Taito released Battle Shark in 1989. The game pretty much offered up the same basic gameplay as Operation Wolf, but instead of the view of a commando on some secret mission, you were the gunner of a submarine during the third world war. The arcade machine featured a mockup of a periscope. You had the eyepiece where you'd look and see the actual game, and from the base of the periscope extended two flight stick type handles. They were used to turn the view left and right, and up and down. The eyepiece didn't actually move or you'd be knocking yourself out with the action. The in game view has you controlling a crosshairs as you are shooting submarines and other various underwater near future war fantasy vehicles all while fish swim by. You need to shoot the missiles and torpedoes being shot at you. It plays just like a gun game on rails without the gun controller. Each section of the map has you going through the same stage types. Descent, search and destroy, boss battle, ascension. The game featured cool voice work and decent graphics, and a notable score by Team Zuntata. It's a fun but short game.
In 1990 Taito released the ridiculously silly The Ninja Kids. It's a comic take on the ninja action games of the late 1980s. It's standard stuff with a button for attack, jump, ninja magic. You have the standard jump + attack, and the double tap of the direction + attack combos. That's it. You can select between four players. Each one offers a different weapon. It's clearly inspired by the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles but goes much further as far as humor goes. The game has a cartoon art style even by 1980s arcade sprite standards. You're out to stop an evil cult from resurrecting The Satan. You progress through the game's five levels beating up anything in your path. As you go you're cutting people in half in a cartoon way. You hit someone with glasses on and they fly off and the character's eyes bulge out and the animation it entirely exaggerated. The entire game is like that. You'll face a midboss and a main bosses in each level. There are some questionably racist Japanese takes on black people and the game is one of the better examples of notable "Engrish." It has a few laugh out loud moments that are worth playing through for. The actual gameplay is barely average beat them up style even by the era's standards. Fun to play through once or twice, but not much there after that.
Space Gun was releasedby Taito in 1990. It's the further evolution in the Operation Wolf style of on rails gun shooters but this time it takes place in space against aliens. It plays out like a two player Doom as if it were a lightgun game on rails. The aliens come at you from all sides again while you control a crosshairs to aim. You have a button for a special shot that's on par to a grenade. You can find glowing panels on the walls and shooting them will reveal the three special shot types. You get a limited number. They're based around fire, ice, and electricity. There are hostages in each level that you're not supposed to shoot and are to help escape. You have to be careful in using your special shots when hostages are on screen as they might be taken out in the blast radius. You'll often find hostages stuck to walls from alien goo. You'll need precise aim and timing to shoot them free. The aliens themselves move well and are highly detailed and animated. You can shoot off specific body parts from them. Shooting their heads off isn't a for certain one shot kill as a few of them don't seem to need their heads to continue attacking you. The gore level has the aliens spewing green slime and exploding all over the place. The game controls well using the controller instead of the light gun mounted on the arcade cabinet.
Taito released ThunderFox in 1990. The game is in the long line of Rolling Thunder and Shinobi style games. An action game where the action is split between an upper and lower tier within the play field. You have buttons for attack, fire weapon, jump, and jump attack weapons. Holding up or down and pressing jump will move you up and down the tiers. You play as a member of an anti terrorism team out to stop a global terrorist organization. It's the standard stuff for the genre. Taito wasn't innovating in any way here, merely cashing in on something already on the way out in the arcades. The graphics are decent enough but nothing special. The gameplay is essentially just decent as well. It's shoot and stab through hordes of enemies across the tiers as they rush you from both sides of the screen and as they come through conveniently placed doors. The levels are all generic subgenera locations. You have the street, the military base, the enemy airship and the like. The music is worth noting as it's strangely inappropriate jazzy synth. It's just seemingly so out of place. It's worth romping through once, at least.
The year was 1993 when Taito released Tube It, the final game on the collection into arcades. Tube It is one of the best Tetris clones ever made. In the game you have to connect pipes. The play field is thirteen sections high. Each section has a connection dot on each side. You need to connect the pipes from one side to another. You can connect any two connection dots. The pipes come in straight, elbow, and T shaped sections. As they fall into place from the top of the screen you can move them and turn them. As you connect the pipe sections they change color allowing you to easier see the paths. It's not always possible to connect them straight across of course so you end up with glowing lines winding and curving all around before you finally make the connection and clear away that full pipe. It's very fun and original as far as Tetris clones go. Graphically it's just not going to be all that impressive being a puzzle game but it gets the job done in a clear and simple manner. The music is catchy and fun as it so needs to be for the puzzle genre.
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