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Title: Taito Arcade 3
System: Evercade
Price: $29.99
Release Date: February 2026
Prelude
While finishing the review of Taito Arcade 2, I was hopeful we’d see another Taito cart of some kind, whether that’d be a Console or Arcade cart, but I had a feeling it’d probably be the latter due to some leftovers from the Taito Super Pocket still needing an Evercade home. Sure enough, Taito Arcade 3 is indeed real, and indeed includes the remaining Taito Arcade games from the Super Pocket, plus some newcomers!
Presentation
Per the usual norm with Evercade by now, the Arcade emulation is still real solid with next to no major errors that I could notice. Games look crisp, sound fine, and the emulation is pretty spot on, with the only things I noticed being very, very minor differences in sound with two games that are only really noticeable if you played the PCB/ACA versions. Business as usual here!
Gameplay
The final batch of Taito Super Pocket Arcade leftovers are part of this cart, meaning the only thing you can play only on the Taito Super Pocket and nowhere else related to Evercade is Space Invaders 91. So if you aren’t missing the idea of not having that, these three Taito carts will replicate that Super Pocket lineup really damn well. Of course, it wouldn’t be worth it for Pocket owners like me if there weren’t some exclusives that you couldn’t play on the Pocket, so we have a nice mix here!
Lunar Rescue: Space Invaders was a gigaton that changed Arcade gaming forever, Space Invaders II kept that energy up a year later. Lunar Rescue did not capture the same level of fame, but that doesn’t mean the game is bad, far from it! Lunar Rescue takes the Space Invaders idea of shooting up at enemies, and combines it with a new goal of controlling a space ship with limited fuel to reach a landing pad and rescue people stuck on the moon.
You have limited fuel, and can slow your descent to avoid crashing into asteroids, but the more you slow down your ship, the more fuel you use up, so if you want those extra points you need to save up fuel as much as possible, while also making sure to shoot down as many of the alien spaceships that block your way back upward. Rinse and repeat, and go for the highest score.
Of the two Space Invaders-adjacent spinoffs (Lunar Rescue and Space Cyclone), I’ve always preferred Space Cyclone, but spending time with Lunar Rescue again on Evercade made me grow to appreciate it a lot more than I did previously. For a 70s era scorechaser, Lunar Rescue is a pretty decent one.
Crazy Balloon: Another hyper early game, from back in 1980! In this game, you move a balloon, avoid spikes, and try to make it to the exit. Your balloon sways from side to side, and if your balloon touches a spike it pops, but the tiny dot at the bottom of the balloon is what you’re actually moving, so if you navigate that through trickier passages, you’ll score more points.
On the other hand if you goof around too long, you’ll get blown around by a face on the side of the screen, and get less bonus points if you try clearing the stage. Really simple, and if you’ve ever played a Kururin game this concept basically originates from this game. Short and simple fun, but only one you might click with if you’re a score chaser.
Qix: A game I fell in deep love with via the Game Boy port, and this original version is still fantastic after all this time! You might recall we went over the sequel game Volfied for Taito Arcade 1, and the original Qix plays a lot like that, with the main objective still being to box in the big enemy and score the most points depending on how much percentage of the screen you get. No powerups or mini enemies this time around, just you and the Qix plus their clones. You also have the ability to not just draw at normal speed, but at a much slower speed, leaving you more open to getting struck by the Qix but at the benefit of getting even more points if you complete a draw while moving slowly.
That’s about it here, since there’s no ending or anything of the sort like you might expect if you played Volfied first, but that really isn’t a bad thing at all! The core loop here works even better than in the sequel games in my book, and the pure focus on score makes this a great one to pick up and play. Perfect for picking up for a few minutes, drawing some risky lines for big points, and then putting it away once you eventually lose, and a good play for scorechasing fans.
Zoo Keeper: Every other game in this set has been reissued on modern consoles or a Taito thing of some kind in the past decade, except for this one. After playing it, I have no idea why Taito was reluctant to bring this to more platforms, since Zoo Keeper is an incredible take on the early platformer! The main goal here is to keep all the animals within the cage of each level by fortifying the bricks surrounding the animals. Animals can just keep ramming into the bricks and wear out the walls, allowing them to escape to go after you, but if you run over thin air or a weakened wall you’ll build those bricks right back up.
You’re on a time limit, and between each interval a bonus item will drop for you to pick up, ranging from bonus point items to a handy little shovel that lets you send any escaped animals back into the brick cage. Once time runs out, each animal within the cage will turn into points and thus raise your score, leading to a really fun gameplay loop, especially as the game gets chaotic rather quickly; several stages in and there’ll be so many enemies running around the game will slowdown, which also makes it tougher for you to stay alive.
As a scorechaser, Zoo Keeper is pretty fun, but ironically the best way to get points and where most of the challenge comes from is not from trapping all the animals, but the platforming bonus stages where Zeke must climb a set of platforms to rescue his friend Zelda. Sure, it seems very short and easy to rescue her, but on the way up to her platform you can jump over obstacles and collect bonus items that spawn on the moving platforms, which give quite a lot of points if you stall around and focus specifically on racking up those bonus items. If you get really good at these segments, you can earn some major points this way, which makes the Donkey Kong-esque platforming sections the most enjoyable aspect here. There’s also another bonus segment where you have to climb stairs and jump over animals to rescue Zelda, but it’s a lot more annoying and less useful for point purposes.All in all, an incredible scorechaser and the best game of the cart by far.
Unfortunately, it was also the only game on this cart I’d say has a pretty nasty bug in the form of some kind of broken save state system. It’s fine on Evercade VS/Alpha/EXP, and save states made on those systems will work fine between those three, but if you shift from those to a Super Pocket or vice versa, your save states are not recognized on the other device. They’ll still be there upon putting the cart back in the system that state originated from, but it seems to share the same issue Gate of Doom had on Data East Arcade 1. Funnily enough though, the manual score saving that the VS/EXP/Alpha does will let your scores carry over to playing on a Super Pocket, but it seems if you wanna save state your scores, you gotta stick to a platform branch. (I presume the OG 2020 Evercade is like the Super Pocket in terms of what save states it recognizes here.) Keep that in mind if you wanna rack up those scores.
The Fairyland Story: This single screen elimination game would be another of Bubble Bobble’s inspirations, and tasks you with being a fairy who must clear the screen of enemies by turning them into cakes. You then either destroy them by pushing them off a cliff, or by just shooting them over and over until they break. Decent little concept, not the best execution for me here.
Fairyland Story might seem real tough to get anywhere with the scoring in this game, but the trick to that is to just focus on trying to line up enemies underneath a cake Dig Dug style, which can pay off real well if you pull it off. Still, this is by far the game with the highest learning curve here if you want to go for big points, but a decent little prototype of much better games Taito would churn out shortly after, and what others like Data East would clone relentlessly.
Cadash: This game was a pretty ambitious game for the time, being a four player RPG adventure accomplished by linking two cabs together. Unfortunately every reissue of this game locks you to 2 Players, and that’s the case here on Evercade too. Still, that doesn’t mean Cadash isn’t a fun co-op game, and it does a pretty decent job of being an RPG Arcade game!
You have four classes to choose from, each with their own weapons, upgrades, and even Magic availability. The Ninja is weak but quick, the Wizard is fragile but super powerful, the Fighter is a pretty typical action gamey hero, and the Priest has a decent attack level and powerful defensive magic. Each has their own level up benefits, and they also have exclusive equipment only a certain class can put on.
Upon picking your class, it’s off to the first stage, which shows you the ropes pretty quickly. Defeat enemies, get EXP and Gold, get stronger per level up, and beat the stage within the time limit. Yes, this means you have to grind at some points, but not to the point of running out the timer. Yes, even if you grind the enemies will still steamroll you if you so much as brush some of them. No, this game isn’t that great for 1CC or even scoring purposes.
That means if you’re hoping for a fair and balanced Arcade take on the RPG genre with everything polished to perfection, that isn’t Cadash, that’s Legend of Valkryie. Here in Cadash you will die a lot, even if you go real careful and try to avoid damage, you’ll just run out of time. That’s also not counting the fact that as you progress through each stage, the levels get bigger, having multiple pathways, and even introducing mini sidequests and light plot elements to base each stage around, making the limited time on the clock even more tricky to deal with.
Honestly, don’t feel too bad if you just credit feed through this and play Cadash more casually, especially if you bring a friend along as you’ll have a pretty good time upon doing so. As an Arcade game it comes off very unbalanced and not at all fun to play for scoring or memorizing for a 1CC, but as a co-op adventure it definitely manages to be fun enough for a full clear in an afternoon, and well worth a play for that alone. Being free from the Super Pocket for co-op play makes Cadash especially appealing on this cart.
Cameltry: This is a first for the Taito games on Evercade, being how this one required a dial controller back in the original Arcade. Operation Wolf used a light gun on a stick which was the other accessory-focused game, but Cameltry flat out wanted you to use a dial to play this game, so did it translate well to D-Pad controls?
Yeah, I say it handles them very well. See, the main goal here is to tilt an entire maze from left to right, bouncing a ball around it as you try to hunt for the exit in as short of time as possible. There are four different courses of varying difficulties, and each course has its own set of stages, so you won’t be able to mix and match the Beginner and Advanced stages, for instance. You have a timer, you clear each stage and carry that timer into the next one after getting your bonus time, and keep at it until you reach the end of the course or time out!
Honestly, the Dial controller was quickly an afterthought for me there, since the D-Pad for tilting the maze does so with pretty good speed and didn’t make me feel like I was hindered by not having the actual dial to spin around in my hands. No, plugging in a USB Dial does not bring back the Dial controls. Some prior reissues of the game remapped the dial directions to the shoulder buttons, but I found them to be just fine on the D-Pad. You also can speed up your falling by holding down the A button, which also bumps the maze and helps your ball move a bit faster if you time it just right.
Race to the end, get the best score on each course, and have fun! This one is pretty short, but a very replayable game once you start memorizing the stages, and it can be pretty fun to keep challenging yourself the more you play it, so I found it to be a pretty fun dial game brought to Evercade just as good as it could have been.
Football Champ: A four player soccer game, now freed from its one player only prison on the Super Pocket. You choose from one of several different countries, pick a team captain from that country, and face off against the other teams! You have your typical shot/pass, but now you can slide tackle and even punch the other players as long as the ref isn’t in view of it.
The game is just Soccer, not much else to say here. Very flashy presentation, the four player support is pretty quirky and the game is way better as a multiplayer game than against the CPU, who acts like a fortified wall at all times even with all the DIP Switches set to easy. Don’t think you can stalemate your way to a tie either, since that counts as a loss. If you wanted a sports game, you have one now, albeit a very tough one.
Puzzle Bobble: The Taito Puzzle classic that got cloned a bajillion times. Your grandma might have played Bubble Witch Saga and never got off the computer when you wanted to go posting on forums, because of this game being made back in the 90s. Anyhow, you aim bubbles of certain colors, match them with the same color bubbles and try to clear a wall of bubbles in order to advance to the next stage, it’s pretty easy.
You go through a set of 30 stages, each being their own unique bubble walls. There’s no VS CPU mode here as that wouldn’t come until the home ports, so this is a fairly casual, easygoing game if you just want to save state/continue your way through 30 something levels. Pretty solid fun in that regard, but if you’re a scorechaser you might get even more outta trying to clear the stages as fast as possible and by shooting weak points in the bubble wall to collapse a bunch of bubbles at once; the more bubbles you clear at once, the bigger you score, so combining this with the time bonus makes for some pretty addictive scoring!
Either way, if you’ve ever played any game like this, whether that be one of the bajillion clones out there or other Puzzle Bobble entries, you’ll know what to expect with this first entry. Perfect for the handhelds in particular, but really just good ol fun on anything. It ain’t the peak of Puzzle Bobble 3, but it’ll do.
Conclusion
In conclusion, Taito Arcade 3 leans a bit more into the scorechaser heavy side of things than 2 did, but the games here are a pretty great bunch overall. You have the surprisingly engaging Lunar Rescue, the all time addictive classic Qix, a hidden gem in Zoo Keeper and a surprisingly well-executed Dial game in the form of Cameltry, all of which stand out as easy recommendations from the cart.
The other games are a little shakier, but still fun. Crazy Balloon can be quite repetitive even if the challenge is decent for scoring, Cadash is an excellent game for playing in any way but how you actually would in the arcades, Puzzle Bobble is the birth of a classic formula, and Football Champ is infuriating solo, but a good pick for multiplayer sessions. I think I’d nudge Taito Arcade 2 over this one slightly in terms of my personal favorites, but Zoo Keeper does a significant job in almost making this the best Taito cart to date. With the Super Pocket leftovers done, I’m just hoping we get one more cart to see a full cart of Taito games not available on that thing! So many pre 90s games to choose from…
I give Taito Arcade 3 an 8 out of 10.