Japanese STG Difficulty Wiki

[Steven]

Good thing I never said it's the easiest one, then~

Please rank them. I don't like this developer enough to really want to 1CC any of their games, so I'll take your word for it. ESP Ra.De. does seem on the easy side out of all of the CAVE games that I gave played, though, which is about 2/3 to 3/4 of them. I know Deathsmiles is like the single easiest one, but I haven't played that yet.

I will say that Perikles has Slap Fight WAY too high, though.

[bcass]

Difficulty wise, I roughly agree with the list in the OP as far as Cave difficulty is concerned. Once you get to Progear, IMO that's when the difficulty starts to noticeably ramp-up compared to the lower ranked titles.

[Steven]

Is Progear hard? I found it at Mikado a few years ago, and with no knowledge of the game, no missed to the stage 3 boss the first time I played it, got bored, and suicided until game over. Haven't played it since. Yeah, I know that might sound kind of insane, but that is the (very strange) experience I had with it. I have heard the overseas version might be harder than the Japanese version, though, and of course I never saw past the stage 3 boss.

[bcass]

Stages 1 to 3 are quite tame, much of the difficulty for a 1CC comes from the latter stages which have significant difficulty bumps. Final boss is also especially tough. You also need to play more risky on the earlier stages if you want enough resources to finish the game.

[Steven]

Okay. I don't know about resources because I have absolutely no idea how to play the game, but that's about what I figured. Not sure about that overseas version's difficulty, but maybe I'll do some research if I get bored later. I don't even remember where I got that idea that the overseas version is harder, but I do recall seeing it somewhere recently.

[bcass]

I cleared the original Japanese version, haven't played any other versions so can't comment.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

The US release of Progear isn't that different from the JP one in terms of gameplay. If you can do well at one, you'll do well at the other. I'm not even sure the US release really is that different honestly, and I struggle sometimes to tell the difference (its difficulty setting defaults to 2 but feels like it's tweaked to be the same as the JP version's default of 4, so US operators can feel like they can crank the difficulty that much higher if they want). Rank might rise slightly slower, though if you're scoring well you can max out rank by stage 1 by sealing enemy bullets, which jacks up rank quickly.

In terms of absolute difficulty, Progear's a tough game, but not that much tougher than Dodonpachi. I find Esp.Ra.De and Espgaluda 2 far harder as you don't have a relatively huge shot flooding the screen with bullets that you can lock onto anytime you need to make an attack from above or below (it's a lot easier than Ketsui where the lock on only happens if hitting with the middle shot). If you're able to no-miss to the S3 boss without bombing, you'll have tons of resources for the extra lives which are given out generously if you score well (as opposed to only 2 extra lives from scoring + item as in most CAVE games). Progear's bombs aren't terribly strong though and don't do much damage to bosses compared to DDP laser bombs on a per-frame bases, but because they last a long time they still allow you to deal a decent chunk of damage.

Progear is way, WAY harder in loop 2 than most CAVE games though, owing to the nightmarishly hard changes found in the loop. You have some of the craziest, most dense revenge bullets out there on top of far harder enemy and boss patterns, more enemies in stages, and checkpoints that force you back to the start of the stage if you die any point before the boss. I've only made it to 2-3 in both the JP and US versions.

And yeah, Esp.Ra.De is quite tough. There are several other CAVE games where shot types feel stronger and fill the screen more effectively relative to the enemies. I've cleared a number of CAVE games and Esp.Ra.De still eludes me.

[DrTrouserPlank]

Ketsui at 21 is ridiculous as well. I'm 99% sure CAVE made Ketsui as a joke because it's 100% not clearable without TAS.

[Meriscan]

Ketsui at 21 is ridiculous as well. I'm 99% sure CAVE made Ketsui as a joke because it's 100% not clearable without TAS.

Someone add this to http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.ph ... 63#p780663

[DrTrouserPlank]

Ketsui at 21 is ridiculous as well. I'm 99% sure CAVE made Ketsui as a joke because it's 100% not clearable without TAS.

Someone add this to http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.ph ... 63#p780663

It's a ludicrous game. It has a good scoring system that lets you actually play the scoring game at various levels/abilities unlike DOJ which makes you feel like you don't deserve to live if you dare to break the combo with it's 0.25Sec timer.

The later patterns/levels however are utter donkey dick. It's like they sat in their office and came up with as many troll patterns as possible and when they were finished said "Let's see these fucking idiots clear this shit"

Great soundtrack (4 is an absolute banger), the ships feel great to use (nice speed on lock and shot). There's a lot to like about it. It feels really good until you realise that Ketsui Kizuna Jigoku Tachi roughly translated means "feed me your money, let me ramrod your asshole and you'll thank me for the privilege". Translation apps can be unreliable. YMMV.

[ZPScissors]

whoever put ESP.ra.de as a 20 there has got to be taking the piss. Game is ludicrously difficult.

I was under the impression that ESP Ra.De. is (almost universally?) considered to be one of the easiest games CAVE ever made, assuming you're doing survival and not scoring, but this list is not very good and sometimes just plain wrong. I wouldn't really bother using it unless what you are looking for isn't on the much, MUCH better Perikles list. Both lists are missing at least some things that the other has, but in general the Perikles one is way better. Obligatory "difficulty is subjective", of course.

From what I've played (never finished the clear but I did get to the final boss a few times) 20 for ESP Ra De seems perfectly reasonable. Overall I feel like the list is fairly accurate for CAVE games (there's still some things wrong though, ie. just about everyone I've seen comment on Dangun No TLB's placement thinks it's too high) but yeah, it's full of inaccuracies otherwise. Sometimes there's trends to it, for example (just based on my opinion), Yagawa games tend to be a little bit too high, Raiden Fighters tends to be too low, and there's several games where I think their No Autofire rating is where With Autofire should be. Then there's the absolutely insane stuff like the infamous rating of Sam3 1p at 24 when literally everyone in this community that has actually cleared it thinks it should be in the mid or high 30s, or on the opposite end of the spectrum, Twin Eagle at 41 which was clearly just rated based on the fact that using 30hz autofire makes the rank go completely out of control (which can be mitigated by simply using a slower autofire rate)

[Steven]

From what I've played (never finished the clear but I did get to the final boss a few times) 20 for ESP Ra De seems perfectly reasonable. Overall I feel like the list is fairly accurate for CAVE games (there's still some things wrong though, ie. just about everyone I've seen comment on Dangun No TLB's placement thinks it's too high) but yeah, it's full of inaccuracies otherwise. Sometimes there's trends to it, for example (just based on my opinion), Yagawa games tend to be a little bit too high, Raiden Fighters tends to be too low, and there's several games where I think their No Autofire rating is where With Autofire should be. Then there's the absolutely insane stuff like the infamous rating of Sam3 1p at 24 when literally everyone in this community that has actually cleared it thinks it should be in the mid or high 30s, or on the opposite end of the spectrum, Twin Eagle at 41 which was clearly just rated based on the fact that using 30hz autofire makes the rank go completely out of control (which can be mitigated by simply using a slower autofire rate)

Also Same! 1P at -10 with autofire, putting at 14 and making it easier than Hishouzame. Lol.

BTW while you're here, I decided to go for Same! 1P this year first and then do Tatsujin Ou later unless I pick up the Tatsujin Ou PCB soon, in which case I'll switch to that instead.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Ketsui at 21 is ridiculous as well. I'm 99% sure CAVE made Ketsui as a joke because it's 100% not clearable without TAS.

I watched someone get to 2-5 Hibachi in DOJ BL in person this weekend, and I got through most of Ketsui's first loop without dying in an amazingly good run. I think if you approach these games with a "it can't be done" mindset, you're creating a self-fulfilling prophecy when you play. Remember: Never Give Up!!

[DrTrouserPlank]

DFK strong ... 12

Basically a formality then?

A game so difficult that cave had to include an auto-bomb into arcade so people could play it.... ...... they had to include a "super-easy" mechanic into an arcade machine to make people keep putting money into it.

I just think some people who make these lists have devoted so much of their lives to these games that their view on difficulty is so utterly warped as to be meaningless.

[EmperorIng]

Yes Trouser-sama, a game so challenging the autobomb lets you sleep to a 1all with almost no thought, because all the difficulty is in stage 5 and you can just bomb and hyper through it.

Ketsui cannot be cleared without tas

lmao, good to have some genuine laffs again as opposed to just getting annoyed at people parroting misinfo

[BareKnuckleRoo]

DFK strong ... 12

A game so difficult that cave had to include an auto-bomb into arcade so people could play it....

The best part of this is the initial release of DFK 1.0 (the one that didn't have the helicopter yet) didn't even include autobombing. Instead, bomb items REFILLED YOUR ENTIRE STOCK, similar to the Donpachi US version giving a full refill at the end of each stage. This actually makes it even easier than DFK 1.5 with its autobombs as you had way, way more total bombs to use and could just blast through anything remotely troublesome.

The only genuinely nasty part in DFK is learning the laser wheel routing, namely for the ones that appear from behind you. It's also tough to learn how to squeeze through them while lasering as your laser aura makes it a bit tricky to see the gaps. If you have the resources though? You just hyper or bomb right through them to safety. There's still a lot of bullets flying around, but a 1-All is by no means brutal.

[To Far Away Times]

I have never wavered so much on shmup like I have on DFK.

On one hand it is so over the top and ridiculous that it has that gravity that made me want to play it as soon as I saw it. And it's a fairly easy 1CC with practice, 12 feels about right to me based on that ranking, and one that can be fairly consistent and also avoids restart syndrome thanks to the auto bombs. But the auto bombs are also the part of the game's biggest weakness.

Even though the 1.0 version didn't have auto bomb, it truly feels like the autobombs were a band aid to cover up bad stage design and really always meant to be there. If you put those same autobombs into a game with fantastic level design like a Mushihimesama Futari, DOJ, or Ketusi, the autobomb would make no sense. But in DFK it feels like it needs to be there. Stage five is way too hard and unfun without auto bomb, and with the autobomb it feels incredibly sloppy and fairly low stakes. And so for that reason, DFK has always felt like a game that was less than the sum of some otherwise fairly incredible parts. Touhou 15 - Legacy of Lunatic Kingdom has this same problem of too high of a difficulty that is covered up with a sloppy autobomb mechanic.

That being said I think DFK is still worth playing, but it is solidly in the middle of CAVE's work when some revised stage design could have really elevated it.

Plank, have you ever tried DonPachi US version that Roo mentioned? That versions refills your bombs at the end of each stage, meaning the only bombs that go to waste are the ones you don't use, and is kind of inbetween a bullet hell and a manic shmup. Not to difficult either, one of CAVE's easier ones. I think 1 - 2 hours of pratice a day and I had the clear after 4 days.

[DrTrouserPlank]

I have never wavered so much on shmup like I have on DFK.

Plank, have you ever tried DonPachi US version that Roo mentioned? That versions refills your bombs at the end of each stage, meaning the only bombs that go to waste are the ones you don't use, and is kind of inbetween a bullet hell and a manic shmup. Not to difficult either, one of CAVE's easier ones. I think 1 - 2 hours of pratice a day and I had the clear after 4 days.

I just had a look at it. The problem is that I will die 99% of the time with all my bombs. It still seems like it's going to get fairly difficult but more in the Psikyo vein with random fast shots rather than overwhelm from bullet walls. I only really enjoy the Danmakus, and games have to reach a kind of manic threshold for me to find them fun enough to keep playing. This may well get there eventually, I didn't play long enough to tell.

[Angry Hina]

I thought as well, that 12 suits that game. Its as well harder compared to Deathsmiles.

[donluca]

From my experience, both suffer from the same "impossible last stage" issue.

For DFK it's the damn stage with the rotating lasers and for DS it's the ballroom.

Up to those parts, honestly, they are pretty much innocuous, even for someone who's terrible at shmups like me.

[Angry Hina]

Its very common in this genre, that the last stage does a bigger jump in difficulty and lenght compared to the ones before. DFK and DS do it in the same manner like many others do, I think.

[donluca]

That's not the case in most games, IMHO, unless you count stuff like TLBs and extra stages unlocked under special conditions.

Most of the CAVE and Toaplan games I've played have a very nice ramp of difficulty with no particular spikes toward the end.

I mean, they *do* slightly increase in the difficulty, but nowhere near the insane jump there is in DFK and DS.

[To Far Away Times]

DFK’s last stage feels like it was plucked from some ransom kusoge, rest of the game is pretty solid though.

Deathsmiles’ last stage isn’t that bad, but it’s stage select map doesn’t include the final level so most people are probably going into it raw and it takes some repetition to figure it out.

Deathsmiles essentially ends at the penultimate boss, provided you can reach Jitterbug and are not on your final life you shouldn’t have much trouble without bombing. Once you do that you are awarded two lives with a total of six bombs plus the three you’ll have in stock, meaning you never have to make risky dodges as you bomb the final boss to oblivion.

[Angry Hina]

That's not the case in most games, IMHO, unless you count stuff like TLBs and extra stages unlocked under special conditions.

Most of the CAVE and Toaplan games I've played have a very nice ramp of difficulty with no particular spikes toward the end.

I mean, they *do* slightly increase in the difficulty, but nowhere near the insane jump there is in DFK and DS.

I thought in the moment of my post about Tatsujin. Its 5th stage is much harder compared to the rest but you are right that its not too often the case. But in my memory DFK wasnt that extreme either.

[donluca]

I guess in the end it heavily depends on the individual player and its strength and weaknesses in attacking each shmup mechanics.

For me the ballroom in DS and the rotating lasers in DFK are absolute bullshit, especially because of how easy everything is before that part.

Other players may feel less of an increase in difficulty because they might be used to certain patterns or situations.

That's also why I've always been a little skeptical about making tier lists about shmups difficulty.

[MaXXX]

DFK strong ... 12

Basically a formality then?

A game so difficult that cave had to include an auto-bomb into arcade so people could play it.... ...... they had to include a "super-easy" mechanic into an arcade machine to make people keep putting money into it.

I just think some people who make these lists have devoted so much of their lives to these games that their view on difficulty is so utterly warped as to be meaningless.

Can you clear anything rated above 12? If not, the fact that you cannot clear DFK Strong is not a rebuttal to DFK Strong being a 12.

[Randorama]

Some of you may be interested in knowing that the STG wiki actually gets periodical updates: you can check here. I am adding some more info on the wiki that I forgot about, after all this time.

This is all TL;DR stuff, but I wanted to post my own musings on the topic: free speech and all that jazz.

The methodology for voting should be this one. The project has been going on since 2008, apparently, and it is still far from finished. For instance, it seems like they are currently evaluating Varth and Rabio Lepus (proposed scores: 28 and 20?) among other titles that are two notable omissions in previous drafts, and re-evaluating old entries as well. Notes appear on the front page of the site. I cannot see comments on who can contribute votes, i.e. if people can/should prove how skilled they are. See however below.

The methodology seems to work like this:

1. Player sends in vote and comments explaining the vote, possibly comparing the game to other games (e.g. "Ketsui 2-ALL is a 50/50 because no other game shoots so many bullets");
2. Managers of the wiki do the math and post a score based on this approach.

My personal suggestion, thus, is to take the list with a full bag of salt because it is, again, far from a finished product, and people vote according to their own impressions. The wiki basically posts one number and a few comments out of possibly hundreds of personal opinions lumped together by brute force. Imagine a room with 100 individuals evaluating Varth's difficulty, voicing their comments all at once, and then writing a difficulty score on a whiteboard, one guy doing the average after the voting and cherry-picking one opinion when writing a report of the game. Now, imagine that new people come and vote after the first 100, and you don't know how many more people will vote afterwards. Be sure to cherry-pick the comment you like best, of course. I suspect that the voting system might work like that, but in digital form....

You might also check Perikles' annotated list, which however is aptly titled "Classic Arcade Shooter list" and it is Perikles' list of personal opinions: it does have console games but no Cave titles. I cannot see Perikles' comments explaining how he scored the games, so there you go: votes by brute force, I believe. I won't comment on Perikles' knowledge of games, also.

I am certainly thankful to Perikles and the author(s) of the STG wiki because this stuff is TONS of work and they don't get paid, so I am certainly NOT complaining about the gaps. Some opinion is also better than no opinion, as people offered opinions based on their experiences of the games. Those who want an "objective" shmups difficulty list wiki might as well as ask for peace in the world now, since it looks a bit more feasible...Let's all try to be aware of this much, please, and the list will make quite a bit of sense.

Please note: automatic translation says that:

• 41-50 - Highest difficulty: Increased by system specifications and adjustments. Problem children for outsiders;
• 31 - 40 - One of the most difficult games of all time: Adjustments to clear ALL are for advanced players;
• 21～30「medium～advanced level. Up to 21～24, the top of the first lap of the 2-lap END title will occupy the top spot. Beyond that, it includes relatively easy 2-round END titles and highly difficult 1-round END titles 」
• 11-20 「Medium difficulty level: Balanced item 」 that even beginners can reach within six months
• 1～10 「 Low difficulty level: A title that even beginners can safely recommend. Clearable within months on average」

My two cents: I believe that the scores presuppose that players actually spend months of dedicated practice on titles that might appear "easy" if you just look at numbers. From this description, I am also guessing that people can vote if they can display knowledge and expertise with the game. My own personal hunch is that the managers of the wiki might filter out uninformed opinions, or try to do so.

Whether they actually do so or are successful at that, it is another matter entirely. Some scores suggest that e.g. Cave experts are over-represented and most voters do not know how to play Toaplan titles, for instance (cf. Ketsui scores, any Toaplan score in the list).

Their voting system actually can easily lead to these problems, even if it makes evaluations relatively simple (of course! Just drop a score and write comments!). If a group/sample is over-represented, the whole chart will be unbalanced. Such is life: again, these people do not seem to get paid so it is hard to have a perfect guide. Besides, where to find Toaplan masters in this age and times? It's not the 1980s anymore, alas!

Some more considerations nevertheless can be offered, of course based on my own subjective experience (over the decades, even).

The 41-50 tier:

No real idea on 40+ titles, even if I tried some of those games via cheat codes in emulation just to have a laugh. Please see my comment on record holders below, though. More in general, I know that people clearing titles in that tier spend years of methodical practice after having accumulated tons of experience. The existence of this tier appears controversial to me, but this thread contains discussions on the topic (e.g. Twin Eagle being a 44). It seems like the wiki creators want a "no, these games are only for the crazies" tier, because some shmups are either absurdly difficult or are not even designed for a "true" 1-CC (e.g. Parodius).

The 31-40 tier:

This is the tier of hard, long-term "projects" for people who have time and patience and, I guess, some skills. Mahou Daisakusen should be a 37 (2-ALL) and a 18 (1-ALL). The first loop becomes tough by stage 4 due to rank, and stage 6 is a boss rush that is hard to clear if characters die even once. The loop includes way faster bullets and more hit points for enemies, and upon death there will be no power-ups floating on the screen. Players need learn to 1-life the loop and/or survive without power-ups until some appear during the stages. This takes months of dedicated play. I used save states and played the much easier Sorcer Striker (=US version), which sits at 37-7=30. It was still an ordeal, to be honest.

A 30 for Raystorm and Dangun Feveron means that these games are the hardest non-looping shmups around and can probably be 1-CC'ed by players who spend months playing them and having obtained previous, easier 1-CC's. We are talking of years of *actual* experience with the genre, not "Oh, I have played 1 credit of X every six months for the last four years, but I always gave up because I didn't win". Non-looping titles within the 31-40 are...harder modes (e.g. Ikaruga) or designed to be irrationally difficult (e.g. Pistol daimyo no bouken, Viper Phase 1).

The 21-30 tier:

This is the tier for the committed, expert players who however may not chase loops and other extreme challenges. Some games with 2 loops are in the 21-30 range (e.g. Shippu Mahou Daisakusen at 28, DonPachi in its US version at 33-3=30), but that is because the first loop is also "quite easy" (18-3-15 for a Donpachi US 1-all, and Shippu 1-All should be a 14). Nevertheless, the authors assume that a 1-CC will take months of informed practice by expert players, to re-iterate the concept. I believe that all other Cave games are at least 20-30/50 scores and loops are 30-40/50 scores, or even 40-50/50 scores. Deathsmiles's scores signal that at some point the Cave guys noticed that maybe their games were a wee bit hard.

The 11-20 tier:

This is the tier for intermediate players, I guess. All the Taito Darius games fall in this tier, modulo adjustments. For instance: Darius is a 15, Darius Extra should be a 15+3=18; Darius II should be a 24 but "only" a 24-10=14 with autofire; Darius Gaiden should be a 17 but only a 17-10=7 with autofire; G-Darius in one of its versions should be an 18. Players who have mastered the basics and have started 1-CC'ing easier games could focus on titles within this tier to increase their skills and knowledge. 1-All for some looping games begin to appear here, so players may also begin to learn how to handle loops and progression to harder tiers. This tier is *not* about formalities, as far as I am concerned, so proceed with caution.

The 0-10 tier:

Let's begin here, yes. However, even games with low scores should require beginners months of dedicated play before they can be 1-CC'ed. My own personal experience is that Insector X and ThunderCade took me 2 months or so to 1-CC consistently, when I was learning to play shmups (i.e. I was a beginner). No learning, no 1-CC, as anyone in a rational frame of mind would figure out by themselves. This tier includes titles in which some characters or techniques "break" the game: Night Raid is a 2 if players use the left-upper corner trick, but a 22 otherwise (I think). Raiden Fighters 2 with the Fairy should be a 2, but a 24 with any other plane. Using these techniques/characters should require time before the 1-CC arrives; not using them turns the games into though, advanced tier challenges. There seems not to be a "insert coin and win" tier, I am afraid (maybe Karous at 0?).

General musings: Cave games are though and 2-ALL, 1-CC's take years of practice (well, Psikyo games too, I guess? Let's not forget Konami classics...). Patience is the virtue of the strong, and the genre seems to invite epic levels of dedication and skills. With a few years of dedicated learning, you might actually not get a 1-CC on DoDonPachi but you might get a degree, learn a trade, become very fit, and in general achieve impressive results in domains that may involve remuneration rather than a N. 1 spot on a hobby board. A few people on this website hold top scores (World Scores, if you prefer), so they might write a book or two on the topic.

I am not a moderator, but I suggest that future conversations should be informed by these basic considerations (thanks in advance for being a sweet-heart, also). "Difficulty" is certainly in the eye of the beholder or maybe in the hands and minds of the player, but the genre might require a different frame of mind and sense of scale than other genres, when reasoning about "difficulty". The same could be said about other arcade-style genres, truth to be told (or: go and try to 1-CC Rainbow Islands or Final Fight, please). Framing such discussions on "difficulty" will be healthy for your "shmup sanity", I believe.

Don't forget to have fun! They're just videogames, anyway. Oh, and beheadings for people failing to 1-CC their monthly quota are on the last Wednesday of the month. Please show up on time and properly clean your neck.

(1877 words total: The usual disclaimers apply).

[Lethe]

The fundamental problem is trying to mash disparate clades (of both games and players) into a single list. Different types of games inevitably end up on different scales, and virtually nobody is capable of cross-referencing impartially. Let's try ordering a developer's games into their own list, single round only, Japan versions only:

Code: Select all

Tatsujin Ou
Same! Same! Same! 1P
Kyukyoku Tiger
Dogyuun!!
Hellfire
V-V
Tatsujin
FixEight
Out Zone
Zero Wing (autofire)
Twin Hawk/Daisenpuu
Hishouzame
Tiger-Heli
Batsugun
Vimana (autofire, though I don't think it makes any practical difference lol)
Slap Fight
Batsugun Special

Hey, that mostly makes sense when the numbers aren't being compared to unrelated games. What about some others?

Saibu

Code: Select all

Viper Phase 1 (Old Ver)
Raiden DX Training (full qualify)
Raiden II
Viper Phase 1 (New Ver)
RFJ ALL3 (Ixion)
Raiden
Raiden DX Training (partial qualify)
Raiden III
Raiden DX Expert (no extra stage)
Raiden Fighters 2 (not Slave)
RFJ ALL3 (Slave)
Raiden IV Original
Raiden Fighters (not Slave)
Raiden DX Novice
Raiden IV Light
Raiden DX Training (no qualify)

Taito (popular games)

Code: Select all

RayStorm
RayForce
G-Darius Ver. 2
RayCrisis
Darius Gaiden (no autofire)
Gun Frontier
G-Darius
Darius II (autofire)
Darius
Metal Black (autofire)
Darius Gaiden (autofire)
Gekirindan (2P Type C)

Cave

Code: Select all

SDOJ Hibachi (not Expert)
Dangun Feveron (TLB)
Deathsmiles (level 3, via Extra)
Ibara
Futari 1.5 Maniac
EspGaluda II
DOJ White Label
Ketsui
DOJ Black Label
DFK Black Label
Guwange
ESP Ra.De
Progear
Mushihimesama Maniac
DoDonPachi
Futari BL Maniac
DonPachi
EspGaluda
Futari 1.5 Original
Mushihimesama Original
Pink Sweets (infinite lives)
DFK 1.5
Futari BL Original
Deathsmiles
Deathsmiles II

Again, maybe not perfectly ordered, but pretty reasonable. It's only when more qualifications are introduced (international version, +x points per loop, nebulous autofire impact, trying to account for 12 different ships in one entry, collect exactly 7 bees, played on a DDR floorpad with the screen upside down) that things start going weird.

I also noticed the "months of playing" thing in the headers, which makes me have even less faith in the project TBH. To me it has the implication that difficulty clout/masochism is a part of the voting motivation. "My game's totally more hardcore than your game, it says it should take 6 months to beat it!"

[Randorama]

Lethe:

I personally agree on the issue you mention (mashing clades and players), but I guess that we would need to carefully read all the material on the wiki and be able to understand it accurately. Again, I was using an automatic translation to figure out their methodology: if the authors would accuse me of misrepresenting their project as a result, I wouldn't deny the claims (but then again, language barriers are such).

I am also not sure on how you come to your proposed ordering, though, since you don't really explain why you partition titles by company and single round mode, right? I do have an intuition, but also in this case I would need more information on the goals behind these choices to be sure that "I get you" (and, by the way, how do we consider shmups "unrelated" or not? I mean, you shoot stuff in SlapFight and Darius, after all). I am not sure on what do you mean by cross-referencing, though I guess that you mean: comparing games from different publishers?

...My point is not to criticise your rankings but point out that knowing your motivations and choices is key to understand how these rankings come about. Personally I also agree on partitioning the set of shmups by company/publisher because it may allow players to make more direct comparisons among titles that *should* be similar in design. Please note, however, that for series like Darius, we have 4 titles (5 or 6 with Darius Extra and Darius Gaiden Extra, right?), produced over 11 years and more or less by four different teams. That is, similarity may not be guaranteed by the titles being released by the same companies. We would probably need some more criteria to score one group of games from one publisher, and there would be no guarantee that those criteria would extend to other companies (=your cross-referencing?). Besides, who decides the criteria? Why those criteria and not others? And so on.

Your rebuttal may probably be: "Rando, it is a quick reply on the forum, what the f$% do you want from me?!", which would be *perfectly* legitimate My simple point is that if you/me/I go for a different method to create a difficulty wiki, then we would need to also figure out what we want to do with the wiki, why achieve goal X and not Y, and so on. Whether this method would be more informative than the wiki, though...we would need the users to evaluate that, as far as I am concerned. Users tend to bitch & moan anyway, so I'd wait before starting such a gruesome task for free.

Just to be sure, though: the "layers" should have been added by the list's compilers. I don't think that voters use them as a reference, but anyway I went through automatic translations. I didn't think in "wagging penis" terms, though: people on this forum had the habit of wagging genitals by showing how fast they were at 1-CC'ing something, so I didn't think that the opposite behaviour could be used to brag ("Hey, it took me 20 years to 1-CC DOJ, now that's what I call hard"). I think that the compilers introduced them as a potential "objective" measure, but unintentional mis-readings are always possible (and even intentional ones...).

My two cents:

The wiki tries to give a partial ordering of shmups in general according to a numerical value (partial ordering=more than one game is a 40/50, for instance). The methodology they use is based on likert scales plus comments from voters, but they only report values plus some eventual comments. This is akin to trying to create a map of Earth in which we start from "home", and then represent places on the map only according to the distance. If I decide that "home"=Italy, then I might write down that "England" and "Sweden" are two places at the same distance, so they require the same time to reach.

Do I need to explain further why this kind of map might be...a bit hard to read, although useful in some way or another? (say, you cannot fly more than 3 hours, so you want to know where you can go on holiday?)

Anyway, I am not surprised about the presence of scores: if I may, the modern world tends to be obsessed with charts and hierarchies. I had situations in which I had students to go mental if they don't like the grade; computed mechanically, even, but they want to be one point higher than their friends. I don't see why this chart should be different from other charts.

I also do research and sports, and I know that at a certain level, it is more useful to reason in terms of "sequences of skills you need to acquire before you can do X". For instance, if a person wants to do 1-hand push-ups, it is common to explain what previous strength skills the person should acquire, how to acquire them, what alternatives are there if the person struggles along the way, and so on. No mention of "time", because everyone have their own pace unless the target are the Olympics, and so on. I do however explain how to measure progress and how students/practitioners can figure out how many sessions they may need to achieve a result. It is up to the students/practitioners to count the hours/days/weeks/months, though.

Trying to plot a similar approach to shmups may be more useful than having an all-purpose chart, but I suspect that it would be *tons* of work. Case in point, these guys have been at it for 16 years, they are not done yet, and they definitely have my eternal gratitude for it, exactly like KoopaTGR and vvv_stg. It's just that after their experience on this task, I suspect that I would approach the task in a different manner.

Still, in an ideal world I'd be happy to have a Directed (A)Cyclic Graph charting all possible routes that would take an absolute beginner to shmup perfection through whatever path suits them best ("start from Karous easy, then choose among these titles as the next step, then etc. etc.".). Screw scores: choose your own path from "shmups rags to riches", even though the Secret SHMUP Difficulty Committee (SSDC) has established what counts as a possible path for you! (Meetings would be off-line and everybody would wear a hood, of course. What secret handshake sould we use?).

Of course, we would have posts of aggravated users who would ask "What if I want to start from mid-way and do as I please oh noes you're all wrong !!1!". People often struggle to follow the instructions and seldom blame themselves for the consequences, don't they?

Then again, everybody's a genius in hindsight, and the leitmotiv of this forum (and the posts in this thread, especially) is that everybody's own personal subjective opinions should be the golden standard of the universe now and forever, 5th grade-style. The comment is self-deprecating: just check my previous comments and feel free to point an accusing finger

[Lethe]

...My point is not to criticise your rankings but point out that knowing your motivations and choices is key to understand how these rankings come about. Personally I also agree on partitioning the set of shmups by company/publisher because it may allow players to make more direct comparisons among titles that *should* be similar in design. Please note, however, that for series like Darius, we have 4 titles (5 or 6 with Darius Extra and Darius Gaiden Extra, right?), produced over 11 years and more or less by four different teams. That is, similarity may not be guaranteed by the titles being released by the same companies. We would probably need some more criteria to score one group of games from one publisher, and there would be no guarantee that those criteria would extend to other companies (=your cross-referencing?). Besides, who decides the criteria? Why those criteria and not others? And so on.

Your rebuttal may probably be: "Rando, it is a quick reply on the forum, what the f$% do you want from me?!", which would be *perfectly* legitimate My simple point is that if you/me/I go for a different method to create a difficulty wiki, then we would need to also figure out what we want to do with the wiki, why achieve goal X and not Y, and so on. Whether this method would be more informative than the wiki, though...we would need the users to evaluate that, as far as I am concerned. Users tend to bitch & moan anyway, so I'd wait before starting such a gruesome task for free.

It's not a serious revision, just an attempt to illustrate why, IMO, this list has the problems it has and how it got there.
It probably started out as simple rankings of "hardest Toaplan game" "hardest Konami game" etc which aren't hard to decide on. If we go back to that most basic form, the relative order of games on the wiki works fine (well, at least the well-known ones).
The scoring would have been added later as a way of representing the distance between games, then represent conditionals like loop count, then as an agnostic way to combine lists, each adding exponential complexity. Even if every other factor was properly tuned, the final step would still require re-evaluating everything. I think it's self-evident that none of those hypothetical steps have been achieved - there are even games that still have seemingly placeholder scores, like the bottom three Toaplan games are all at 3.

I avoided complicating factors because I don't think they contributed to the example. Grouping by developer is convenient as most only had 2-3 design ethoses each plus the occasional oddball, and people are naturally going to tribalize, which leads into...

The wiki tries to give a partial ordering of shmups in general according to a numerical value (partial ordering=more than one game is a 40/50, for instance). The methodology they use is based on likert scales plus comments from voters, but they only report values plus some eventual comments. This is akin to trying to create a map of Earth in which we start from "home", and then represent places on the map only according to the distance. If I decide that "home"=Italy, then I might write down that "England" and "Sweden" are two places at the same distance, so they require the same time to reach.

Do I need to explain further why this kind of map might be...a bit hard to read, although useful in some way or another? (say, you cannot fly more than 3 hours, so you want to know where you can go on holiday?)

The way I would view it: There are incalculable environmental factors to why one would plasticize to a given life experience (excluding essentialisms for now). For instance, I was reading Malc's old writeup of UFO Robo Dangar where he declares it to be his favorite shmup. This is implied to be 1. because he already liked Terra Cresta, 2. because he had memorable arcade competition with it and 3. because he ended up spending more time on it than other games. In other words, it stuck because it was circumstantially appealing. I'm of the belief that this happens a lot and much of our rationalizations are arbitrarily created after the fact.

This is, of course, the same reason difficulty is so subjective. No matter how "objectively" easy or hard something is, it always takes extra effort to swim against the current of our prior experience, not to mention the present. And it takes a special type of person to, in their own time with no outside pressure, learn to do something they've already subconsciously decided isn't working. A total Toaplan-head, rooted in a particular set of priorities, and motivated by factors beyond the objective qualities of the games, is not going to be an ideal choice for evaluating totally different varieties of shmup, or may even end up especially biased against similar games. If everyone's subject to this, then who moderates? Someone with very wide and shallow experience? Isn't that person then just not qualified for anything at all?

But I agree that a lack of "the method" for shmups is exacerbating. Lots of attempts across all genres, but never an indication that any of the methods are really superior or are just motivating. For good reason too, because I expect most people don't see the point in having a method for a pointless diversion. At the end of the day those who play a lot and are in the right place in life get better at games, who could have predicted that? And somehow I doubt such weirdos are going to be the ones to stick to rigorous models.