quickly became a commercial success for Taito. In Japan, Game Machine listed Elevator Action in their August 1983 issues as the most-successful new table arcade unit of the month. It then topped the Game Machine table arcade cabinet charts for three months in late 1983, from September through October to November 1983, and persisted on their charts up until the April 1, 1984 issue. In the first month of the North American release, the game was said to have "surpassed all expectations" in terms of popularity and sales by Keith Egging, the vice president of product development at Taito America. The game was reportedly popular with patrons at the 1983 Amusement Expo. Conversion kits for the game were also popular, and the number of kits sold set an "enviable record" for the company. It was among the top five highest-grossing arcade games of 1984 in American street/route locations. It received a positive review from Computer and Video Games magazine in January 1984, with the reviewer stating it "has a really original theme and I found it a pleasant change from the normal spaceage shoot-em-ups." In a 1984 issue of Video Games, Steve Harris wrote, "it was a good action game which allows for a great deal of player input", and while he feared that it might have been overshadowed by the laserdisc games of the time, thought the game was as competent as those. It received a Certificate of Merit as part of the 1985 Arkie Awards. Retrospective Eurogamer wrote that it was "astonishing just how playable it remains". In The Video Games Guide: 1,000+ Arcade, Console and Computer Games, Matt Fox wrote that the game was an "enjoyable arcade game", giving it three out of five stars according to the book's own rating system. Reviewing the Taito Egret II mini-arcade version in March 2022, Metro said it is "simple stuff but enjoyable and not as ridiculously hard as you’d expect given when it was released." They also praised the "unusually deliberate action" and said it has elements found in the later games Impossible Mission, Rolling Thunder and Shinobi. Legacy In 1991, a version of Elevator Action was made for the Game Boy, developed and published by Taito. While it retains the gameplay of the original arcade version otherwise, it includes new gameplay elements like power-ups and new weapons. A port of the game for EZweb mobile phones was released