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

[donluca]

Dangun Feveron.

No matter how hard I tried, I could barely get to the boss of the second stage.

I'm probably playing it wrong, but what the hell...

[bobhasashotgun]

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.)

The penalty zone sounds awful on paper, but if you're good enough to clear the first five levels of Image Fight then you're most likely good enough to avoid the penalty zone. It mostly just adds tension to bosses that could otherwise be easily timed out (especially stage five.) It also is good for crazy score chasers to rack up extra points.

[FRO]

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:

I will agree with this assessment. I "beat" the NES version years ago after acquiring it for $5 complete in box in a closeout sale. Forget doing that game in one life or on a single credit. It's not worth your time. Supposedly, the original C64 version is quite good, but I haven't bothered with it. The NES version if beyond frustrating. For what was a good concept, the execution is ridiculously sloppy.

[glide]

Truxton 2/Tatsujin Oh is brutal, I can't even finish level 3 without using cheats. Super Star Soldier also gets really hard towards the end. Two terrific games made less fun by their sheer difficulty.

[pegboy]

I've got 2 from personal experience, one I recently cleared and one I did a long, long time ago.

Twin eagle (done recently) - Twin eagle requires lots of non-routable dodging in the chase sequences and also lots of luck since its all random. I doubt it could be cleared consistently at all. And you also get zero extends to further the nonsense.

Gradius iii - I also want to say that the gradius iii cube rush is unfair but apparently the pros have studied it enough to figure out how to do it very consistenly now, so much so that it's probably one of the easiest parts of the game in later loops. But for us mere mortals its got to be one of thr biggest "fuck you" moments in stg history.

[Steven]

I've started to think that Tatsujin Ou is not a great game at all; it's quite poorly designed, and the more I play it, I have begun to realize that it's actually super boring. It's pretty much the only game I can think of that is both super boring and super difficult at the same time. The graphics and music are absolutely incredible, but I really wish they were attached to a better game.

[BrianC]

Twin eagle (done recently) - Twin eagle requires lots of non-routable dodging in the chase sequences and also lots of luck since its all random. I doubt it could be cleared consistently at all. And you also get zero extends to further the nonsense.

I want that game to be good because the NES version has an awesome subtitle. "Revenge Joe's Brother"

[pegboy]

Twin eagle (done recently) - Twin eagle requires lots of non-routable dodging in the chase sequences and also lots of luck since its all random. I doubt it could be cleared consistently at all. And you also get zero extends to further the nonsense.

I want that game to be good because the NES version has an awesome subtitle. "Revenge Joe's Brother"

Arcade version has it too:


And it's good alright, no bosses, 2 song soundtrack, amazing ending, etc. Seriously it's objectively bad but has at the same time has undeniable charm.

[xxx1993]

Psyvariar 1 and 2. Because fuck the buzz system.

[Marc]

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:

I will agree with this assessment. I "beat" the NES version years ago after acquiring it for $5 complete in box in a closeout sale. Forget doing that game in one life or on a single credit. It's not worth your time. Supposedly, the original C64 version is quite good, but I haven't bothered with it. The NES version if beyond frustrating. For what was a good concept, the execution is ridiculously sloppy.

If I remember correctly, it was a Speccy game first. That version is great, for what it is. It's certainly tight and snappy, not sloppy at all.

[sunnshiner]

(Cybernoid) If I remember correctly, it was a Speccy game first. That version is great, for what it is. It's certainly tight and snappy, not sloppy at all.

Yep, it was a pseudo follow up to Exolon (another good game!)

Psyvariar 1 and 2. Because fuck the buzz system.

Now, y'see, I thought this for ages but I really like Psyvariar 2 because of the buzz/graze system. I don't want every game I play to have it but (I think) it works in that game for whatever reason.

[xxx1993]

Psyvariar 2 only works if you're using the girl.

[To Far Away Times]

I think Psyvariar 1 is alot better than 2.

2 is also extremely weirdly balanced. There are weird difficulty peaks designed to kill you fairly early on, and then some of the later levels are completely devoid of challenge until the boss.

Boss fights often have little dodging at all until the boss throws out *that one attack* that's 10x harder and designed to kill you. It's balanced so stupidly.

[xxx1993]

It just has one of the worst TLB conditions in any shmup...

[Sengoku Strider]

If I remember correctly, it was a Speccy game first. That version is great, for what it is. It's certainly tight and snappy, not sloppy at all.

Those are not words I would use to describe the NES port. "Broken hit boxes" and "I'm not entirely sure the dev played this before shipping it" do come to mind though.

[sunnshiner]

Psyvariar 2 only works if you're using the girl.

This is true and probably why I like the game. I'll usually opt for the easier-to-use character/ship in a game (blue in DDP DFK, spread shot in Crimzon Clover, etc...) because I'm a #filthycasual