shmups.system11.org

I've seen this mentioned a few times here on the forum so I thought I'd make a topic about it.

This Japanese wiki contains a list of a large amount of arcade STGs ranked by difficulty on a scale of 0 to 50.

The games are sorted by loop clears and such. Some of the hardest are a 2-ALL of DOJWL, an Ura 2-ALL of Ketsui and a 2-ALL of Sengoku Blade. Some games have explanations (in Japanese) if you click on their title.

The easiest games are mainly just staying in a certain place such as Night Raid which involves staying in the top left corner, although Raiden Fighters 2 with the Fairy is pretty low (some factors increase or decrease the rating, i.e. autofire in Darius Gaiden). Deathsmiles II is the easiest Cave game (5) and Deathsmiles is the second easiest (9). I wonder why Nemesis is a lot lower than its Japanese counterpart Gradius? Perhaps due to the recovery enemies?

This is a pretty good resource (despite being in Japanese) and I think the community should be more aware of it!

vvv_stg translated the list into English. [Mod edit: moved to first post and removed spoiler tag so this list is easier to find]

reminder that it has DOJBL 1-all ranked the same as sdoj so it can't be that hard

I also think that this list is very informative, always fun to have a quick peek at one game or another. I'd also say that the general tendency is spot-on, you'll always disagree on this game or that one being slightly more difficult or easy, that's to be expected, however. Some things are completely baffling to me, though. Who was the joker that thought of Dragon Saber as a 12 point game, together with something like a Xevious 1-ALL and a Side Arms ALL? That just can't be right, Dragon Saber is excruciatingly hard.

There's some kind of community voting to determine rank, but I guess they fucked up there.

Some games are missing from the list, probably because they're too old / unpopular and there isn't even a 2-all video available for them.

The rankings are pretty damn off sometimes, just imo. I rarely play for clears, though.

One thing that caught my attention was the high-ish ranking of Strikers 1999 and the low-ish ranking of Crimzon Clover boost (36 and 18 respectively), since I cleared both of those fairly recently and I thought they were at least relatively close to even in difficulty. It could just be that I don't understand how to play CC for survival, though. Meanwhile EspGaluda is at 16? That's way too high.

I agree that Dragon Saber at 12 must be wrong.

play for score instead of clears

I'm always surprised to see Parodius and Twinbee ranked so high. I guess I need watch a full run and see what the big deal is.

The CCWI ratings are for Type Z only.

The craziness starts here.

Also OMG is Image Fight 2 Loops clear not in #1 right now ???

36 for strikers 1999 still seems a bit too high

a few months ago they even had sdoj expert with hibachi ranked at only 26 for some reason but they removed it now

Those two aren't even shmups anymore on the second loop. They just want you off the machine so it's full of bullshit walls you can't survive with your giant hitbox.

Is CCWI (Arcade Original) with Type Z really more difficult than the first loop of Ketsui?

Honestly, no. Type-I is more on par with Ketsui first loop.

For me, Type-I seems way harder than my Daioujou WL 1-ALL. Since I always play this game in higher rank, so it may be the reason.

According to my memory, the CCWI rank number is given by KIK after his survival clears of all the 3 Modes. It shall be reasonable. Perhaps the rank of Ketsui is a bit lower than it should be?

Surprised to see Omega Fighter and Game Tengoku so high.

I don't know if Sengoku Blade 2-ALL is as hard as the games on its tier, but it certainly is a huge jump compared to a 1-ALL, which is one of the easiest clears there is. Trying to 2-ALL the game as a beginner in the genre probably wasn't the smartest thing to attempt

ketsui 1-all is pretty easy and short, plus bombs work on everything and you get 2 secret extends instead of the usual 1

on the other hand CCWI original type I still took me quite a few attempts, the game is pretty long for a single loop, the last extend can be hard to get when playing for survival and it has a TLB immune to bombs which can easily screw up even good players

the patterns outside of the TLB aren't that bad but every single small mistake hurts your chances of clearing big time and due to the game's length you get plenty of opportunities to fuck up

if ketsui is a 20 then ccwi original type I is 25-26, easily a harder game than most cave 1 loop/no loops including galuda II, futari maniac and mushi 1.5 maniac max

Tried translating the list into English. I should have realized that this list has ~300 entries before trying to do that. I've not done much proofreading so far, and it has quite a few places where specific games left me confused (marked with question marks). Plus I still have very vague idea what section headings are trying to say. But what I have so far might be useful, so here it is:

I don't think Mushi Ultra should be quite in the top class, and they still have P47 Aces ridiculously high for some reason. Lots of people cleared it in STGT, it should rather be somewhere in the early 20's.

Thanks a lot for your effort, vvv_stg!

That's hilarious. Second loop in Gradius III is a cakewalk as we all know, but the third one gets a lot harder.

I also have no idea why a Sand Scorpion 1-ALL with autofire has 14 points, that's probably one of the easiest clears out there. Dragon Spirit with autofire on the other hand is a mere 6, I guess they know some secrets about Dragon Spirit and Saber that are unbeknowst to all of us. Not that Dragon Spirit is all that tough (unlike Saber), but that's quite a bit low compared to the other stuff that lingers around in the same area.

I wonder why they didn't include Tatsujin Ou.

Finding the will to play it is worth at least ten of those points.

Is Ketsui Ura 2-ALL really easier with Panzer Jager than it is with Tiger Schwert? The list says "+1 for using Tiger Schwert."

who knows, 1 point is nothing in a subjective list like that

i'd also argue that futari ultra for the low scoring clear isn't a 44

I think translating this table was worth it if only because I found this wonderful game in progress. That cinematic rivals Blaster Master opening.



To be fair, there are infinitely many more people on this forum's scoreboard who cleared the second loop

Now, my favorite note in the table is "-20 with autofire on", which is... well, I can see how this could happen.

Interesting read but some of the video replays just don't live up to the ranking on STG merit or just not updated enough with new high score runs/entries.
Or course not even WR run is going to be recorded.

help with some translations

Ultra Guard has an English name Ultra X Weapons I think.
Comments in those DBAC rows are using burst setting plane.
Raiden DX one is [not consider destroying all radars]


I found a Chinese translation of 2008 version of the wiki; Tatsujin Ou 1-ALL was on the board with a rank near Strikers 1945 II 2-ALL. Perhaps they finally gave up on giving it a proper rank and let it removed.


The wiki is mostly for survival clear difficult. A high score video is not necessary. But it's cool they find videos for almost every game.

Okay so they have pin sweets in there with the infinite lives trick.
Why no ranking for a clear without the trick? That would jack it up to top 10 tier level for difficulty.

They give different rankings do the different ketsui loops why not include the pink sweets non infinite lives?

because basically no one plays pink sweets without infinite lives

a lot of games/modes are missing

I think that wiki shows Gradius III loop 2 clear as 30 + 10. And then loop 3 clear would be +13. So wouldn't that mean Loop 1: 30, Loop 2: 40, Loop 3: 53? 30 + 2 makes absolutely no sense, loop 2 of that game is substantially harder than loop 1.

After reading the original page, I think it's 40 for Loop 2 (+10) and 43 for Loop 3 (+13)

Yeah, 43 for Loop 3+. Also note it says -3 (so 27) for the US/World versions.


There's another list on that site for just 1-loopers and Tatsujin Ou is on there at 34. This list makes it clear that it's for 1CCs only, whereas the original list seems to take into account scoring systems as well.

I've always thought that list was really off, but to be fair it's pretty hard to make an accurate ranking like that.

We could try to do our own version, but who here has beaten most of those (maybe Rando?) I think I've beaten about 25% of the list, but it might be a fun project to try to beat them all. Anyone feel like starting at the bottom and going all the way through?

vvv_stg Thanks for translating the list!

Overall I think the list is pretty good for getting a general idea of how difficult most of these games are.

A few thoughts on some of the games I've been able to 1CC so far:

According to that list R-Type 1 and 2 are separated by only one point. That doesn't seem right. R-Type 1 really isn't that hard in comparison. R-Type is actually fairly easy on repeat plays once you know where to position yourself and what's ahead of you. You need that plus a good deal of dexterity for R-Type 2.
R-Type 1 isn't as hard as Gigawing, not even close. Gigawing is really difficult.
The list has Trouble Witches AC at the same level as DaiOuJou BL; Trouble Witches should be at least a few spots lower.
Mushi Futari Original should be a bit higher and Mushihimesama Original should be lower. Mushihimesama Original is one of CAVE's easiest games alongside maybe Deathsmiles. Futari is probably more difficult than most people give it credit for.

DaiOuJou BL is the most difficult game I've beaten, seems about right.

The absolute values of the games are probably wonky as hell, but the relative ranking overall seems solid. I don't think anyone can say with certainty that "X game is definitely a '42' in difficulty", but anyone should be able to say "X game is above Y game" if they know those games very well. If there were some way for everyone to compile lists of games they know very well and then combine everyone's into one huge list, you'd end up with a very good list. The only thing is everyone would have to restrain themselves to only rank games they know really, really well, and can say without argument that that game is higher or lower (or "roughly equal") than every other game on their list. If I didn't stop paying for my website due to being a cheap shit I might've made a programming project out of this, but eh.