Taito's trackball dragon shooter Syvalion is coming to Arcade Archives

HAMSTER Corporation is releasing Taito's 1988 arcade game Syvalion as a standalone download for PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch. The game joins the Arcade Archives series this week. It was previously only available on modern consoles through the Taito Milestones 4 compilation that launched in March.

Syvalion is an unusual top-down maze shooter where you control a massive golden mechanical dragon. The original arcade cabinet used a trackball for movement. You navigate tight corridors and use a fire-breathing attack to destroy robotic enemies. The flame attack has a limited range and drains a meter that must be recharged by moving quickly without firing.

Sharing the Darius universe

The game was designed by Fukio "MTJ" Mitsuji. He created Bubble Bobble two years earlier, but Syvalion takes a much darker sci-fi tone. It shares a universe with Taito's Darius series. The plot involves an alien race called the Varia invading Earth. The player steals the Syvalion mech to fight back.

The campaign is highly randomized. The game selects different scenarios, text interludes, and level layouts each time you drop a coin. This branching structure leads to over 100 possible endings based on your performance and the routes generated. You can choose between a Basic Series mode to learn the ropes or the Real Combat Series for the full arcade experience. The Real Combat mode ramps up the difficulty and introduces completely different music tracks.

Combat requires careful positioning. The dragon is large and segmented. It moves like a mechanical snake through the mazes. Bumping into the maze walls will not damage your ship. Enemy projectiles, however, will drain your health very quickly. There are no invincibility frames after taking a hit. A single mistake can melt your health bar in seconds. You have to balance aggression with retreat to keep your flame meter charged. Running out of fire leaves you completely defenseless against the robotic swarms.

Trackballs and giant spiders

The boss fights take up a large portion of the screen. Early encounters include a giant mechanical spider and a flying robotic claw machine. The environments shift from high-tech metallic bases to rocky underground caverns as you progress through the chapters. The heavy synth soundtrack was composed by Hisayoshi Ogura from Taito's in-house band Zuntata.

Playing a trackball game on a standard controller is always a compromise. The Arcade Archives release maps the movement to the analog sticks. It also supports native mouse input on compatible setups. This is the closest way to replicate the original arcade feel without buying a dedicated trackball controller.

Rough history of home ports

Syvalion had a rough history with home ports. The 1990 Sharp X68000 version was well-received in Japan and even included MIDI music support. The 1992 Super Nintendo port was heavily compromised by the hardware limitations of the time. The console struggled to handle the massive dragon sprite and the fast scrolling. The arcade original did not get a proper global home release until the Taito Legends 2 collection on the PlayStation 2 in 2006.

The Arcade Archives release includes the standard digital quality-of-life additions. You can adjust the difficulty settings and compete on online leaderboards. It also includes display filters to mimic a CRT monitor.

Syvalion is an oddity in Taito's back catalog. Buying it on its own makes sense if you only want to play the dragon game and do not care about the rest of the Milestones collection. Players with a modern trackball or mouse setup can use this release to test their hardware with a game built specifically for that input method.