Taito Memories Joukan

"The best Arcade Collection out there"

Introduction: "What is this so called Taito Memories Vol. 1 collection thing", "What is so great about it?" you ask. Well to begin, it is a game that will not see a life in the States. Why is this better then the American release of it? Because for some reason Taito of America decided not to copy this game and to make their own collection of games which suck compared to this copy. Here is an example: In America they chose to release Elevator Action 1 (from the Nintendo system) instead of Elevator Action 2 (which was on the Saturn and is like 100 times better then the Nintendo system version). Everything that the Japanese put in their collection, America decided to look for more inferior games to just mash them up in a collection and hopefully sell it. Of course there were some similarities: like both games had some type version of Alien Invasion in their collection but since I am not really a game, I could care less.

Controls 9/10: Now as for the controls, it will vary from game to game but I will give an example of one game (Elevator Action 2): X is to jump, circle to shoot and X+circle is to toss a bomb. Also The R1 button is defiantly the button to enter more continues for what ever game you are playing. Also for every game, the back button is X since in the Japanese people's minds X means no while circle means yes or accept.

Every single game is arcade ported perfect with out any bugs, (excluding the R1 button and the option screen that allows you to exit the game that you are playing and etc) but that also means there are no extras once you beat a certain game. Even in the normal option mode there are no extras which kind of sucks.

Music/Sound/ Length ?/10 : The length and music/ sound quality again depends on the game that you are playing since (of course) the older ones will have a more worse quality then the newer games in the collection.

So should you get this? Yes, if you have a Japanese PS2. Maybe, if you are willing to shell out the money for a Japanese PS2 and for the game but if you really want it then go ahead and get it.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 08/23/07