As a bonus to message board readers, at no extra charge, here are my notes about Taito Legends 2 that didn't make the review:
Black Metal - gx astonishing but casio keyboard music awful
Lunar Rescue - You dodge asteroids to land on the surface, pick up people, and then shoot your way back up to the mother ship - mediocre
Balloon bomber is a heinously simplistic balloon shooter
Crazy balloon looks like a real bad home computer type-in game circa 1982
Qix A - played many home versions, but nothing can touch the crisp controls and distinctive sounds of the original
Wild Western - looks great but unplayable
Chack'n Pop - a maze game where you drop bombs - lousy controls stick to everything
Front line - never realized the arcade version was so cheesy - better on Colecovision!
The Fairyland Story - platformer with a dig dug vibe, complete with chubby fire breathing dragons. ok.
Legend of Kage - standard ninja jumping action has a crazy crouching tiger flavor as you jump between the treetops flinging stars at flying ninjas. Marginal.
Ki Ki Kai Kai - shoot and repel ghost and zombies as you forge vertically through Japanese village. Weak
Kuri Kinton - ninja side-scroller with intense kicking action but touchy, imprecise jumping.
Sylvalion - Move large, slithering dragon through a maze frying stuff but most stuff is indestructible. Any arcade game that includes training stage has got to suck
Bonze Adventure - 2nd rate ghost and goblins - throwing bouncing balls which is cheesy
Nastar Warrior - sequel to Rastan. Controls awfully stiff in this side-scrolling sword slashing game, but large monster sprites of hideous creatures are impressive!
Raimais - interesting maze game best described as Dodge-em with power-ups. The unresponseive controls wont do with any favors though.
Camel Try - like bonus game of first sonic - tilt a maze trying to move bouncing ball to the goal. Oddly addictive but could do without wacky music
Don Doko Don - addictive cute little platformer where you bash wandering mushrooms and toss them to make them burst into fruit - every platform game you’ve ever played.
Insector X - looks like a childish shooter but tough - could do without the nursery rhyme style music
Violence Fight - Next You! Funny dialogue, huge fighters but repetitive button mashing gameplay "Computer score a point over": lousy incomprehensible English translations
Growl - fight against an army of evil poachers! So progressive you can even beat up women in heels. Plenty of cool weapons like whips, grenades and machine guns
Gun Frontier - impressive vertical shooter where you collect gold bars from defeated enemies and unleash massive smart bombs. If only your plane wasn't so damn wide!
Hat Trick Hero - impressive scaling soccer game along the lines of super sidekicks for the neo geo
Liquid kids - lovable round hero tossing water balloons at fire-creating enemies. Fast paced with a Supe Mario flavor and a lot of cool water-related strategy cool!
Majestic 12: updated space invaders with timestop and laser beams. Invaders that become large are just annoying
Grid Seeker - correctly predicted the 2nd Persian gulf war (but in 1999) rapid-fire vertical shooting action. Have a shield in front of you kick ass
Arabian Magic - pretty darned impressive Arabian side scroller with genie special attacks and rich opulent palaces
Darius Gaiden - side scrolling fish shooter. Smart bombs create votexes that sucks everything in. Polygons look great
Elevator Action 2 - amazing animated characters and unflinching violence. Worst part is waiting for the damn elevator!
Space invaders dx - includes a split screen mode and porady mode with wacky aliens
Cleopatra Fortune - heinous Tetris clone
Gekirindan - Frenetic vertical space shooter
Space invaders 95 irreverent take on the classic with goofy characters,bosses, and galga-like bonus stages
Ray Storm - superb polygan shooter with awesome lock-on capacbility - many will rmember from ps1
Puchi Carat - bust a move meets breakout - hardly memorable
G Darius - remarkable polygon shooter with rapidly shifting viewpoints that lets you control enemies to augment your weaponsThere are too many prompts (do I really need to confirm that the save was successful?)