Title: Taito Arcade 1
System: Evercade
Price: $29.99
Release Date: September 2025

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Prelude

Earlier this summer Blaze revealed a batch of Evercade cartridges for the rest of the year, and one company just made me scratch my head upon seeing their game lineups shown off. Taito was announced to be getting normal Evercade carts after being exclusive to the Super Pocket until now, along with an Evercade Alpha. (Side note: I am reviewing the Alpha soon, but it’s gonna be the Street Fighter one, not the Taito one. I’m not made of gold, sorry)

The problem for me came from how of the two Taito Arcade cartridges, almost all of the games on both came from the Super Pocket, with only a few exclusives among both cartridges, and nothing that initially seemed compelling. Thus, it seemed like a pretty big disappointment right off the bat for those who own the Super Pocket besides me.

Still, as one wanting to cover all the Evercade carts, who loves arcade games, and had curiosity in comparing the pocket versions to the cart versions, I figured I give both of these carts a shot. After all, not everyone got the Super Pockets, and the Super Pocket lacks stuff the EC versions do not. (Dip Switches being the biggest example, along with a better D-Pad) Thus, I decided to go through these both with the mindset of treating them just like an ordinary Evercade cart. No need to ponder if these are better or worse value than the Super Pocket, since not everyone buying these carts even has one.

Presentation

With Taito games ranging from the late 70s to 1990, these Arcade titles go over a good assortment of hardware, and all emulate fine here as is the blaze tradition. We’ll get into the trouble from using international versions of certain games later, but in terms of how they look and sound, the 9 games on this cart do the job well, which is a must considering how excellent some of the OSTs from these titles are.

Gameplay

The routine is known by now. Onward!

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Space Invaders– The original game from the 70s, with the colors a slightly later revision introduced. You move a small tank around, shoot a singular shot upwards at the invaders, and try to defeat the current wave before they can all come down to take out your bases, or just shoot you.

You’ve almost certainly played a variant of this before, and a lot of games after this point did the same concept but better. King and Balloon, Galaxian, Galaga, and so on. That doesn’t mean Space Invaders aged badly however, since trying to clear waves without dying is still a fun scorechasing time, but compared to say, Return of the Invaders the formula isn’t quite as engaging.

Still, this is the one that started it all, is a big historical footnote in gaming history, and manages to still be a simplistic bout of fun. Worth playing to beat your score if you want, but if you aren’t into beating a high score, this won’t hold your attention as much as the sequels would have.

Colony 7- The first of three exclusives to the cartridge! A rarity in that this one hasn’t even been reissued in any modern form factor up till now. No Egret II Mini reissue, no Arcade Archives release, no Taito Milestones or Super Pocket showing, this is the modern reintroduction of Colony 7, as far as I can tell.

In this game, Taito seems to have wanted a bit of that Missile Command pie, since you control two bases that must defend a city from alien invaders. You do this by shooting a combined beam at them as batches of invaders fly around to try and shoot through the breakout-esque wall blocking your cities, or by taking out the two gun turrets responsible for your offense. In a pinch you can deploy a powerful bomb to help shield from attacks if things get too close for comfort, but your primary attack is what you’ll need to rely on more.

Interestingly enough, this game has a weird gimmick where if you add an extra credit before starting the game, your main weapon will gain some extra range, allowing you to take out the enemies and their shots a lot easier. Either way, the difficulty ramps up fast and you’ll quickly be on your toes, so this one is a brief, if enjoyable little scorechaser. Not exactly worth dropping your super pocket for if you own one, however.

Pirate Pete- This game has a weird history. If you know of a game called Jungle Hunt, this is that same game, but with a pirate theme slapped on it. The original Jungle King had a sampled Tarzan yell that got the copyright gods all riled up, so they tweaked it once, shipped it out again, that wasn’t good enough, and thus they reskinned the entire thing into a pirate themed adventure.

Now you take control of the titular Pirate Pete, who must set out to rescue his girlfriend from bad pirates, in a four-stage adventure, each being different from the last. The first stage takes place on a pirate ship and has you jump from rope to rope, requiring careful timing to make it to the end without falling, before you dive into the ocean to swim over some sharks. You can hit them with your knife when they aren’t trying to bite you, but the points gained from doing so makes that risk not worth it, so you’re best off swimming over everything.

The third stage is the most fun, and has you platforming over boulders tumbling your way. Just good old Donkey Kong-style platforming as you make it to the top of the hill, before you reach the fourth and final stage, a single screen where you must carefully jump around the pirates and reach your girlfriend before she gets boiled. Rinse and repeat until you die and cherish your high score from there.

Despite the variety Pirate Pete has on offer, the game still feels balanced in a frustrating way, and while it gets more fun once you finally remember the routines of each level, I couldn’t help but have a bit of a grudge towards this one. That first stage was a quarter drainer for me until I finally got the hang of the jumping, and the second stage is deceptively difficult if you focus too much on attacking the enemies. Once I learned I could just swim past everything, I had a much easier time, and the final two stages being more up my alley led to the game loop being pretty decent. Still, this is a pure scorechaser and if you aren’t up for beating the more difficult loops solely to aim for a high score, you won’t have much to do here besides try to clear that first loop.

Chack’n Pop– A single screen Arcade game that would lead into Bubble Bobble. Hey, I talked about this one in another compilation review! My positivity for this one still stands as a scorechaser.

You take control of Chack’n, who must recover hearts stolen from his lover. To do so, you go throughout several stages, bombing cages with trapped hearts in time while also trying to get rid of enemies in your way. You can drop a bomb in front of or behind you, and this is how you can take out enemies, along with yourself if you get too carried away.

While clearing the stages normally is pretty typical and something that can be done simply with good ol memorization, Chack’n Pop shines as a scorechaser through the various ways in which you can get point bonuses. Clear the entire stage as a pacifist, and you gain a huge amount of points. Likewise if you wait for all the eggs to hatch and go all in on destroying each monstar, you’ll get points.

This means if you want to play risky for more points, you certainly can, and that’s what helped keep Chack’n Pop as a frequent go-to on my Taito Super Pocket, and made this one quite a delight to play on my Alpha. Yes, this is also primarily a scorechaser, but a darn fun one with more depth than you might expect.

The Legend of Kage– Yet another Arcade action game, where you must take control of a ninja going through four stages in order to save a Princess. You have a shuriken to throw as your projectile weapon, and a sword for melee combat and deflecting enemy projectiles. Unlike Pirate Pete though, this game is a lot more fun and flexible with its four stages.

The first one has you defeating enemies as you work your way up to a boss enemy, which takes you to the next level upon beating it. Then the next one has you take out a certain amount of enemies, leading into a climb up a vertical tower where you simply have to make it to the top, until that last level has you scaling the castle to rescue the princess. Rinse and repeat on further loops in different seasons for points.

The focus on action here moreso leads to Kage being a bit tougher to get into at first glance, but once you start learning how to deflect projectiles and get the hand of the combat, clearing the first loop is pretty simple. Still, this is yet another scorechaser that while fun, isn’t exactly as gripping as the other shorter loop games from the time, even if the increased variety does make me prefer this to Pirate Pete. Once again, if you aren’t into going for high scores, you aren’t gonna get much outta this one.

Bubble Bobble– This game is absurdly popular and you probably don’t need to know much more about this one if you’re looking up this review to begin with. A co-op arcade game that kickstarted tons of fun arcade trends, from co-op mandated endings, secrets and point bonuses galore, and tons and tons of replay value purely from all the wild things you can do to boost your score or find secrets in the 200 stages on offer here.

What else is there to say? While the Super Pocket version felt a little weird due to only being a solo adventure, now with the cartridge you can just pop it into a VS or Alpha and get that co-op experience for the full adventure. Even by yourself though, this is one incredible scorechaser, and easily the strongest game on the cartridge for the sheer replay value.

Raimais– In this dot-eater game, you take control of Rika as she sets out to rescue her brother from a dangerous, 32 level labyrinth, by driving her bike all over the place. What sounds like a belated Pac-Man clone has way more depth to it than one might expect, although this is an unfortunate situation where the usual Blaze routine of getting the western release of a game is a huge detriment.

See, the Japanese version of Raimais has all sorts of crazy fun bonuses and secrets as most Taito games had around this time. Alternate pathways, multiple endings, (including a secret ending people didn’t find for decades solely due to it being bugged until the recent Arcade Archives version) multiple ways to shortcut to the ending and lots of secrets to uncover. There’s also scenes with voice acting every few stages, which was mighty impressive for 1988. Sadly, Raimais wasn’t that great of a game for scoring due to the nature of this structure and how destroying respawning enemies over and over again gets real tedious.

In this western version of Raimais, only previously reissued via PS2 before now? Well, you lose all means to shortcut to the ending, meaning you gotta play all 32 stages no matter what. All the cutscenes are gone, and some of the secrets are gone. There’s a little more variety and the 32 stage gauntlet makes it slightly better for scoring, but the huge focus on secrets helped to give Raimais an alluring charm that made it worth playing multiple times just to see what sort of craziness your route would lead to. Now you just have a mediocre dot-collecting game with occasional, clunky boss battles, with less of the magic that made Raimais unique.

Sure, you get very good music (that restarts far too frequently), and there’s still fun to be had here, but next to some of the western Arcade versions of certain Konami games, I’d argue the western version of Raimais here is one of the worst downgrades of an Arcade game between regions, period. What could have been a magical, quirky game to boost this cart’s obscurity factor instead has to settle with a medicore dumbed down version. Very disappointing.

Don Doko Don– Another in the “filled with secrets” category, this elimination platformer has you and a friend tag along for 50 stages, taking out enemies and bosses as you hammer around each of the levels. This one I’ve always found rather forgettable with some annoying sound effects, but there’s still a good chunk of scoring fun to be had, and plenty of secrets to uncover including, you guessed it, hidden levels.

Of the many games like this on Evercade, I personally find Tumblepop or Snow Bros 2 to be far superior, but you also have Bubble Bobble on this very cartridge, so Don Doko Don just came off as weird filler to me. Fun filler, but still filler. Still worth playing through with a co-op partner if you have one, though.

Growl– Now this is a treat. A four player co-op brawler with you taking control of animal fans who set out to stop poachers by aggressively beating them up. With a bombastic soundtrack, satisfying combat and some fun weapons, Growl might not be as in-depth as some other belt scrollers from the time, but it’s a shockingly good one to play, and that’s just from me only being able to play this by myself. With two or four players, I can only imagine it being an absolute blast, although you shouldn’t really get your hopes up about this being good for score purposes, since there’s not much depth to that.

Nevertheless, as a co-op brawler, Growl is a great time, and having the four player version available here compared to the two player one we could have gotten was a great choice, making this a perfect pick for the Evercade VS in particular. A lot of retro brawlers from the time would often get too repetitive for my taste, but I’m happy to say for me at least, this sits comfortably next to Taito’s own Warrior Blade and Konami’s Vendetta as excellent brawlers worth spending a co-op afternoon on. It might not be Taito’s best brawler, but it certainly is one that leaves a great impression nevertheless, and one I found myself digging quite a lot.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Taito Arcade 1 has a lot of scorechasers on it, but outside of Chack’n Pop and Bubble Bobble, none of them are really addicting. The newer games on the cartridge offer some excellent co-op fun in the form of Growl, Bubble Bobble and Don Doko Don, but when it comes to Taito compilations this one is a pretty weak set in comparison.

Even dismissing the redundancy from the Super Pocket, this batch of games is either early 80s scorechasers with not too much depth to them, or pretty great co-op games that are best played that way, and not so much as solo experiences. What might have been an absolute sleeper hit with Raimais is tainted by the choice of using the terrible Western release of the game that removes what gives Raimais its unique identity, and when one regional difference can make or break your game, that really hurt the overall set for me.

All in all, a decent package of scorechasers, but not many of Taito’s best, even if the greats here are really great. The 80s had much more engaging and addicting scorechasers they could have pulled from, but alas, these just weren’t from that pool outside of the two big names, and you’re best off getting this cart moreso for the co-op action from the newer titles on the cart, or if you really like the original Space Invaders and aren’t lamenting the absence of Return of the Invaders.

I give Taito Arcade 1 a 6 out of 10.