Taito Legends 2

The Good
I'm a big fan of classic gaming from any era, and since I play primarily on my PC, it's always a joy when I can find a collection like this. With games from an era I never truly got to experience, this Taito Legends (the second game in Taito's Legends series of collections) is packed with tons of classic, and obscure, arcade treasures.

There seem to be more scrolling-shooters this time around, with graphic powerhouses like Darius Gaiden, Elevator Action Returns, and Bubble Symphony mingling with older titles like Alpine Ski and Crazy Balloon.

Each games has extras like configurable controls, scans of the original flyers sent out to arcade owners and the like. Most are also two player, and they work fine with many different controllers.

Also, some of the games weren't widely available, and getting to play games I had never heard of, like Growl and Gun Frontier, was a ton of fun.

The Bad
But, though this collection has great games, and plenty of cool bonus features, it does have some warts. Chiefly at fault is a horrible menu system that forces you to scroll through each of the games before you come to the one you want. Ideally you would only need to select a title from a drop-down list, but not here.

Also annoying is the game's habit of resetting your controls each time you load it up. I have to continually reconfigure my game controller to work with it each time I play. I also found the lengthy disc-check the game goes through to be tedious; anything that keeps me from my game is not a good thing.

And, though this obviously doesn't bother me, some people may find the going a bit tough. These are arcade games after all, and they are much harder than your average console game of the times. But with the controllable difficulty most players should be able to find a setting to suit them.

The Bottom Line
Overall, I would highly recommend this collection to anyone who has fond memories of their local arcade, and to anyone interested in classic gaming. If you're a fan of beat-'em-ups, scrolling-shooters, or puzzle games, there's sure to be something on this disc to interest you.