With three highly regarded compilations of games from Taito’s history already available, can a fourth collection contain enough quality games to make it worth your while?

Perhaps more than any of the other Taito Milestones collections, number 4 is a real mixed bag. Though there are a few excellent games here, none of them really feel truly essential in the way that Bubble Bobble (on Taito Milestones 3) or The New Zealand Story (on collection 2) do.

Let’s take a look at the games of Taito Milestones 4 in chronological order.

Water Ski, from 1983, feels like a slight evolution of Alpine Ski (released the year before, and found on the first Taito Milestones compilation). It has a few of the same issues, such as sluggish response times and collision detection that doesn’t always feel fair, but it’s an interesting curio from the distant past nonetheless.

Field Day is a collection of sports mini-games which feels a bit too tough against the CPU opponents, but is much more fun when playing against other humans. That said, it’s incredibly dated and basic, and hasn’t aged particularly well.

Typhoon Gal is an interesting fighting game with some nice animation and a very fast pace. I’ve never seen or heard of it before, and was pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed it.

Arkanoid is probably the best-remembered game in this collection. A Breakout-style block breaking game with power ups and a sci-fi theme, it’s an excellent evolution of the genre.

Bonze Adventure is a truly bizarre platformer in which you take on ghastly, ghostly yokai. It’s pretty fun, and as another game I’d never even seen before, let alone played, I enjoyed this one too.

Kuri Kinton has fantastic presentation and some real anime-style touches; like many 80s arcade games it can be brutally difficult, but it’s an enjoyable experience nonetheless.

Syvalion is another oddity in which you control a very slinky dragon. A shoot ’em up with maze exploration elements, it’s a unique game that feels completely different even today.

Don Doko Don is a single screen platformer in the Bubble Bobble vein, also playable by 2 people simultaneously. It’s really good fun!

Cameltry is a weird game in which you steer a ball to an exit in a maze, with the twist being that you’re controlling the maze rather than the ball. An enjoyably unusual experience.

Lastly, there’s The Ninja Kids from 1990, a scrolling beat ’em up with a cast of Sesame Street-esque puppets. Despite some rather dated, inappropriate racial caricatures amongst its mixture of enemy characters for me this is the highlight of the collection, and can support up to four players simultaneously too.

With save states added, as well as the fact that of course you’re not spending more real money in order to continue, it’s a great way to experience these games, many of which you (like me) may not have seen before. Though I didn’t feel like this was an essential collection, The Ninja Kids is superb, and there are some real oddities here that make it worth exploring for retro gaming fans.

Taito Milestones 4 is available now on Nintendo Switch.

Hi! I’m Jason, and I write for midlifegamergeek.com, every single day. If you’re interested in supporting original, regularly published, human created content (which has never been plagiarised or otherwise copied from the hard work of other writers), you can donate and help me to keep this site running.

Not only do I earn no income from my writing here (though I may earn small fees from affiliate links posted on my pages; as an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases from these links), but it seems that my work has, at times, been stolen and re-used by lazy, morally bankrupt idiots.

There’s no pressure of course, but I’d be truly grateful for any support that you could offer – and it’s easy to do so at either of these links: Ko-Fi.com/geekmid or PayPal.

Any donations are truly appreciated – and I also appreciate you taking the time to read my articles. Remember: this whole article was by Jason Brown, and appeared on midlifegamergeek.com. Take that, Skynet!