HARDEST shmup ever!

[EmperorIng]

It's as if people forgot about Gradius III. The number of mushi or ketsui clears probably vastly outnumber Gradius III clears.

[Some-Mist]

I saw beatsgo get decently far in gradius III at the last Chicago shmupsmeet, and it was one of the most mindblowing things I've seen (next to drunkninja looping ketsui). I couldn't even figure out how to smoothly clear the first stage of gradius III before I gave up...

edit: not that I should be any judge of the hardest shmup ever since my 1CC list is pretty weak, but gradius III definitely made an impression on me.

[Doctor Butler]

its like you people've never heard of tohou...... -.-;

Touhou is not hard, at least by shooter standards. It requires a steady hand, but it's slow-pace doesn't demand much of your reflexes.

Now, Zillion Beatz, on the other hand...

[Formless God]

duuuuuude

[Some-Mist]

ya got someone on the hook lol

[Xyga]

Touhou is cuter.

[Erppo]

The number of mushi or ketsui clears probably vastly outnumber Gradius III clears.

Is there even anything you're basing this on (except maybe the fact that it's impossible to clear Gradius III)? Considering how much older it is and how many more people played the genre back then, this sounds extremely unlikely.

[Xyga]

(except maybe the fact that it's impossible to clear Gradius III)

Succulla's run gave me nightmares: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQ-8URl4 ... T7h8uRxZxQ

[Squire Grooktook]

its like you people've never heard of tohou...... -.-;

Touhou is not hard, at least by shooter standards.

On Lunatic it's about as hard, if not harder, than most Cave games that don't loop. It's definitely not the hardest, but I wouldn't say it's easy.

[Doctor Butler]

On Lunatic it's about as hard, if not harder, than most Cave games that don't loop. It's definitely not the hardest, but I wouldn't say it's easy.

Yeah, on the hardest difficulty, perhaps. I meant on Normal Mode, Touhou is much less demanding than other games on default settings.

[Squire Grooktook]

On Lunatic it's about as hard, if not harder, than most Cave games that don't loop. It's definitely not the hardest, but I wouldn't say it's easy.

Yeah, on the hardest difficulty, perhaps. I meant on Normal Mode, Touhou is much less demanding than other games on default settings.

Yeah. To be fair though, the same could be said of a lot of doujin shmups out there.

[chum]

On Lunatic it's about as hard, if not harder, than most Cave games that don't loop. It's definitely not the hardest, but I wouldn't say it's easy.

Yeah, on the hardest difficulty, perhaps. I meant on Normal Mode, Touhou is much less demanding than other games on default settings.

Lunatic is viewed as the standard difficulty by pretty much the entire playerbase.

edit: Everyone here always say that they are easy... and as someone who played them a lot I call absolute BS on that. I played a lot of arcade shmups as well and those are normally easier in my opinion, although many of CAVE games are harder, CAVE isn't the only arcade dev out there.

If even half of the people spouting the things you were earlier actually meant it, surely the scoreborads on here would have more than a handful of decent entries (which, by the way, were pretty much all submitted by players who normally don't frequent this forum and don't play arcade shmups at all)

[Xyga]

Here we go again.

[Jeneki]

HARDEST shmup ever!

[EmperorIng]

Is there even anything you're basing this on (except maybe the fact that it's impossible to clear Gradius III)?

Bingo.

I would also factor in the fact that despite real difficulty, Cave games are far more lenient than the average 80s shmup. You can pass through the edges of some bullets, no checkpoints, generous power-ups, etc. Gradius III by comparison, doesn't do anything to make your job easier.

Didn't Gradius III tank at the arcades because players just found it too hard?

[Blackbird]

There was a "Top 25" style thread for the hardest 1CCs of all time a while back.

Here Be Dragons

It's a really old topic so it doesn't include a lot of the latest games. Maybe it would be interesting to compile a new, updated list around this theme?

If we really wanted to, we could probably rank "Hardest 1CCs" objectively by polling the shmups community for completion numbers. For example, we could ask "How many of you have completed Ketsui loop one in one credit?" and so on for each shmup. By comparing the number of people that have cleared to the total number that have played the game, we could assign each game a "completion percentage". For example, if 100 people respond and only 8 have cleared Ketsui, then Ketsui has an 8% 1CC rate. It would then follow that the game with the lowest 1CC/completion ratio would be the most difficult shmup. I guess the numbers would skew a bit for games which very few people have ever gotten to play (DDP Campaign an obvious example), but with a big enough sample size, it should be pretty accurate.

[Bananamatic]

bullshit list, dimahoo cant be anywhere near dodonpachi

[Patashu]

I thought of a good third place for my list: Muchi Muchi Pork Manpuku 2-ALL!
Manpuku combines a ridiculous torrent of suicide bullets from almost everything in the game (including suicide circles, splurging 'lasers' of bullets, etc) with the over-the-top patterns of loop 2 (especially miniboss and post-miniboss sections with such dense bullets as to feel almost impossible to safely clear!). Your only saving grace is that you can get score extends indefinitely, but no no one has ever cleared this.
The record is 2-4 by DEL. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0DoSUrbqMFo
The only reason why I would not put it higher than third despite having never been cleared ever is that this gameplay mode gets very little attention compared to Futari Ultra and DDP DoJ DL, so it's possible that it would have easier strats/a clear by now if it were more popular.

If we really wanted to, we could probably rank "Hardest 1CCs" objectively by polling the shmups community for completion numbers. For example, we could ask "How many of you have completed Ketsui loop one in one credit?" and so on for each shmup. By comparing the number of people that have cleared to the total number that have played the game, we could assign each game a "completion percentage". For example, if 100 people respond and only 8 have cleared Ketsui, then Ketsui has an 8% 1CC rate. It would then follow that the game with the lowest 1CC/completion ratio would be the most difficult shmup. I guess the numbers would skew a bit for games which very few people have ever gotten to play (DDP Campaign an obvious example), but with a big enough sample size, it should be pretty accurate.

This wouldn't work. For example, Gradius III has a reputation for being incredibly difficult, so weak players will think 'I'd do awful at this game, I'll just skip it'. Imagine if it was so intimidating that only people who can clear it are brave enough to play it! Then it would have a 100% 1CC rate despite being incredibly hard. I've tried it before and stuff like this will skew the results too much to be useful. (Plus, it's also befuddled by things like - OK, they've played it, how long/hard did they try for 1CC before giving up, etc.) You have to create a statistical model that estimates player skill and shmup difficulty alongside amount of effort expended, which isn't easy. (Gathering objective data would probably be the hardest part though!)

[WizardYuuka]

Donpachi HK.

[Blackbird]

Yeah, there are lots of things that could mess up results. There are probably a good number of shmups that are so bad/boring that most players don't even bother to finish them, even if they're comparably easy.

[iconoclast]

There was a "Top 25" style thread for the hardest 1CCs of all time a while back.

Here Be Dragons

It's a really old topic so it doesn't include a lot of the latest games. Maybe it would be interesting to compile a new, updated list around this theme?

I think that list came from this wiki, which is now up to date: http://www.wikihouse.com/stg/index.php? ... 0%EC%CD%F7

This one has Daioujou WL at the top and Futari 1.5 Ultra just below it, but I think Futari would be harder to clear. It just depends on how many mistakes you make, I guess. In that sense Futari (and every other game ever) is more lenient, but DOJ's patterns are easier to deal with and the game is shorter, so iono.

Futari 1.01 Ultra and Saidaioujou Expert Inbachi look way harder than both of them

[Patashu]

Donpachi HK.

Can you explain what's hard about it? And can you link the best known run of it?

[ACSeraph]

Here Be Dragons

Darius II near the bottom of the list a full ten points under Darius 1 is major lulz

Donpachi HK.

Can you explain what's hard about it? And can you link the best known run of it?

Isn't it some weird broken hack of the game that's basically impossible to beat?

[WizardYuuka]

Donpachi HK.

Can you explain what's hard about it? And can you link the best known run of it?

Shit's FAST, rank is retarded, safespots are gone. Dunno what the best run is since not many people play it and there's basically no replays uploaded of it, but I know some people have made it to 1-5.

Isn't it some weird broken hack of the game that's basically impossible to beat?

As far as I know it's not a hack - just the Hong Kong release of it.

[50Hz]

Donpachi HK.

Can you explain what's hard about it? And can you link the best known run of it?

Isn't it some weird broken hack of the game that's basically impossible to beat?

I recall there being a webpage with some detailed info but I can't seem to find it. HK ver is mentioned in a couple of threads like this however

[Volteccer_Jack]

Daioujou WL at the top

That at least fits with my experience, limited as I am to seeing the first 3 stages of many of these games.

Surprising to see Parodius up there. The second loop is crazy, I guess?

[Chaos Phoenixma]

Even the first loop is pretty nuts with the rank system, and unlike the Gradius series, there's only 2 extends instead of extend every. I've never actually seen the second loop outside of a little of seahawk's replay. I really do need to go watch a vid of that especially because this is one of the games I was considering trying to learn.

[Volteccer_Jack]

there's only 2 extends instead of extend every

did not realize

[Doctor Butler]

Where can I get this HK release?

[Patashu]

Where can I get this HK release?

Sharing and linking to ROMs is illegal, but I can tell you that if you google it you'll find it just as easily as you'd find any other DonPachi ROM.