Having grown up witnessing the rise and fall of the arcades, there’s a special place in my heart for loads of titles from that era, ranging from the greats to oddball guilty pleasures. One thing you learned quickly in that era was that if a given title was making money, you could count on other companies trying to replicate that success and get in on the action. Granted, some incredible titles came out of that tradition, with cases where the clones actually surpassed the original (looking at you Ms. Pac-Man), but more often than not you could get results that would range from middling to outright mediocre. While I normally love these retro arcade collections, unfortunately more often than not this one seems to be tapping that crowd on the lower end of the spectrum, making it fascinating from the perspective of seeing and understanding what competition was out there, but not often very much fun to play through.

Rather than having the rundown go from the decent games on through the worst, we’ll start with the ones that were more in the awful range, though not always for the same reasons. In the case of First Samurai and Second Samurai they oddly feel like almost completely different titles, with the first being an odd side-scrolling action game with some unusual elements and rules that no amount of classic experience could quite prepare me for. Second Samurai, sadly, is even more nonsensical in its play, with such a reliance on you almost constantly picking up power-ups that it’s simply a terrible mess of visual nonsense. Possibly the worst of the bunch though is Sword of Sodan, which looks like it was trying to show off some graphical prowess with the appearance of the hero’s faces, but then utterly fails when it comes to gameplay. I actually would question whether this was even ready for release at all since it plays so poorly.

Moving into games with more obvious inspirations that are merely mediocre, but at least playable, we have Gourmet Warriors and Iron Commando. Gourmet Warriors is very obviously in the mold of classic beat-em-ups like Final Fight and others, though not as varied or ambitious. It does have an odd element where you’ll use the different ingredients you’ve picked up along the way to prepare a meal, which will then give you a bonus depending on what you make. Unique, but not something you’d likely want to return to much. Iron Commando, by contrast, feels very specifically influenced by Capcom’s The Punisher beat-em-up, copying a number of its mechanics and even moves, but it’s plagued by a very odd jump and the fact that most of the weapons are simply a pain to make use of. Neither are great, but they’re certainly better than the first batch.

Finally, finishing out with the two titles that are arguably the best of the bunch, though still not great by any means, you have Legend and The Tale of Clouds and Winds. The first, by general feel, would best be compared to the Dungeons and Dragons beat-em-ups, though not nearly as polished or fun. The controls and the movement of characters can be quite unusual at times, but the vibe is still in that general vicinity in terms of the art style and overall feel. The second, The Tale of Clouds and Winds, actually reminds me a great deal of the classic Golden Axe in many regards, but again that doesn’t end up working well as a compliment since this is an obvious step down. Still, you can see some of the inspiration and that should help explain the play on a very general level. Again, while this collection isn’t entirely a disaster, and there’s value in seeing what else was out there in different markets, these are still, at best, pale shades of the superior games they were looking to replicate.