What the hell, my friend...

[TLB]

If he's good at Quake 3, I personally believe skill transfers a lot from FPS to STG, so it's natural he'd get good at STG fast.

Well, it must be certain FPSs, then, maybe the faster ones like Q3, where you have to be thinking a little bit ahead CONSTANTLY. I play and rape him at Counter-Strike (Source, though he plays 1.6, which I also rape him at =P), which is a game that you, the individual player control the pace of. I don't feel like going much into detail (I don't wanna think and punch shit hunched over into my phone, I don't feel too hot), but we had a strikingly similar discussion at school. Maybe if he'd stop being such a douche he'd stop by here and shed some light on things. He DOES seem to know what he's talking about, I suppose.
But to demystify his ridiculous skill a little bit, he is playing BWR+, which is easier IMO (I get farther easier and improve every couple runs; not so in the original), and he uses the Blue Peace...which makes much of the game A LOT easier. Not to say he's magically shitty or anything, but he's not as godly as I made him out to be. He is adept at shmups though, no doubt.

[Aquas]

This topic reminds me of the time I went into Flip-a-Game (a local gamestore in Minnesota that lets you play 15 mins of a game for a buck) and asked to try out Ikaruga on the gamecube. The owner noticed that I was playing a shooter and he says to me, "yeah, I used to play those types of games a lot when I was younger." and I agree fervently, saying they're great and fun and I like the genre. Then he suggests I try out Einhander (which I had not played before at that point) and I start playing it and the owner says to me, "You're good at these games" after I play for about 15 minutes, and then goes on to say "Just by watching you play this game, I know you're going to figure out someway to get ahold of it at some point." And lo and behold, I had later downloaded the game and emulated it the PC. He was selling it for nearly $80! Great game though, that Einhander.

I've also went in there and tried out Strikers 1945 and some other games just to kill some time.

That's my somewhat unrelated shaggy dog story.