History GameBreaker / ShootEmUps

* ''VideoGame/TimeCrisis: Crisis Zone'' has the Laser Rifle. While exclusive to the console port, it is the most broken weapon in the game. Instantaneous hit rate, obscene rate of fire, very damaging, and it takes no effort to kill anything. The only issue is that it has to be unlocked, but it is well worth it. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qyuoJqZbUQ The weapon in question can be seen here.]]

* In ''VideoGame/GHOSTSquad'', the two best weapons are the [=SPR11=] sniper rifle and [=TR14=] machinegun, two weapons that are classified as having high-rank [[ArmorPiercingAttack penetration]], allowing you to shoot enemies behind objects that even the best real-world firearms should not be able to cleanly pierce through. Aside from allowing you to kill enemies well before they have a chance to strike, this also means you can easily score a lot of Quick Shot bonuses, making both weapons ideal not only for survival but also for score.[[note]]Of course, all of this only applies if you are playing the version of the game with card slots, ''Evolution'' (a cardless upgrade which provides the perks of a card that has achieved OneHundredPercentCompletion), or the Wii port; those with the basic, no-card arcade version of the game only get four weapons, only one of which has any piercing properties and even then lacks the hilarious penetration of the [=SPR11=] or the [=TR14=].[[/note]]

** The Fire Gun in ''Contra III'' constantly does high damage to anything in the fire. Most bosses die in seconds if you aim it at their weak spots. Also the Laser Gun, which fires at a slow rate but also pierces through many enemies and kills bosses faster.

*** ''Mountain of Faith'' in general is broken by its bomb system. Because your bombs are tied to your power level, and because there is an extra level of power (5.00 power is functionally the same thing as 4.00 power, except that power items stop appearing, making it basically a free bomb), as long as you never hit max there will be more than enough power items to make it through virtually anything. The bombs are very large, very powerful, and grant both autocollection and invincibility throughout without any real downsides besides the power drop. To prove the point, there is an [[http://www.shrinemaiden.org/forum/index.php/topic,2368.0.html infamous replay]] in which the player bombs ''every attack'' and still beats the game without continues.

* ''VideoGame/EventHorizon'' has a strategy dubbed as the Death Ray Oracle, which revolves around pairing the Oracle ship, a huge FlyingSaucer with [[InstantDeathRadius 360° auto targeting]], with the DeathRay, a [[ChargedAttack Charged]] WaveMotionGun which [[ForMassiveDamage Hits For Massive Damage]] and has long enough range to cover the entire battlefield when buffed. The result? A build powerful enough to CurbStomp ''anything, anywhere, within 5 seconds or less'', which resulted in [[ObviousRulePatch banning Oracle in PvP]] for quite a long time, until auto targeting was {{nerf}}ed and several weapons and ships were implemented with ''the sole purpose of countering it''.

** The 'Marisa Bugged/Broken' glitch from ''VideoGame/TouhouFuujinrokuMountainOfFaith''. Put simply, due to a mishap in the game programming Marisa B does absurd damage firing unfocused between 3 and 4 power. By absurd damage, I mean killing bosses ''before their bullets even approach Marisa.'' If you can get through the stages with a decent amount of power this makes clearing the game an absolute joke. The reason this is going here is that if it's an accidental glitch you would expect a patch - the game's been out for over three years now, and no fix.

*** And it's taken UpToEleven with [=FutoC=]'s Liberation mode, which ''slows down the enemy bullets'' to the point where you're practically playing the game tool-assisted. Yeah, in a BulletHell there's no way '''that''' could be broken.
*** Another shot type that takes Liberation's brokenness UpToEleven is [=MarisaA=]. Her Liberation has two completely distinct shots. Focused, she shoots a spread of lasers that cover the entire screen without any effort, and unlike most spread shots, the individual lasers are ''very strong'', which turns most stage portions into complete jokes. Unfocused, she shoots a forward-focus cluster of lasers that, when targeted on an enemy (which is very easy to do), deal damage at the level of [=MarisaB=]'s glitched laser from ''Mountain of Faith'', except that this isn't a glitch, it's the intended behavior. This allows for shenanigans like wiping out a boss spellcard so quickly that Marisa can stay in one place and have the card dispel before any bullets even have a chance to reach her - and then doing that ''four or five times straight''. On top of all that, how does [=MarisaA=] enter her Liberation mode? By using Master Spark, which is every bit as powerful as it is in canon. The only downside to [=MarisaA=] is that she is slightly underpowered outside of Liberation, but she has enough to work with that she can still gain Liberation charge pretty easily.

*** Tsubakura's ''Black Wings'': Gives Tsubakura an upgraded bomb which takes the above-stated problem with Len'En's bombing system UpToEleven; Whereas Tsubakura's normal bomb, ''Monochrome Ray'', does absurd damage but lacks any wide range, ''Black Wings'' now makes the bomb ''full screen'', and '''''negates the bomb immunity of Stage 6 and Extra bosses'''''.

** In ''Kioh Gyoku'', due to how the [[ArtificialStupidity A.I.]] works, practically [[UpToEleven EVERY]] character has at least one [[AIBreaker A.I. Breaking]] attack. However, the DifficultButAwesome Erich is widely considered to be the absolute best character in the game. Why? His amazing [[BeamSpam homing lasers]] can easily destroy the A.I. opponents, especially on slower characters. Every single one of his attacks involves these nasty lasers, which appear in large numbers, are fast, and do a lot of damage. Oh, and since EX attacks are sent by grazing, and there are [[BulletHell so many bullets]] when late in the match, so more and more lasers are sent to your opponent to keep racking up the damage.

* ''[[VideoGame/EpicBattleFantasy Bullet Heaven]]'' has Anna, unlockable by getting S-ranks on five levels. All the other player characters have subweapons that are, well, weapons; a wider-range, more powerful attack that can only be used occasionally. Anna's subweapon, however, is a SuperMode that gives her triple firepower until the subweapon meter runs down. Upgrade the subweapon recharge speed to max, and you can pretty much keep it on ''permanently''.

* ''VideoGame/{{Touhou}}'':
** [=MarisaA=] in ''Lotus Land Story'' epitomizes this. Apart from the GoodBadBugs listed above (and in the case of the "Malice Cannon", ''even then''), [=MarisaA=] in Lotus Land Story is considered to be the most overpowered shot type to exist in any Touhou game, purely by virtue of how absurdly powerful her lasers are. It is not an exaggeration to say that she ends boss attacks 60% faster than the next most powerful shot type. On top of that, her lasers pierce enemies, are the only shot in the game that does, and there ''will'' be enemies hiding behind other enemies regularly throughout the game. Considering this, it's no wonder ZUN has been so reluctant to give Marisa's laser shot types in later games any amount of stand-out power.
** ''Perfect Cherry Blossom'' brings in [[NinjaMaid Sakuya]] as a playable character, and she is, by and large, one of the easier characters to clear the game with; her normal shot covers the screen, while her focused shot locks in on enemies, and her bombs (depending on the shot type) have some of the longer invincibility times in the game. And she gets ''four'' per life, compared to Reimu's three and Marisa's paltry ''two''.

** The Boundary Team in ''Imperishable Night'' is by far the easiest team to beat the game with. They're a homing team in a game clearly not designed with homing in mind; Reimu wipes out a significant chunk of the enemies before they can even attack and Yukari deals significant damage to whatever she's attacking even when she's on the other side of the screen (the micrododge-heavy nature of the game makes staying beneath bosses a serious challenge). Combined with a small hitbox and ''extremely'' long deathbomb timer, you have something tailor made for beating the game. Given that this is the main character and ''one of the most powerful beings in the setting'', it's kind of understandable.\\\

** ''Phantasmagoria of Flower View'': [[LivingToys Medicine Melancholy's]] "Sweet Poison" card is an immovable [[PoisonedWeapons poison cloud]] that can slow down opponents; when pitted against the computer, the AI is programmed to duck around enemy shots, so throwing out several of these shots in their path will result in some... interesting situations.\\\

** The 'Marisa Bugged/Broken' glitch from ''Mountain of Faith''. Put simply, due to a mishap in the game programming Marisa B does absurd damage firing unfocused between 3 and 4 power. By absurd damage, I mean killing bosses ''before their bullets even approach Marisa.'' If you can get through the stages with a decent amount of power this makes clearing the game an absolute joke. The reason this is going here is that if it's an accidental glitch you would expect a patch - the game's been out for over three years now, and no fix.

** There's also [=MarisaB=] from ''Double Dealing Character''. The game has a system where when you autocollect point or power items (whether by bombing or by using the auto-collect point at the top of the screen), it rewards you based on how many items you collected - 60+ items guarantees you a life piece, 3 of which make an extra life. This normally works fine, since you won't see 60+ items in one place very often. But [=MarisaB=]'s bomb converts any bullets it hits into power items, which add to the collection total and make it ridiculously easy to gain lives by simply throwing the bomb into dense areas - and remember, just bombing causes an autocollect by itself, triggering another bonus. Run out of bombs? No problem, just kill yourself and you'll have a fresh new stock of three bombs to abuse again. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_EGRwLQer8 See here]] for this in action. It helps that even apart from this sort of abuse, [=MarisaB=] has the highest raw power of any shot type in the game - and because of the power items spawned from the bombs, she will basically always be at full power.\\\

** Sanae in ''Legacy of Lunatic Kingdom'' is by far the best character in the game. Remember her two shottypes in ''Undefined Fantastic Object''? Well, her shottype in this game combines both of them. Unfocused, she covers the screen in highly-damaging explosive frogs. Focused, sends out homing snakes. Sanae can kill anything, anywhere. In theory this is balanced out by her focused shot being slightly weaker than Reimu or Marisa's and not hitting anything below her, but the damage difference is minor and the game never really makes you leave the bottom of screen. Even better, her bomb lasts a long time and has no real disadvantages in a game where all bombs do roughly the same amount of damage. And all of this is secondary to Sanae's real ability: Being perfect for the game mechanics-- Bomb (Pointdevice) or life (Legacy) fragments are gained by killing a lot of enemies while grazing a lot, which Sanae, having a focused homing shot, excels at. She tends to get ''significantly'' more resources than anyone else.\\\

** ''Hidden Star in Four Seasons'' has the Autumn subweapon, ''especially'' when it comes to the game's mechanics. When it comes to seasonal releases, the lack of movement amongst other things hamper the constant usage of the other subweapons when collecting the season items you get when releasing; with Autumn as the subweapon, however, you will be able to move around with the release aura with the ''massively'' increased speed you get with it, allowing you to fly around the entire screen, and pointblank bosses to kill them instantly by spamming Autumn releases. The only major downside to using Autumn releases is the fact that you have no invincibility whilst using it, which will cause you to die by flying into fairies and bosses until you can distance yourself.\\\

** Another Touhou fangame GameBreaker is ''Riverbed Soul Saver'''s Liberation mode, which gives your character absurd amounts of firepower (think Imperishable Night's Malice Cannon glitch if it didn't require constantly focus-shifting ''and'' covered a wide area). It also lasts for a ridiculously long time, around 30 seconds or so, often enough to get through three or even ''four'' boss attacks with the firepower it provides. On top of that, it doubles any resources you pick up, meaning constantly abusing the mode throughout the game snowballs and provides you with more lives and more time spent in Liberation. It's meant to be balanced out by the fact that getting hit during Liberation causes your character to lose all the bombs they have in stock (making it a high-risk high-reward strategy), but due to the incredible area of attack and sheer power of the mode, it's very easy to avoid getting hit - and even if you do get hit, the doubled resources typically make up for the bombs you lost anyway.

* The ''[[VideoGame/{{LenEn}} Len'en Project]]'' series of games has it's bombing system. Bombing, in general, is seen as much more broken in comparison to ''VideoGame/{{Touhou}}''; whereas Touhou has high damage output against stage enemies, and low damage output against bosses, Len'en's bombs do obscene amounts of damage, no matter what. Characters like Tsubakura, Kuroji, and Sese have bombs that will practically ''instantly end any nonspell or Spell Card''. It does not help that bombs are handed out ''much'' more regularly in each game as opposed to ''Touhou'', '''especially''' in ''[=BPoHC=]''.

* Touhou's sister series [[VideoGame/{{Seihou}} Seihou]] is no stranger to game breakers either.

** In ''Kioh Gyoku'', due to how the [[ArtificialStupidity A.I.]] works, practically [[UpToEleven EVERY]] character has at least one [[AIBreaker A.I. Breaking]] attack. However, the [[DifficultButAwesome Difficult, But Awesome]] Erich is widely considered to be the absolute best character in the game. Why? His amazing [[BeamSpam homing lasers]] can easily destroy the A.I. opponents, especially on slower characters. Every single one of his attacks involves these nasty lasers, which appear in large numbers, are fast, and do a lot of damage. Oh, and since EX attacks are sent by grazing, and there are [[BulletHell so many bullets]] when late in the match, so more and more lasers are sent to your opponent to keep racking up the damage.

* The [[SpreadShot Spread Gun]] in ''{{VideoGame/Contra}}''. Since it fires five shots at a time, you can destroy quite a few bosses with ease just by firing point-blank. And most other enemies only need one shot anyway. If you're a competent platformer player, the jig is up once you have this weapon.

* In the UsefulNotes/AdobeFlash WebGame ''{{VideoGame/Enigmata}} 2: Genu's Revenge'', the [[TimeStandsStill Stop Time]] skill is this. It stops time, allowing you to wail on a boss without much problem, and you can activate it again as long as you have energy remaining. It has a high energy cost... which can by solved by upgrading it so that it uses less energy.

* ''VideoGame/EventHorizon'' has a strategy dubbed as the Death Ray Oracle, which revolves around pairing the Oracle ship, a huge FlyingSaucer with [[InstantDeathRadius 360° auto targeting]], with the DeathRay, a [[ChargedAttack Charged]] WaveMotionGun which [[ForMassiveDamage Hits For Massive Damage]] and has long enough range to cover the entire battlefield when buffed. The result? A build powerful enough to CurbStomp ''anything, anywhere, within 5 seconds or less'', which resulted in [[ObviousRulePatch banning Oracle in PvP]] for quite a long time, until auto targeting was [[{{Nerf}} nerfed]] and several weapons and ships were implemented with ''the sole purpose of countering it''.

** Sophia's Defense shot, Acid Reaction. Unlike other shield-type attacks that usually have some sort of gap in their defenses, Acid Reaction ''completely'' envelopes your ship as you fire your main shot and blocks not only conventional bullets, but even some attacks that other shields cannot. You can even just leave it at level 1 and focus on leveling up the other two Element Shots, only bothering to invest in Acid Reaction once the other two weapons are maxed out; while leveling up this attack does increase the damage radius, it's not necessary to do so to enjoy the defensive benefits. As such, some players make it a point ''not'' to use Acid Reaction or else the game gets [[ItsEasySoItSucks too easy for them]].

* ''VideoGame/{{Caladrius}}'' features a wide array of characters and weapons, so there's bound to be some that basically render all the other options obsolete unless you're doing some sort of SelfImposedChallenge, especially once you unlock Element Shot customization (where you can slap three of any character's Element Shots onto your chosen ship):

** Some consider the Judge Spear itself to be a GameBreaker. Fully power it up and give it a Slave formation that makes up for its lack of defensive spread, and you can easily tear through large enemies (and earn QUICK SHOT! bonuses that most other ships would find impossible to earn) and bring down bosses in very little time.

* ''StarSoldier: Vanishing Earth'' has the Blue Ship. The Green Ship [[WeakButSkilled has wide coverage and nice spread damage,]] the Red Ship [[JackOfAllStats has strong frontal and minimal back coverage with some good focused damage.]] The Blue Ship is entirely front-facing, and unlike the other ships' shots two of its laser cannons power up from level 3 and on, dealing astounding amounts of damage for a standard attack. Its first [[SmartBomb Ex-Arm]] is not truly noteworthy, especially compared to the other two ships, but its second Ex-Arm is ''devastating'': it unleashes a WaveMotionGun that deals so much damage ''it can kill or nearly kill most bosses in one shot.'' The fact the Blue Ship is also the fastest ship and has the longest lasting [[DeflectorShields Rolling]] is just icing on the cake. A halfway proficient player can keep the Blue Ship running on max or near max power the whole game and unleashing Ex-Arm 2 mostly on bosses to end the fights in seconds.

* ''VideoGame/SpaceInvaders Infinity Gene''? More like ''Infinity Cheese''. If you're going for the leaderboards, pick either of these two ships or ''don't bother''.

* Falchion Beta in ''[[VideoGame/{{Gradius}} Gradius Gaiden]]'', compared to the other three ships Lord British, Vic Viper, and Jade Knight. For its Double, Falchion Beta has Auto-Aim - Which auto-tracks and destroys any enemies above it. Auto-Aim renders any stage a cakewalk, even in higher loops. Its Laser, Gravity Bullet, causes such a high amount of concentrated damage that bosses die in mere seconds. Its missile weapon, Rolling Missile, will also pierce targets forward ''and'' back from where it drops.
** From ''Gradius III'', we have the Reduce shield, which reduces your ship's size and hitbox. In the arcade version, it provides no defense, but in the SNES port, it becomes a two-hit hitbox-reducing Force Field (though the first hit makes you grow slightly closer back to normal size), so not only do you become a smaller target, you also get reasonable defense to go with it. What propels it into game breaker territory outright is Full Barrier, a !-slot powerup that restores a partially-damaged shield back to full. So after activating Reduce, simply highlight the ! slot so if you take damage, you can keep your ship at minimum size without having to deplete your shield first.

* The hidden Slave fighter in ''VideoGame/RaidenFighters''. It fires shots that spread out in front of it, which fire very fast and are capable of doing large amounts of damage, particularly at point blank. Moreover, it has a small hitbox, and if you choose the Judge Spear variation of the Slave, you not only can move absurdly fast, but you also have the Judge Spear's super-powerful bomb. The Slave is so hideously broken that all the other ships are simply not worth using; on the ''Raiden Fighters Aces'' compilation, the Slave dominates every single online leaderboard, save for ship-specific leaderboards.

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{{Game Breaker}}s in [[ShootEmUp shoot-'em-ups]].

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[[quoteright:320:[[VideoGame/ThunderForce https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/tfvi_rynex.jpg]]]]
[[caption-width-right:320:See that boss on the right? [[GameBreaker That laser]] will [[HardLevelsEasyBosses fry him in less than four seconds]].]]

*** Another shot type that takes Liberation's brokenness UpToEleven is [=MarisaA=]. Her Liberation has two completely distinct shots. Focused, she shoots a spread of lasers that cover the entire screen without any effort, and unlike most spread shots, the individual lasers are ''very strong'', which turns most stage portions into complete jokes. Unfocused, she shoots a forward-focus cluster of lasers that, when targeted on an enemy (which is very easy to do), deal damage at the level of [=MarisaB=]'s glitched laser from ''Mountain of Faith'', except that this isn't a glitch, it's the intended behavior. This allows for shenanigans like wiping out a boss spellcard so quickly that Marisa can stay in one place and have the card dispel before any bullets even have a chance to reach her - and then doing that ''four or five times straight''. On top of all that, how does [=MarisaA=] enter her Liberation mode? By using Master Spark, which is every bit as powerful as it is in canon. The only downside to [=MarisaA=] is that she is slightly underpowered outside of Liberation, but she has enough to work with that she can still gain Liberation charge pretty easily. [[note]]That, and the fact that her shot makes about the MostAnnoyingSound ever exposed to human ears, but this can be fixed by turning off sound effects in the options menu.[[/note]]

* The Lock-on Laser in ''Raiden II''. They removed it in ''Raiden III'', but restored it by popular demand in ''Raiden IV''.
** The Lock-on Laser is actually the weakest weapon in the game, most players go with the SpreadShot or the laser.

** Then there's the XP-55 Ascender, unlocked via cheat code in ''Strikers 1945 Plus''. Again, not the fastest, but compensats for it with its decent strength and ludicrous special attack. It homes in on enemies, charges quickly and can hold the maximum nine specials--when other planes have at the most five specials.