One of the Japanese companies most responsible for the early explosion of interest in arcade gaming, Taito created numerous, iconic video game classics in the 70s, 80s and 90s.

There was a period where a single game was synonymous with the arcades, and was the gold standard for all other titles to beat in terms of profitability and addictiveness: Space Invaders.

You’ll find Space Invaders on this Evercade collection, along with 8 other games. Though unsurprisingly, Space Invaders itself is dated from a technical point of view, its raw simplicity in terms of its mechanics, concept and minimalist audiovisual design still holds a great deal of charm, and it still has the power to be quite addictive too.

Bubble Bobble is perhaps the second most familiar title in this collection, and has long been one of my absolute favourite games of all time. This cartridge is worth the price of admission for these two titles alone, for me at least.

Just don’t tell Blaze; it’s already a bit of a travesty, albeit an understandable situation giving licensing costs, that they’ve split the Taito Arcade collections into two cartridges that are released on the same day; all 18 games on Taito Arcade 1 and 2 could easily have fit onto a single cartridge.

But I digress; back to the games!

Chack’n Pop is the lesser known predecessor of Bubble Bobble; if you’ve played and enjoyed the single screen platforming antics of Bubble Bobble as much as I have over the years, it’s fun to see where it evolved from. With less intuitive mechanics and the lack of that earworm of a musical theme, though, it doesn’t compare to its spiritual successor at all, but it’s great to have it on this collection anyway.

Growl is a slightly janky beat ’em up based around an Indiana Jones-type character (and friends), taking on poachers in some proper action movie style. One thing that stands out to me in Growl is just how many bad guys you can end up taking on at once, and it’s cool that there’s plenty of weaponry, including guns, to help even the odds. This one’s a good title to play on the Evercade VS, given that it offers up to four player simultaneous gameplay.

Don Doko Don is another single screen platformer in the Bubble Bobble tradition; a later release, it’s got some lovely, colourful pixel art visuals and its gameplay is pretty cool too.

Like Bubble Bobble, it allows for two players to tackle it co-operatively, so it’s another good excuse to dust off the VS.

The Legend of Kage is a hack and slash platformer with weird animation and odd mechanics that feel slightly off. That said, it has a neat sense of verticality, which is unusual for the genre.

Colony 7 feels like a mashup of Missile Command and Space Invaders, offering frantic, base defending action at an impressively furious pace. Though also quite dated, the gameplay shines through.

Raimais is a game little seen outside of Japan, and feels like a real hidden gem. A Pac-Man style maze game with a lovely, metallic, 80s sci-fi sheen, it’s a game I’ve never seen or played before, and I’m looking forward to exploring it further.

Finally, Pirate Pete feels like it was pretty ambitious and probably very impressive back in its day (it was released in 1982). Another fairly obscure oddity, it’s basically a collection of four mini-games, in which the titular Pirate must swing across the deck of a ship, take on sharks in the ocean, climb a mountain and take on the dastardly scallywags who’ve kidnapped your beloved.

I thought it was familiar; I’ve got Jungle Hunt on the Atari 2600, and apparently, Taito released three near identical games with different themes, with Pirate Pete and Jungle Hunt among them. It’s nicely colourful and varied, with some nice animation,.but it has dated worse even than the older titles on here. Pirate Pete also has some questionable collision detection, and fussy mechanics too.

Overall though, this is a truly unmissable collection for players of a certain age. I grew up on Taito’s games, obsessed with titles like Space Invaders and Bubble Bobble, so I’m very glad to have this in my Evercade collection.

If you do have the Taito Super Pocket, however, be aware that there’s significant overlap here; if you have that specific handheld, this might not be quite as essential for you. However, there’s no way to take advantage of the multiplayer modes on the Super Pocket, so of course this might still be a cartridge you can’t miss.

You can buy the Taito Arcade 1 cartridge from Amazon.

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