I have to admit that as a real fan of classic arcade shooters of all types, the Switch (and now the Switch 2) is an amazing system to have on-hand to enjoy them quite fully. Whether docked or on the go, side-scrolling or vertical, sprite-based or some form of rendered, the system is chock full of shooting goodness. So it does tend to take something special to manage to step ahead of the rest of the pack. 

Given the fact that I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for arcade classics, with the Raiden series being a memorable cornerstone of the vertical shooting subgenre, I was excited just loading this collection up based on reputation alone. What I didn’t anticipate is that all 3 titles in this collection would get me to break a bit of a sweat, challenging me but having a great time all the same. Having played so many arcade shooters over the years, there are just certain expectations you have for what makes them classic and worthwhile. What I didn’t expect, and that slapped me across the face in this collection, is that it really feels like it has cranked the speed of the play experience up to 11, and that’s both exciting and terrifying at the same time.

I guess it’s something that I have always taken for granted, that in terms of speed the typical arcade shooter just moves at a certain pace. I would imagine in the older days this wasn’t so much of a deliberate choice as being tied to limitations of the horsepower the developers were working with, but now in an age where hardware is more than capable of handling just about anything sprite-based you could throw at it, I suppose games were just programmed to cap movement speeds. With all 3 games in this collection that cap has been raised, with your ship, your enemies, and the bullets flying at a pretty quick rate. Throw in a few ships whose stats for movement are even higher, and there are options available to you that I was honestly starting to struggle to adequately keep track of in terms of control. I could see how for someone who isn’t as into shooters this could make the game overwhelming, but for veterans like me who are looking for something to break away from normal expectations, this is a real challenging treat.