Just to sort of give my opinion on the latest part of the argument that BrianC brought up.....(not like it matters or anything, but I'm bored.....)
1. In my opinion, overall, the SNES library of shooters isn't on the same level as the Genesis or TG-16. Of those systems, the SNES had the best games on an aesthetic level (graphics and sound), but the other systems had more games that PLAYED great.
2. BUT, the shmup market really got oversaturated during that time. While I found Rob's rankings to be a bit low with a number of games, I can understand why a somewhat comprehensive list of games for a system of that era would lean toward the low side. Yeah, a lot of good shmups came out at this time, but a ton of mediocre to crappy ones did, too. While I doubt we all can agree on which ones stunk (with a few exceptions), I think we all can agree that many shooters from this time were little more than derivative attempts to capitalize on the success of those great games.
3. Like Rob alluded to in his last post, it wasn't just the SNES that was guilty of having a ton of crappy games. The Genny released crap like Insector-X, XDR and more; while the TG-16 had Toilet Kids, Hani in the Sky, Toy Shop Kids and more.
While it seems like Rob's list was harsh in that mediocrity was punished with lower-than-usual ratings, it goes without saying that a lot of blah stuff was put on the market at that time.
As a point of comparison, here are the rankings for all the shmup reviews I've currently done for the three systems I've mentioned.
GENESIS:
Airbuster 7
Arrow Flash 5
Atomic Robo-Kid 4
Bio-Hazard Battle 9
Curse 4
Insector-X 2
M.U.S.H.A. 10
Truxton 4
Wings of Wor 7
XDR 1
SNES:
Acrobat Mission 7 (a wee bit too generous, methinks....)
Aero Fighters 6
Bio Metal 4
Darius Twin 4
Jikkyou Oshaberi Parodius 10
TG-16:
1941: Counter Attack 7
Darius Plus 8
Heavy Unit 1
Saint Dragon 2
Super Star Soldier 9
Toilet Kids 2
While those are by no means complete samples, they do go to show that there was a lot of mediocre shooters during that time, which (in my opinion) makes giving out low ratings left-and-right a forgivable offense.