When exposed to the sort of scrutiny shmup players expose their games to, a fair amount of flaws surfaced in the original DemonStar, the spiritual successor to (and developed by the same people as) DOS sort-of classic Raptor (Hey, there was little competition, okay?), but as far as shmups developed somewhere else as Japan go, it went further than most.
Unfortunately the player usually did not - well at least I didn't - not managing to stay alive for long enough to power up adequately to keep the screen from filling up with baddies. With the larger ones usually having no-warning instant death lasers. Poor design choice that.
There's a new version out, I'm a bit reluctant to call it a fullblown sequel, but it looks very pretty indeed, and you'd be excused for thinking this was a Seibu game
Grab the demo here http://www.mking.com/demonstarsm2/index.html
and let us know how much you like it >>