YMMV / Cho Ren Sha 68k

• Awesome Music: Oh yes! The chiptune soundtrack really makes you reminiscence of the old days of gaming and Ruzarin "Loser" Kashiwagi made some great use out of the Sharp X68000's sound system. "We Love the E.A.R.T.H ", the track that plays at the high-score tables, really helps gives you a sense of accomplishment when you score a new personal best. A remastered version of the original soundtrack can be purchased here.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • Upon completing Stage 6, the background, which has otherwise been constant for the entire game, suddenly turns red and black and instead of the game displaying "STAGE 7" as one may expect, it shows "STAGE 0" instead. Sure, there isn't really any plot to the game, but it gives you the feeling that something's really not right about this stage.
  • Setting the stage flag to 0 in the secret options menu triggers a version of Stage 0 in which the Final Boss theme plays but no enemies show up and you just fly endlessly with nothing of value to do until you exit the game.
  • The urgent-sounding klaxons at the start of "Impossible One", the theme for the Stage 6 and 0 bosses. Can come off as a Jump Scare if the player doesn't expect them.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • Both Boss Rushes (the standard one and the special "Show Time!!" one) have no powerup ships, forcing you to do the entire thing with no shields and a weak minimum-level weapon.
  • The lack of autofire is a sore point amongst players due to how tiring it can get to repeatedly tap the fire button for the roughly 50 minutes needed to complete both loops. This was a deliberate design decision by the developer, who explained that the lack of autofire is meant to be a throwback to 80s shmups that don't have it either, but not everyone agrees that excluding autofire for the sake of nostalgia is a good thing. That said, if you use a game controller with its own autofire feature, or use third-party tools such as JoyToKey to create an autofire button, it's easy to get around this.
• Shocking Moments: While version 1.10 with its new stage backgrounds is a pleasant surprise for shmup fans, what many of them did not expect was a completely redone ending.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: The transition from Stage x—0 to Stage (x+1)—1^note Where x is an odd number (where an explosion takes place and it turns out to be the exact same one from the start of the game) sounds like it could make for a great plot twist...if the game even HAD a plot to begin with.

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