Hardest. Shooters. Ever.

[DJ Incompetent]

#10
Gradius 4
Gradius 3 Arcade
DoDonPachi
Super R-Type (R-Type 2)
Mushihimesama
Armed Police Batrider
Dragon Blaze
Battle Garegga
DoDonPachi Daioujou
Mushihimesama Futari
#1

[mainpatr1]

How about Mid-Garts for X68000?

Right from the first level,it is very tough with bullets covering the screen and no powerups.

All you have is a weak fire shot to kill the enemies with.

[Estebang]

I'm not gonna dig through this entire thread to see if it's mentioned, but the hang glider game in Takeshi's Challenge must be the hardest shmup of all time. You can only move down, which means you're allowed only a certain number of dodges before you crash into the sea, and your gun is basically a peashooter.

[monkeyman]

Hmm, just going off my experience but here goes:

Armed Police Batrider - I just can't for the life of me see what's going on over my own bullets.
Mars Matrix - While I try to get used to the 3 shot type system I get overwhelemed by 1,000,000 bullets and die.
Truxton 2 - Die at the wrong point and it's game over when you restart with no speed and fast enemies filling the screen. Like many checkpoint games if you die ou may as well restart.
Battle Garegga - Brown bullets: booo!!
R Type 2 - I struggle past the stage 3 boss after 1,000 attempts then hit a brick wall (literally) at stage 4 boss. I tried infinite mode on rtype dimensions just out of curiosity to see what came next and was satisfied that it wasn't going to get any better after that.
Ikaruga - The start of stage 4 makes me cry. (and that's after I've credit fed my way through stage 3 boss)

These are just the ones that spring to mind, and I still quite enjoy the latter two despite my fustration with them.

[RSmith]

@Klatrymadon
Sorry for the confusion I was strickly talking about gradius in that last sentence there not about the other games I mentioned.