Taito Legends

The fact that is doesn't run on a 360 is the big takeaway I wanted to impress on anyone reading reviews. I knew this might be a problem when I bought the game, but I didn't see this information anywhere for sure, and it was cheap enough to find out by trial.

I do have an original XBox, on the crummy TV in the basement, and the game plays fine on this. I bought it primarily for certain retro games which I've played before, and these are certainly decent renditions.

This is basically a commercial derivative of the MAME arcade emulator (In fact, if you have the PC version of this game, there are rom images on the disc that you can drop straight into MAME). This means that all the games will play about the same as they do in MAME. This works in favor of Taito Legends, except for Phoenix - the sound isn't even CLOSE to being accurate. I think the sound in Jungle Hunt and Gladiator may be a little off as well. But other than that, I didn't notice any other flaws in the games I've played before. Based on the fact that this is essentially a shrink-wrapped MAME, the emulation here is mostly spot-on.

The biggest problem with this collection is that there are a couple of really good games, and the rest are basically crap. If you buy this game, buy it for the games you recognize, because the ones you don't recognize will probably do nothing for you. There weren't any games I hadn't played before that I spent more than 5 minutes with here, except for Space Gun, which is average at best.

For me, having an arcade-perfect version of Bubble Bobble to play on my Toshiba HDTV was worth the price of the package, but I wish they had put 5-6 strong titles on here instead of the 20+ medicore titles we ended up with. Oh, and though I can't confirm this yet, if you have the option of picking up the Xbox or the PS2 version, I'd recommend the Xbox version, because the PS2 supposedly has (more) issues with inaccurate sound (if this matters to you).

Taito Legends is a hard compilation to judge. It -- like Midway Arcade Treasures 1 -- mixes early, mid, and late 80s games, and it's just odd to have Electric Yo Yo on the same disc as Operation Wolf. There is, admittedly, a lot of filler -- the old lightgun games don't do well without a lightgun, the scrolling shooters are mostly forgettable, and three Space Invaders games might be too many for one compilation. However, the games span many genres (single-screen and scrolling shooters, adventure, puzzle, action) and the really good games are, well, really good.

Buy this compilation for:
* Space Invaders
* Jungle Hunt
* Bubble Bobble
* Rainbow Islands
* Phoenix
* Colony 7
* Zoo Keeper
* Elevator Action
* Plump Pop
* Rastan
* Super Qix
* New Zealand Story
* Plotting (aka Flipull)
* Tube It

The presentation is great. A lot of attention went towards this package, and it shows.

While there are glaring omissions (Japan and Europe got two compilations, with a total of around fifty games overall), it's a solid compilation. In any case, for the price, it's a steal.