probably still cheaper than what a cart of the Genesis port of Runark/Growl goes for.

@-wc- I can't remember if it was that collection, but I do remember hearing of one of more of those that had severe emulation errors.
I do remember the PS2 had a different games than the Xbox/PC version. I've got a physical copy of the PC version as well as PS2. Only to find the PC uses StarForce copy-protection which I've read is one of those DRMs you might want to think carefully before installing. I guess it's better to run through a VM, I guess? Though I don't know if current Windows will even run such old software anymore...?
I remember buying DotEmu's Irem collection a decade ago, to find it was very clearly MAME-based, including being about as early in development emulation as you could imagine. Games like R-Type Leo and GunForce II which deserved better.

Although it’s been mentioned above, the Taito Legends collections blew these away! I still have both volumes on PS2 and every so often I pop one into my fat PS3! And both collections were packed with around 65 games and were $30 each! I think part of the greed here is Square Enix who owns Taito and has experienced losses the last few years. But $40 bucks for milestones is insulting! Cmon

@KingMike

I believe that there could have been problems, but I tend to keep myself blissfully ignorant of the technical specifics and concentrate on my actual experience playing the title, and in the case of Taito Legends 1, I've been playing it for years and I've never had an issue or given it a second thought ✌️

I didn't know all of that about the other versions and things, so thanks for that 👍

@joey302

I've always wanted 2, but 1 is so very good! 👍

in fact they couldve just rereleased them on switch and I'd have double dipped! But I wont be buying these "Milestones" collections, no.

All Rastan games is tempting…

For anyone curious, here are the games in the Milestones collections that were not in the Legends collections.

Space Seeker
Halley's Comet
Ninja Warriors
Ben Bero Beh
Darius II
Dinorex
Solitary Fighter
Champion Wrestler
Dead Connection
Rastan Saga II
Warrior Blade: Rastan Saga Episode III

@OldManHermit
They were bloody awful ports though.

@Moroboshi876
I'd love the Egret carts, but they work out pretty expensive to import sadly.

Taito before 2024: No, you can't have the original Rainbow Islands on Switch ever ever.

Taito in 2024: Oh! Here you go, twice!

Already got the Arcade Archives versions of anything I want here. 10 titles ultimately seems a bit stingy anyway.

@SpringDivorce I know. They usually got a little discounted and buying other items in the same order softens the blow, but the problem is they're often out of stock, like volume 2 for some months now.

I wonder what major titles are left for Taito's pre-F3 games. The only ones I know of are Ninja Kids and Pu Li Ru La.

@KingMike There've been a lot of rumors and allegations about StarForce over the years, but none of them could ever be proven - not even in a lawsuit. But since it installs its own device driver - just like Denuvo does - I've never installed it.

That said, Taito Legends uses SafeDisc, which did have a known security issue and Microsoft patched out support for it back in the Vista days.

There's a version without SafeDisc on MyAbandonware, which should be perfectly legal to use in most countries, or you could use the ROMs that you own with a much newer version of MAME.

Keep in mind that if you want to see old, low-res software like this in its original pixelated glory, you'll have to enable integer scaling in your GPU control panel, or else it will be noticeably blurry in fullscreen. (AMD Adrenaline: Settings -> Display -> enable GPU Scaling, then Integer Scaling. Dunno where the other manufacturers hide this setting.)

I didn’t realise until seeing the gameplay video that Runark is the game called GROWL in the West. It’s a hilariously silly beat-em-up, where you’re environment activists. I remember playing on the Legends collection, but it crashed right at the end of the game.

Nice to see all the Rastans in one place, even if 2 isn't that great. Love Cadash

I noticed that a lot of games across these Milestones collections have been released a la carte on Switch, such as Runark/Growl. With that being said, and Parasol Stars being released recently, I feel like I should hold off buying these a la carte and just wait for the next Milestones collection. I want to get in on the Rastan Saga as well, so I'm just conflicted currently as I already got Rainbow Islands separately. I guess it's going to come down to if I want to rebuy games and/or end up with games that I'm not interested in playing. I hate when they do this practice.

Wow, Cadash! I forgot about that game, haven't so much heard a whisper of it in decades!

Looking good, from this collection I want to play cadash, rastan saga 1 (if it has rewind feature), rastan saga 3, rainbow island, runark, thunder fox, and dead connection, that's a lot of games for me 😃

@RobotReptile Bubble Bobble came out on arcade archives at the end of 2022

@Branovices Weird that, among the two period console ports, the TurboGrafx port of Cadash had all four characters (compared to the Genesis having only two), for some reason the TurboGrafx port couldn't be bothered to program the stats/inventory screen. Something kind of important! Even the manual is just like "at level-up you gain points in these stats. There's no way to see the stats but trust us."

Though both ports removed the time limit that the arcade original had to try to keep players from hogging the machine.

Cadash is my all time favorite arcade game! I also love the Rastan series (that music!) and Bubble Bobble (also, that music!). I hope they release a physical version. Definite pre-order for me if so.

Since I either already have or don't care about most of the games in this collection, I'll have to decide whether Rastan Saga III is worth $40+.