I didn't even know Taito made the first one, let alone made a sequel, since I'm still rather green in their library of arcade hits outside of Space Invaders, Bubble Bobble, Darius, and the Ray series. It DOES look like it goes hard though....

I haven't played too many Taito games myself, but as a developer I find them super interesting since it seems like tried their hand in all sorts of genres. I plan on going through the Taito Legends collections on PS2 at some point to rectify my ignorance.

them and Irem occupy this weird sorta space where they're known subconsciously, but the general audience sort of tosses them aside, which is a bit of a shame considering how important they were for the arcade markets and general evolution of gaming as a whole