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Buyer’s Egret?
Taito is a company with a rich history in the world of video gaming, and it’s fair to say that if the Japanese veteran hadn’t existed, the gaming landscape would look rather different today. Space Invaders arguably transformed interactive entertainment from a casual pastime into a global pop culture phenomenon, conquering not just its native Japan but the rest of the world, too. While Tomohiro Nishikado’s seminal shooter is perhaps Taito’s most famous accomplishment, its list of other classic titles is truly enviable. Bubble Bobble, Elevator Action, Darius, RayStorm, Qix, Rainbow Islands, Puzzle Bobble, Rastan, Chase H.Q., The Ninja Warriors… this is just a handful of the titles Taito has contributed to the medium over the decades and is barely scratching the surface.
While Taito has been a subsidiary of Square Enix since 2005 and it’s reasonable to say that the glory days of the firm have long since passed, the Taito name retains a considerable degree of cachet, even with modern players. It’s fitting, then, that the latest in the recent line of ‘mini cabinets’ – which includes the Neo Geo Mini and Sega Astro City Mini – should be focused on Taito’s arcade output. Based on the company’s iconic arcade system, the Egret II Mini is a tabletop console that features its own screen and controls but requires external power (via USB-C) to function. It offers HDMI-out functionality and boasts a robust micro-switched joystick and responsive buttons.
Now, as we’ve just briefly mentioned, Taito isn’t the first to produce such a device. SNK’s Neo Geo Mini arrived in 2018 and wasn’t bad for starters, while Sega’s more recent Astro City Mini offered a much-improved experience by including better controls and superior TV-out image quality. The Egret II Mini has a few neat surprises of its own, the most notable of which is the fact that the display has a mechanism that allows it to be manually rotated 90 degrees to accommodate the arcade titles that used ‘TATE’ setups in their original form (Sega’s upcoming Astro City Mini V will also boast a vertical screen, but not one that can be manually changed to a horizontal setup).
The mechanism is incredibly satisfying to use and merely involves pushing the screen inwards with two fingers and then turning it before giving it a second push to lock it into position. The on-screen visuals rotate automatically, so there’s no chance of you playing with the wrong orientation. It’s an ingenious engineering solution to the issue of arcade titles using different screens, and we’d imagine it accounts for the Egret II Mini’s rather steep cost when compared to its direct rivals. Even so, we feel that the extra expense is ultimately worth it, as the only other option would have been to play TATE mode games with black borders down the sides of the screen.
The Egret II Mini’s other party trick is that it has an SD card slot which allows you to load up extra games. The only way to use this at present is to shell out more cash for the paddle and trackball controller, which plugs into one of the USB ports on the back of the machine. When you have both the SD card and controller connected, you gain access to 10 additional titles, all of which make use of one of these analogue control options.
Finally, there’s the ability to toggle the joystick between eight directional input and the four cardinal directions – the latter being suitable for titles where only movement in four (or even two) directions is permitted. You can switch between the two modes by turning a dial on the base of the system.
From a pure design and hardware perspective, the Egret II Mini feels a lot like the Astro City Mini. It has an all-plastic casing, but a high-quality one all the same, and the controls are tight and responsive. The stick is perhaps situated a little too close to the screen, which might lead to issues for those with large hands, but on the whole, we were able to play for several hours without feeling any discomfort – and should you feel that staring at that display for prolonged periods isn’t your idea of a good time, you can connect the Egret II Mini to your television and plug in the option joypad or arcade stick.
The console’s display is decent enough, but on its default setting, the Egret II Mini employs a rather fuzzy filter which is more obvious on titles that run at quite a low resolution. Confusingly, diving into the system’s settings reveals that this is with the default filter setting of ‘off’ – turn the filter ‘on’ and you’re blessed with much sharper (but not quite pixel-perfect) visuals. Because the image is scaled to fit the screen, expect to see some occasional shimmering; it’s not ideal, but Taito has had to deal with multiple resolutions across all of the bundled titles, so it’s somewhat understandable. In a neat touch, game-specific border artwork is displayed whenever the screen isn’t totally filled by the playing area.
Of course, a device like this lives or dies by the quality of the bundled games. The good news here is that Taito’s back catalogue of arcade titles – as we’ve already discussed – is excellent, so there are plenty of solid-gold classics to get your teeth into. Space Invaders kicks things off and is joined by a few other very early Taito titles in the form of Lunar Rescue, Steel Worker, Pirate Pete and Qix. These are understandably quite crude in terms of visuals but are nonetheless interesting to play. Things become a little more interesting by the time we venture a little further into the 1980s, with Bubble Bobble being just as effortlessly playable now as it was back in 1986. 1987’s Rastan is equally enjoyable, while the Toaplan-developed Kyukyoku Tiger / Twin Cobra is a bona fide shmup masterpiece (and was recently the focus of its own Switch-based collection).
Elsewhere, the likes of Tatsujin / Truxton, KiKi KaiKai, The New Zealand Story, Metal Black, RayForce, Darius Gaiden, Elevator Action Returns, Rainbow Islands (although it’s the ‘Extra’ version, sadly) Bubble Memories and Gun Frontier bring us into the late ’80s and early ’90s, offering a stunning combination of gorgeous 2D artwork and blisteringly engrossing gameplay. These are joined by notable (but perhaps not essential) releases such as the eco-focused belt-scroller Runark (also known as Growl), the humorous soccer title Hat Trick Hero and the side-scrolling action RPG Cadash.
The problem with the latter is that, because all of the ROMs included here are the Japanese ones (at least, that’s the case with the review unit we were sent), most of the text is Japanese, which makes things a little impenetrable if you can’t read Japanese. This impacts other titles to a lesser extent, as Japanese text is mostly reserved for tutorial modes or menus (it’s worth noting that the Egret II Mini’s UI language can be set to English, Japanese, Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese, but this has no impact on the language displayed in each game).
In a neat bonus, Dan Ku Ga, an unreleased update for 1994’s Kaiser Knuckle (which also makes the cut), is included on the Egret II Mini despite having never been released in arcades. This incremental update is very much part of Taito’s attempt to muscle in on the one-on-one fighting game crazy triggered by Capcom’s Street Fighter II and has some neat ideas of its own – such as destructible scenery and boundaries which can be smashed through. The inclusion of these two games is the reason why there are six buttons on the unit, as it mimics Capcom’s effort by featuring three levels of power for punches and kicks.
If you invest in the aforementioned paddle and trackball controller, then you also get Marine Date, Strike Bowling, Birdie King, Arkanoid, Arkanoid Revenge of Doh, Plump Pop, Cameltry, Puchi Carat, Syvalion and Arkanoid Returns, all of which offer pleasantly nuanced controls thanks to the analogue trackball and paddle interface.
Some of the games included here – such as Metal Black, Elevator Action Returns and Gun Frontier – were ported to the Sega Saturn in Japan back in the ’90s, and those versions now sell for handsome sums online. While the games are also available collections that have been issued over the years, you could argue that, by including such collectable examples, Taito has ensured that the Egret II Mini offers value for money. It’s a flimsy argument, for sure, but one that hardcore collectors may well wrestle with prior to making a purchase. Irrespective of whatever justification you make in order to excuse the purchase, the fact remains that this is the only legitimate way to play titles like Syvalion and Arkanoid Returns with a faithful interface, which must surely count for something.
Here’s the complete list of all of the games:
Optional (comes with trackball/paddle controller)
With its impressive build quality, innovative rotating display and unique optional analogue controller, the Egret II Mini is a surprisingly effective way to rediscover the historic catalogue of one of the industry’s greatest arcade firms, but its high price is likely to be an obstacle to all but the most dedicated of retro enthusiasts, especially if you want to purchase all of the optional extras, such as the (admittedly excellent) paddle and trackball controller.
There’s definitely a legitimate argument that Taito’s library isn’t quite as desirable as that of, say, Sega or SNK, but it’s a somewhat moot point; this is as niche as they come, and if you’re being truly honest with yourself, you’ll already know if you want to own it before you read a word of this review. Keen retro addicts are unlikely to come away disappointed with this, but those with a more casual relationship with vintage gaming (and Taito in general) might not get full value out of the unit.
Please note that some external links on this page are affiliate links, which means if you click them and make a purchase we may receive a small percentage of the sale. Please read our FTC Disclosure for more information.
Thanks to United Games for supplying the unit used in this review.
About Damien McFerran
Damien has over a decade of professional writing experience under his belt, as well as a repulsively hairy belly. Rumours that he turned down a role in The Hobbit to work on Nintendo Life are, to the best of our knowledge, completely and utterly unfounded.
Comments (33)
UUUUUUGH…
Too much cool stuff out there, not enough cash, or almost more importantly, time.
I’ve preordered and waiting patiently. Man, that NEO GEO one looks like a plastic toy next to the other cabinets. (Yes…I know they are ALL plastic toys. Shhh.)
Cool screen, but this one’s content is not for me. The Sega Astro City Mini V, however…
I bought the mini neogeo arcade…thing, as a gift for a friend. They have it set up nicely among other tchotchkes. Don’t know how much they play it. My question is, do others that buy this, actually game on it(as is), use the hdmi out or is it purely aesthetic reasons.
I was going to be all over this until it was confirmed it was Rainbow Islands Extra. RI is one of my all-time favourite games (along with NZ story and Bubble Bobble) but the insane and uncalled for alteration of enemies for the Extra version is just a total turn off. Shame as this does look pretty cool.
I’ve thought this for years now but I appreciate that NL has taken on being not just Nintendo but also the retro gaming scene. Keep up the great work!
@Darthroseman Thanks for the kind words!
I want one, I also wanted to play a lot of these games. Especially Growl. I already have the Neo Geo Mini and Astro City Mini so adding this will fit right in.
Do the paddle and trackball controller work on the Nintendo Switch and/or PC?
The only problem I got with this is how expensive it is. The only sites I can order it from are not exactly ideal, and it’s going to cost about $450 for the system shipped with a paddle controller.
One of the appealing things about the NeoGeo Mini and the Sega Astro City Mini were how relatively cheap they were. I thought the NeoGeo was ideal for a little novelty system like this, and the Astro City was about as expensive as I thought it could be worth. Admittedly this is even more sophisticated, but it’s still just a mini arcade deal and it’s expensive enough to be competing with more full sized arcade cabinets that I can get from companies like Arcade1Up. I mean if I go all out on this Taito system it’s about $600, which seems kinda crazy to me considering what it is.
I procrastinated about preordering from Amazon Japan for months, then Strictly Limited emailed that they opened their preorders, and I finally decided to splurge.
The mini cab was just too cute to resist. And I’m really looking forward to playing the Arkanoid games properly, with a spinner. I remember Rastan and Bubble Bobble fondly, too, and QIX was probably my most-played Gameboy game, back in the day.
Definitely an impulse buy for me, but the package just appealed to me more than, say, a PS4 and a few used games would.
This is an infinitely better collection than that Milestones pack.
Would’ve probably got one if it included phoenix
This is what Atari should have done…
I justified my preorder by commiting to figuring out how to hack it so I can run other games on it. Then, it would be worth it because I’d have a rotatable screen, authentic controllers, and hundreds of games in a small, low-power form factor (I am partially off-grid, so low power consumption is a big bonus).
If I am being honest, it looks like a waste of 450$
You know nothing Jon Snow…
Get it …
Egrit…
I’ll see myself out for now…
@Would_you_kindly Yeah, that one really hurts it’s missing
I assume the Strictly Limited ‘version’ will also be fully Japanese and not localised in English (just like the one I pre-ordered on Amazon Japan) but it would be good to know.
I was ignored when I asked them on Twitter.
I ordered mine from Play Asia way back in July. I decided to order the main unit and track ball controller separately as the postage to the UK was way less expensive than purchasing both together ? weird.
Whilst I appreciate a modern console is more powerful and graphically better. I would still like to jump in a time machine and go back to the early 80’s and show this to someone who had one of those Grandstand Munchman or Caveman devices!
So many of these games are already on the Switch, not sure why I would want or need this. Most of the mini consoles I have are sitting on my bookshelf now gathering dust. I just would love if Arkanoid, Chase H.Q. and Zookeeper could make it over to the Switch.
I tried to order this through Strictly Limited Games but they aren’t shipping to Australia and to order it elsewhere puts it up to ridiculous amounts where I could buy a Switch instead.
Not willing to pay that much for it sadly.
Review with affiliate links at the end = bad journalism.
@the_shpydar … but also the only places in the EU you can order without importing from Asia (with all the import tax that might incur). So actually quite useful if you want one of these.
@mr_benn
Useful, sure.
But still bad journalism.
@the_shpydar I’d rather they just be up front and disclose that they received a review unit with affiliate links at the end as NL does, instead of everyone pretending that this sort of thing doesn’t happen on every big gaming website.
Cost a fortune but I had to order it. Arkanoid is one of the few games my wife is into- she plays the nes one a LOT. I was waiting for Arcade1up to someday make an arkanoid to buy her but it seems they don’t do much tatio games.
@Ellie-Moo They responded to my email. They are the same if you buy from Strictly Limited or Games Rocket.
I would love to buy one but I just cannot sensibly spend so much money at this time.
Getting it for sure. I love my Astro City Mini, but I gotta admit that Egret II Mini’s selection of titles is more varied. Some omissions, yes, I would have loved to see Chase HQ here, a game which never gets into Taito collections. But I’m impressed about how appealing most of the included titles turned out to be to me.
Price is steeper, of course, but let’s not forget that the Astro City Mini’s price got reduced after some months, at least in Japan, which again is the best option to purchase the Egret, and the only way to get pink buttons. Now and, of course, when it too gets discounted at some point. And that doesn’t happen with products sold by limited releases’ companies.
If you want more than the base unit and a normal controller then yes, shipping and taxes make the Western options much cheaper.
I cannot believe this isn’t sold out yet. Got my Game Center order in!!
Jungle King / Jungle Hunt / Pirate Pete is a true Taito classic.
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