Shoot em ups you consider to be real difficult or unfair?

[KimagureMachibuse]

What are some shoot em ups you've played so far that you can consider to be real difficult or unfair in some aspects? I have played quite a few but i will list the ones i find to be the most difficult as of now

Gradius 2 MSX is mainly difficult because of the screen scrolling but there are other factors on why i consided this to be so difficult like the first stage being suprisiny difficult for a first stage mainly twoards the end with those green floating heads. plus failing those end of level sections inside the enemy core inside makes the game substantially more difficult. X68000 Remake called Nemesis 90' Kai completley retools the game to make more like the arcade gradius games and the PSP version of Gradius 2 MSX have improved scrolling which make them far less difficult.

Dragon Spirit Arcade I consider this be quite difficult mainly due to the hitbox of the dragon and how most things in this game move quite fast in comparison to the speed of the dragon. especially dont like how many stage hazards they throw at you in certain stages. although i have yet to make it the 8th stage really does not look all that fair with the stage being entirelly surronded in darkness with timed light power ups and with enemies being difficult to avoid. the new version does improve the speed of the dragon but its only slightly more forgiving because of that.

Salamander Arcade The first 3 stages are not too bad but its the 4 stage that i find to be quite bad mainly the boss of that stage yes i am aware you can cheese that boss but even with that it the way to excute that does not always work. the 5th stage is far easier for me except for the end stage wave of enemies that even with memorization is still quite a pain to deal with. PC Engine version retools most of the game to make it much more forgiving and far less unfair compared to the arcade version.

[Steven]

Same! Same! Same!, Tatsujin Ou, and Daioujou Death Label

[Sima Tuna]

Raiden is King Asshole in the shmup genre.

[pulsemod]

same same same 1P ver. also came to mind, but I hadn't put too much time into it.

anything that's extremely memorization heavy or punishing of one death or mistake I'd probably consider too unfair to enjoy

[SuperDeadite]

Guerrilla War

[sunnshiner]

Ikaruga is just a joyless, spiteful PITA and RSG isn't that far behind it. I still come back to them though, because I'm weak and I like pretty graphics. SDOJ is too hard but the 360 mode is pretty good.

[Lethe]

Any Yagawa game played for score. It's not a bug, it's a feature!

Raiden is King Asshole in the shmup genre.

How much of DX have you played? The balance changes + plausible recovery really make a difference. Raiden II is a complete nightmare game for me, but recently I blindly stumbled to DX Expert 1-7 on a whim armed only with some recollections of what the early bosses do. Even had enough fun that I'm considering 1-ALLing it which is an extremely rare reaction coming from me over a Sharklike. Maybe I'm just a psycho for treating the game like that though.

[Sturmvogel Prime]

Well, I've really talked about unfair shmups in many of my reviews, and they break the unfair levels at the point of making Silver Surfer look tame.
I'll give you a few examples.

Terra-Bomber and its stage 4 cannon trap, it's virtually impossible.
Pix Arts' Space Invasion - If you want a Space Invaders clone with horrible controls, this is for you.
Space Blaze / Katakis II / Crush - Visibility blocking, Turridamage and graphic confusion, if you want to wish hell to your enemies, this is the game for them.

[To Far Away Times]

SDOJ is too hard to be fun. That's a game meant for the niche expert players among this already niche genre. There are probably dozens of people who that game is targeted to. It looks and sounds nice, but it's way too difficult for me to invest much time in it knowing I'll never be able to finish it.

Espgaluda 2 takes the relative simplicity of the beginner friendly Espgaluda 1 and ups the difficulty and complexity of the game mechanics considerably. I'm not even sure what they were trying to accomplish in that game. Two Kakusai modes? And making the sequel to an entry level shmup super fucking hard? I don't get it.

[Sima Tuna]

I love Espgaluda II. It's probably my third favorite Cave game, after Mushihimesama/Futari and Akai Katana. Espgaluda II is actually rather forgiving once you understand the bullet slowdown gimmick. It's not an easy game by any means, especially compared to the first one, but I don't consider it on the same level as "super fast suicide zako that flies directly at you in formations, and if it misses you it hangs out at the bottom of the screen firing hyperspeed aimed shots from nightmare angles" a la Raiden.

@Lethe: I've only played Raiden 1 arcade, and I vaguely remember Raiden III and Raiden IV. I've seen Tatsujin-Ou and I'll acknowledge that game might be harder than Raiden, but I couldn't say for sure. Enemy ship speeds in Raiden 1 arcade are some hilarious bullshit.

Oh man, did nobody in this thread think to mention Detana Twinbee yet?

[davyK]

Raiden is King Asshole in the shmup genre.

Raiden III is the worst culprit in that series. The treacle slow ship movement and the ludicrous bullet speed - particularly in boss fights. Reduces it to memorising safe spots. That's OK in smaller doses but when the boss fights are reduced to that and nothing else it's joyless. The levels themselves need memorisation but I find them enjoyable even at the higher bullet speeds.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

I'm struggling to think of a game that's not merely hard but is outright unfair, and that's professionally made and should know better. I can think of several indie games where they just have like, totally RNG based powerups and limited ammo, so you're totally at the mercy of what RNG gives you and when. Barfer Sickmess 1 & 2 do exactly this, you're too weak at default power to do any real damage but one or two spread shot powerups and enemies melt because the added bullets deal the same damage, essentially just multiplying attack damage.

The Parodius arcade releases at high rank feel rather bullshit at times I think. There's such a massive disparity between low and high rank that it feels like you're eventually getting murdered at high rank.

SDOJ is too hard to be fun. That's a game meant for the niche expert players among this already niche genre. There are probably dozens of people who that game is targeted to. It looks and sounds nice, but it's way too difficult for me to invest much time in it knowing I'll never be able to finish it.

It doesn't help that the Xbox 360 release has input lag and a movement bug where the hitbox doesn't shift correctly. The PCB likely plays a lot better...

Espgaluda 2 takes the relative simplicity of the beginner friendly Espgaluda 1 and ups the difficulty and complexity of the game mechanics considerably.

The additional kakusei mode is an unnecessary layer of complexity IMO. It means any time you're not using it and just trying to play it like Espgaluda 1, you're just not scoring, and Kakusei Zetsushikai is really tricky to learn to handle, not to mention the game is generally a lot harder than the first one. I'm not sure it's "too difficult" hard, but it's certainly very hard.

Dragon Spirit Arcade

With autofire this game is far more tolerable, but the massive hitbox size coupled with your relatively low speed is pretty brutal. And that one level with the darkness gimmick is stupid, stupid, stupid, I just dropped the game when I finally got there because I hated that level so much.

Raiden

I actually think that as cool as the Raiden Fighters games are, they're also rather dumb in that all the ships have way too big hitboxes compared to the one ship everyone uses, the slave. Make all the ships have the same small hitbox size, it'll still be damn difficult and then people would actually want to use the non-slave ships. :/

[xxx1993]

Psyvariar 1 and 2. Not only is the mechanic shit, but so is trying to reach Gluon in both games.

[Sengoku Strider]

There was a worst 25 shmups of all time thread a while back. This is what I wrote about Cybernoid for NES, possibly the worst shooter in existence that's not a sketchy Taiwanese bootleg or on the ZX Spectrum:

Cybernoid on NES is not only the worst shmup I can think of, it's probably the worst game I've ever owned. There's absolutely nothing I can think of that I've had over the years that's even in the same category. It's a port of what I believe started at a C64 game, but they made this version way more busted and difficult.

The music is incredibly repetitive. The visuals mostly suck. The enemies are utterly devoid of personality. No bosses, no backgrounds, no plot to speak of.

But that describes a lot of early 8-bit games. Why this game is WOAT-tier: it is fucking hard, and not "master this area to advance" hard, it's "everything spawns randomly and is faster than you" hard. It's "collision detection is not consistent even among the same objects" hard.

When you die, you instantly reappear - like, as in the very next frame. And since enemy spawns tend to be random, they can and will appear on top of you as you respawn. It can happen so fast you don't even realize you died a second time. Or a third.

The game world has you travelling in all 4 directions. You will have to do things like descend through a screen where waves of enemies are flying up at you. Since they spawn randomly, past a certain point you're too close to the bottom where they appear to dodge if they spawn in front of you. You just die, reappear at the top of the screen, and hope you're not in the path of another enemy.

The game doesn't have scrolling screens, it just blinks between them. Meaning that all of the above applies to moving to a new screen as well. You can and will appear on top of randomly placed enemies and instantly die when you move to a new screen.

You will frequently be tasked with squeezing through tight spaces with indestructible moving objects. As they are faster than you, your movements need to be pixel-perfect. Except as the collision detection was just kind of made up as they went along, you can easily snag on a pillar or something through no fault of your own.

The game gives you 9 lives and no continues. You have multiple different weapons you can choose from, but ammo is finite. Certain weapons are needed to clear certain areas, so if you run out and hit a wall, you need to die to refill your weapons and advance.

There are only 3 stages. It has no redeeming qualities. I can't imagine a worst-ever list without it.

Credit to MarMax Gaming for the footage:

[scrilla4rella]

Ibara, Gradius 3, and a lot of the D-tier PC Engine shmups

[SeeNoWeevil]

I recently got into shmups so I'm gonna have to say ALL OF THEM.

Out of everything I'm playing though, I'd have to point out Darius on the Megadrive, particularly the first level for some reason.

[sunnshiner]

I recently got into shmups so I'm gonna have to say ALL OF THEM.

Out of everything I'm playing though, I'd have to point out Darius on the Megadrive, particularly the first level for some reason.

It's the quick, angular movements of the enemy ships that got me in that game, to the point I've played it a couple of times and haven't bothered with it again

[SeeNoWeevil]

I recently got into shmups so I'm gonna have to say ALL OF THEM.

Out of everything I'm playing though, I'd have to point out Darius on the Megadrive, particularly the first level for some reason.

It's the quick, angular movements of the enemy ships that got me in that game, to the point I've played it a couple of times and haven't bothered with it again

The patterns feel very random to me based on how far you push on forward into the screen, so I can feel like I have a good route through a busy section, try to do it again and the patterns are different and I die.

[Sengoku Strider]

I recently got into shmups so I'm gonna have to say ALL OF THEM.

Out of everything I'm playing though, I'd have to point out Darius on the Megadrive, particularly the first level for some reason.

It's the quick, angular movements of the enemy ships that got me in that game, to the point I've played it a couple of times and haven't bothered with it again

The patterns feel very random to me based on how far you push on forward into the screen, so I can feel like I have a good route through a busy section, try to do it again and the patterns are different and I die.

Darius Extra Version is a pretty intense game that's by no means friendly to newcomers. That said, I just played through that first level 3 times in a row to make sure I was remembering correctly, but no, the enemy patterns do not change.

The small enemies you first encounter enter the screen then double back in a figure-eight pattern. Focus your fire on the point where they cross over each other at the centre of the '8' and you'll get them all. There's a crossover point right after they enter the playfield.

The big slow guys move directly across the middle of the screen. Position yourself slightly above them, and right in their faces. Point blank them with both your shot and bombs.

The little triangular guys enter in a straight line, then sweep back in a U pattern once they reach the edge of the screen.

The shrimp enemies enter the screen in a circular pattern.

And that's it. The other enemies are stationary or just drop down. But I can understand how if things get chaotic it can be easy to lose track of which enemies are doing a U and which are doing an 8 when they're both on screen at the same time crossing over each other.

There are a couple of tips that can make this a lot easier:

1. A general rule of shmups is to play up-screen as much as possible, and kill everything as soon as it shows up before it can shoot or start zig-zagging all over the place. That generally requires memorization of enemy patterns, but fortunately this level is a narrow cavern so you have a pretty good idea where stuff is going to appear. Getting pinned to the back of the screen is often the most dangerous position in shmups.

2. A lot of shooters have an on-screen shot limit. In Darius, when you start out you can only have 4 shots on screen at once. To fire again you have to wait for these to leave the screen or...hit an enemy. What this means is that if you get up in an enemy's face, you can suddenly shoot much more quickly, as the bullets are rapidly disappearing into them. This is what we call point-blanking. It's the only way you'll clear those waves of big slow guys consistently. This is deadly to bosses if you can spot the openings in their firing patterns.

3. The previous two points go together. If you're playing upfield, your shots will be leaving the screen quicker, allowing you to keep up a constant stream of bullets to wipe out enemies entering the playfield.

4. One thing that helps with this is changing the firing frequency in the options menu. I find bumping it up to 12 shots per second works well for me, experiment and see what helps your play style. Just remember that if it's really high, your shots will cluster together and leave you without a lot of screen coverage while you wait to be able to shoot again.

I'm far from an elite or expert player, but I can still get through 5 stages without dying in this game. Your ship's hit box is surprisingly fair for a game of this design era, allowing you to be really nimble in navigating through bullet patterns that would rake your shield in a Gradius game. I'm constantly amazed at what I can pull off in challenging enemy fire, there are a lot of times I was sure I would take a hit that I made it through unscathed. It's always intense (which is a great thing), but once you memorize at least the pressure points of the stages and not get baited into some of the traps they lay for you, things start to move from feeling impossible to manageable.

Except for Myhome Daddy. Screw that stupid Bubble Bobble-ass thing.

[evil_ash_xero]

The last bosses of the ESPGaluda games are a bit much. Quite a crazy increase in difficulty.

I'm terrible at Dangun Feveron, due to the speed.

[SeeNoWeevil]

Darius Extra Version is a pretty intense game that's by no means friendly to newcomers. That said, I just played through that first level 3 times in a row to make sure I was remembering correctly, but no, the enemy patterns do not change.

The small enemies you first encounter enter the screen then double back in a figure-eight pattern. Focus your fire on the point where they cross over each other at the centre of the '8' and you'll get them all. There's a crossover point right after they enter the playfield.

The big slow guys move directly across the middle of the screen. Position yourself slightly above them, and right in their faces. Point blank them with both your shot and bombs.

The little triangular guys enter in a straight line, then sweep back in a U pattern once they reach the edge of the screen.

The shrimp enemies enter the screen in a circular pattern.

And that's it. The other enemies are stationary or just drop down. But I can understand how if things get chaotic it can be easy to lose track of which enemies are doing a U and which are doing an 8 when they're both on screen at the same time crossing over each other.

There are a couple of tips that can make this a lot easier:

1. A general rule of shmups is to play up-screen as much as possible, and kill everything as soon as it shows up before it can shoot or start zig-zagging all over the place. That generally requires memorization of enemy patterns, but fortunately this level is a narrow cavern so you have a pretty good idea where stuff is going to appear. Getting pinned to the back of the screen is often the most dangerous position in shmups.

2. A lot of shooters have an on-screen shot limit. In Darius, when you start out you can only have 4 shots on screen at once. To fire again you have to wait for these to leave the screen or...hit an enemy. What this means is that if you get up in an enemy's face, you can suddenly shoot much more quickly, as the bullets are rapidly disappearing into them. This is what we call point-blanking. It's the only way you'll clear those waves of big slow guys consistently. This is deadly to bosses if you can spot the openings in their firing patterns.

3. The previous two points go together. If you're playing upfield, your shots will be leaving the screen quicker, allowing you to keep up a constant stream of bullets to wipe out enemies entering the playfield.

4. One thing that helps with this is changing the firing frequency in the options menu. I find bumping it up to 12 shots per second works well for me, experiment and see what helps your play style. Just remember that if it's really high, your shots will cluster together and leave you without a lot of screen coverage while you wait to be able to shoot again.

I'm far from an elite or expert player, but I can still get through 5 stages without dying in this game. Your ship's hit box is surprisingly fair for a game of this design era, allowing you to be really nimble in navigating through bullet patterns that would rake your shield in a Gradius game. I'm constantly amazed at what I can pull off in challenging enemy fire, there are a lot of times I was sure I would take a hit that I made it through unscathed. It's always intense (which is a great thing), but once you memorize at least the pressure points of the stages and not get baited into some of the traps they lay for you, things start to move from feeling impossible to manageable.

Except for Myhome Daddy. Screw that stupid Bubble Bobble-ass thing.

Thanks!

[ch2]

Ke-Tsu-No-Ana

This is a game I'm utterly fascinated by. It's a sick macabre joke that aims to be unpleasant-by-design. Every shmup fan should play this at least once in their lifetime.

[Despatche]

There is a massive gulf between "really difficult" and "unfair". I don't think very many people on this forum have seen a genuinely unfair game, as most examples are buried in European PC gaming nonsense. There is also the important category of "technically fair but completely anti-player", such as Raiden, Raiden II/DX, Viper Phase 1, etc.

Raiden III is the worst culprit in that series. The treacle slow ship movement and the ludicrous bullet speed - particularly in boss fights. Reduces it to memorising safe spots. That's OK in smaller doses but when the boss fights are reduced to that and nothing else it's joyless. The levels themselves need memorisation but I find them enjoyable even at the higher bullet speeds.

III is not anywhere near as miserable as the previous games. Recovery actually exists in III, your bomb is actually really good, you have the R missile bug, and so on.

[el_rika]

Futari Ultra.

Level 1 is madness. Those fucking rocks are the most unfair crap since Zangief half screen throw

[Vexorg]

Early Toaplan games seem to be notorious for high difficulty bordering on unfair at times. I haven't played it much, but I've also seen Image Fight cited as a game with high difficulty bordering on unfair (notably, the "penalty zone" you get sent to if you don't shoot down enough enemies in the first five levels.) Ghost Pilots on Neogeo seems to borrow heavily from the early Toaplan games as well, although a lot of the difficulty in that one seems to come from lack of firepower.

[Samildanach]

Definitely the last bit of the last level in the PC Engine version of Dragon Spirit. Dear God the combination of close together moving wall spikes, massive player hitbox and ground turrets between said spikes that release speed down power 'ups', all followed by the final boss who emits a single homing projectile that flies faster than you fly to escape it when you inevitably have caught one of those speed downs...utter unfair bullshit.
There's very hard games such as Raiden and the early Toaplan games, but they can essentially be beaten reliably if you are patient enough to learn them and skilled enough to implement the careful route one has planned. This last section of Dragonspirit can be memorized and practiced till you're blue in the face, it will still fuck you sideways.

[Despatche]

Early Toaplan games seem to be notorious for high difficulty bordering on unfair at times.

Ehhhhhhh. Tiger-Heli, Slap Fight, Hi Sho Zame, Kyukyoku Tiger, etc are known for being kinda easy once you figure out what the game wants you to do. Later on you get to hard games like Same! Same! Same!, Tatsujin Ou, etc.

[maximo310]

Psyvariar 1 and 2. Not only is the mechanic shit, but so is trying to reach Gluon in both games.

Lmao, terrible take. The first game does demand that you learn how to gain extra levels in order to access higher stages ( X-D holding the true final boss, Gluon), but I think the extra options of the Delta port (including the very helpful auto-roll) make it entirely possible to learn the game from scratch & clear the TLB.

The only arguable unfair aspect might be 2's locking ship transformation to 1 per level or locking your next stage to your current level ( w/o the option to select variants), but that's a far cry from more substantial difficulty/ unfairness issues.

[SuperDeadite]

Scorpius (X68000) - This game wants you dead. I triple dog dare you aholes to post a legit 1cc vid. I've never seen one...

[Restart_Point]

I really love Xevious 3D/G+ on PS1, but it's infuriatingly hard.

The main thing that gets to me is how hard it is to collect the power up I want. You have to shoot a power up tower when it's cycled round to the colour you want, but you just don't get enough time as it goes past quickly and it changes colour way too slowly. Factor-in doing all this while avoiding bullets and I personally find it almost impossible to get the powerups I want, making a hard game almost impossible. Seems a real shame as sounds like a comparatively small and easy to alter design choice, but it almost ruins the game for me.