When you pick up retro arcade collections you’re likely to get a mixed bag of games at best, hoping to get a few bangers, some middle-of-the-road fare, and only a few duds. In that mindset Taito Milestones 3 is pretty well right on the mark, offering some truly top-tier classic arcade fun, a number that are pretty playable but clearly on a lower level than the best titles, and a few you may never need to load up more than once. 

Starting with the upper-crust games you have the absolutely iconic Bubble Bobble, Rastan, and depending on your tastes perhaps Dead Connection. Considering I place the first 2 in my Top 50 all-time arcade games (and I played a ton of them) they shouldn’t need much introduction, they are highly-regarded without question. Dead Connection has a few rough edges, for sure, but I’d still argue it’s at least pretty fun and distinctive, though I don’t remember playing a ton of it back in the day or even emulated on MAME since.

As for the middle tier, many fit into that mold including the underwhelming follow-up to Bubble Bobble named Rainbow Islands which is OK but lost the thread of what made its predecessor a classic. That goes double, possibly even triple for Rastan 2, which somehow manages to both look and play significantly worse than its revered older brother. I’d actually consider it being on the lowest tier potentially, but I respect the original too much to put it there. Champion Wrestler has personality and is OK but as with many wrestling games it requires some patience and is more of an acquired taste. Finally, both Thunder Fox and Runark are reasonably good, respecting the run-n-gun and a beat-em-up genres respectively, but it isn’t hard to reflect on more polished and satisfying games from those genres.

Bringing up the rear you have the lower-tier, though to be honest among some of the collections I’ve played these are actually better on average than some… so it’s all a bit relative. Cadash just feels like an odd and half-baked side-scrolling RPG-ish adventure, but it just plays pretty poorly in general. Finally you have Warrior Blade, which I’m actually unfamiliar with, but was an odd disappointment. It’s absolutely gorgeous, and it has the majority of elements of a decent beat-em-up, but it’s just a bit shallow which was enormously disappointing, especially considering the care in making it look great.

All in all it’s actually a pretty respectable collection overall, carrying enough excellence at the top to just about make it worthwhile to begin with. The middle and lower-tier games aren’t as inspired or polished, but depending on your tastes something may actually stand out for you as a game you’ll want to return to. It isn’t the best collection out there, but it’s also clearly far from the worst.