Taito Legends

The interesting thing about this collection is not Space Invaders. Everyone expects Space Invaders. What earns the disc its place is the middle of the list, the games that never got a home port worth owning and had no reputation to trade on: Elevator Action's stubborn little spy trap, The New Zealand Story's cruel platforming, Zoo Keeper, Plotting, Gladiator. Taito's arcade output was broader and stranger than its two or three household names suggest, and putting twenty-nine boards in one place is the only way to make that argument.

As a package it is functional rather than lavish. Games sit in a menu, each with a short historical blurb and some artwork, and the emulation is accurate enough that the awkward ones stay awkward. Operation Wolf without a light gun is a genuine problem; steering the crosshair with a stick turns a physical, aggressive game into a chore, and no amount of sensitivity tuning fixes it. Continental Circus loses its cabinet. Battle Shark loses its periscope. That is the permanent tax on arcade compilations, and this one pays it openly instead of pretending otherwise.

Where it works, it works very well. Bubble Bobble is still one of the best-designed two-player games ever made, and having it on a controller with a friend on the couch is close enough to the original bargain. Rastan holds up as a heavy, deliberate hack-and-slash from the era when swings had weight and mistakes cost a credit. The early single-screen titles benefit most, because they were built for a joystick and two buttons and nothing has been lost in translation.

Unlimited credits flatten the design of games that were engineered to take your money, which is both the point and the cost. Play Space Gun with infinite continues and you are watching it rather than playing it. The collection is best approached with some self-imposed discipline, treating each entry as three lives and out, which restores the tension the arcade built in by default.

There are better-curated retro compilations, and Taito's own later volume covers some gaps. But for a disc that asks you to spend an evening rummaging, this one keeps turning up things you had never heard of and did not expect to like. That is the correct use of a museum: you go for the famous painting and leave thinking about something in a side room.