History NintendoHard / ShootEmUps

* ''VideoGame/BattleGaregga''. If you can handle the [[RealIsBrown realistically-colored bullets]], prepare for a different dimension of hurt: the [[DynamicDifficulty rank]] system. Playing normally, the game is practically UnwinnableByDesign in the last two stages; you have to do some rather counterintuitive-looking strategies like ''deliberately not powering up'' (because higher firepower raises the rank more) and ''deliberately dying'' (only way to reduce the rank). The latter also means you need to take full advantage of the point-based extra lives; it's been argued that playing for score (a feat that 99% of gamers don't care for) and playing for survival are one and the same in ''Garegga''.

* ''VideoGame/{{Hellsinker}}'' is relentless, [[GuideDangIt confusing]], and even the first two bosses on the Behind (default) path are pretty difficult.

** Seven years later we got ''Touhou 15: Legacy of Lunatic Kingdom'' which gained almost instant notoriety for being ''absurdly'' hard. About how hard is it? Let's put it this way: SaveScumming is made a central gameplay mechanic in the game and dying over 100 times over the course of one's first run is considered a pretty good performance. Almost half of those deaths are likely going to be inflicted by the [[ThatOneBoss stage 5 boss]].

* A variant of the ''danmaku'', ''VideoGame/{{Ikaruga}}'' is often cited as one of the hardest games ever made. And that's not even regarding going for the evasive "S++" rankings. Part of this is due to the fact that, once again, Treasure found a way to make a shooter that encourages the player to fly ''into'' enemy fire.

* And the less said about infamous titles like ''VideoGame/{{Pulstar}}'' or ''Viewpoint'', the better...

* ''VideoGame/{{Raiden}}'' derives its difficulty from fast enemy bullets and "sniper" tanks/gunboats that pop out and immediately fire a fast shot at you. [[DynamicDifficulty To elaborate, if you consistently perform well (i.e. constantly smashing through Mooks without even dying once), the game gets downright vicious by throwing these things at you frequently to ensure that you won't try to 1cc a single playthrough]]. In addition, dying reduces your firepower back to minimal, forcing you to pick up powerups again unless you picked up one of the rare fairies that generously drop powerups for you upon your death.

* From the ''very first stage'' ''VideoGame/{{Zanac}}'' is utterly unforgiving and constantly throws a thousand things at you at once (even during boss fights) with very few breathers. Power-ups are gotten from shooting one of three boxes, one of which contains the power-up, one of which has nothing and one of which ''fires at you'' when you destroy it. And ContinuingIsPainful to such a degree that if you die ''at all'' in the later stages, you're pretty much screwed unless you have godlike reflexes, making this another vertical scrolling game with "Gradius Syndrome".

* Arcade cabinet horizontal spaceship {{Shoot Em Up}}s à la ''VideoGame/ZeroWing'' are a famous example of this trope. An {{egregious}} one is ''Zed Blade'', also known as ''Operation Ragnarok''. After a deceptively easy start, the player has to fight ever-increasing number of enemies, most of which are pretty strong and require a lot of pummeling to go down. This would not be particularly deserving of note, if it wasn't that the player is required to avoid a veritable storm of bullets directed at him, most of which can't be shot down. This impressive amount of firepower is often shot by the enemies in such a pattern that there's no way to avoid being hit by at least one bullet. Since the ship has no shields and even one hit will result in a life loss, this makes the game practically unplayable... unless one uses an emulator and a cheat file to make the player ship invulnerable. Of particular notice is the last level, in which along with the usual hailstorm of enemies and bullets, there is a background boss that ''cannot be destroyed''. It'll stay there until the end of the level, spewing even more bolts in the player's direction. This writer doubts anyone ever saw the end of ''Zed Blade'' before emulation came along.

* The ''ThunderForce'' series of {{Shoot Em Up}}s has all sorts of unexpected death traps designed to make life miserable. It doesn't help that players who are very good at these games will [[StopHavingFunGuys hate you if you can't one-credit-clear a Thunder Force game within days of starting to play it]].

* The ''ShikigamiNoShiro'' series, which is to be expected, being BulletHell games. The games also have a "Tension Bonus System" that ups score and attack power when near enemies and bullets, of which there is ''plenty'', especially in Extreme Mode.

* ''Rayxanber II'' for the PCEngine not only forces ''R-Type''-like memorization, but has weapons that are underpowered for defeating the fast-moving enemies, some of which ''will'' completely encircle the ship.

It should be noted that while BulletHell games look obviously difficult, a very high bullet count is not needed to make a game sadistically difficult. Tight maze-like stages (even if the walls aren't [[DeadlyWalls deadly]]), fast "sniper" attacks, tricky enemy placement, and [[ContinuingIsPainful post-death powerup deprivation]] can make a "classical" shoot-em-up just as hard as your usual ''danmaku'' shooter. Just as there are players of older shooters who struggle with bullet hell, there are bullet hell players who are {{surprise|Difficulty}}d by how difficult bullet-sparse games from the 80's and early 90's can be.

* ''VideoGame/BattleGaregga''. If you can handle the [[RealIsBrown realistically-colored bullets]], prepare for a different dimension of hurt: the [[DynamicDifficulty rank]] system. Playing normally, the game is practically UnwinnableByDesign in the last two stages; you have to do some rather counterintuitive-looking strategies like ''deliberately not powering up'' (because higher firepower raises the rank more) and ''deliberately dying'' (only way to reduce the rank). The latter also means you need to take full advantage of the point-based extra lives; it's been argued that playing for score (a feat that [[DeaderThanDisco 99% of gamers don't care for]]) and playing for survival are one and the same in ''Garegga''.

* ''To The Earth'' is a wickedly difficult NES shoot-em-up featuring enemies that swoop down at you in waves, fire quickly, and pull away before you can so much as get a shot off, meaning they're barely on screen for a fraction of a second. How is this any different or harder than a traditional shoot-em-up? You have to ''use the Zapper'' for this game. Yes, a high speed space shooting game where you actually have rely on your own gun-handling reflexes. Oh, and if you shoot and don't hit a target, you lose some of your lifebar, so you can't just fill the air with shots either. This contributes to a ruthlessly hard game that ended up being [[LoveItOrHateIt quite polarizing]] among reviewers at the time.

* ''{{Recca}}'' is the UrExample of BulletHell. Except, unlike most bullet hells, it's EXTREMELY fast paced and frantic. You get no continues, you lose all powerups when you die, [[note]]although considering how many enemies are on screen at once, that's not as big a issue as you'd think[[/note]] the bombs need to be charged [[note]]although you do get a unlimited amount of them, it's difficult to find time to charge them.[[/note]] The game has little slowdown for the most part [[note]]Impressive considering it's a NES game with a ton of things going on at once[[/note]] and in general it doesn't fuck around. The credits even state that ''Recca'' is a "Super Hard Shooting Game" Then there's hard mode, which changes the entire game around to make it even harder, and Zankai Attack, which puts the "Bullet" in BulletHell. This makes it the vertical scrolling equivalent of ''Gradius''.

* ''Burning Force'' is a brutally difficult SpaceHarrier clone (but with most of the game being played on a hoverbike that can only move left and right.) By the midway point of the game, there's a constant barrage of things flying at you, and the 3D perspective can make it hard to tell how close projectiles are to you in some instances. Hoverbike bosses can also be frustrating, because unless you have homing missiles you can only hit them if they're low to the ground, so obviously a lot of them like to just fly up frequently so you can't hit them. Not only that, but even in the arcade version, getting a game over kicks the player back to the beginning of the stage, preventing them from just [[BribingYourWayToVictory Bribing Their Way To Victory]], and getting a game over in the final stage (when the FinalBoss is a massive MarathonBoss) ends the game right then and there without a chance to continue.

* The ''VideoGame/PockyAndRocky'' games are generally [[CuteEmUp quite hard, in spite of their level of cuteness.]]

* [[http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Creator/Capcom Capcom]]'s [[VideoGame/{{Nineteen Forty Two}} 19XX]] series which has you fighting through storms of projectiles and enemies and plenty of bosses which take the form of [[ImpossiblyCoolWeapon Huge]] [[AwesomeButImpractical Expensive]] [[MilitaryMashUpMachine Superweapons]]. Not helped by ''1942'', ''1943'', and ''1944'' being [[MarathonLevel exceptionally long]] by arcade standards.

* The ''PockyAndRocky'' games are generally [[CuteEmUp quite hard, in spite of their level of cuteness.]]

* [[http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Creator/Capcom Capcom]]'s [[VideoGame/{{Nineteen Forty Two}} 19XX]] series which has you fighting through storms of projectiles and enemies and plenty of bosses which take the form of [[ImpossiblyCoolWeapon Huge]] [[AwesomeButImpractical Expensive]] [[MilitaryMashUpMachine Superweapons]]. Not helped by ''1942'', ''1943'', and ''1944'' being exceptionally long by arcade standards.

* ''VideoGame/MarsMatrix'' features brutal patterns as early as stage 3 (of 6) and a difficult item-chaining system that you are required to master to defend against and [[AttackReflector counter]] enemy attacks, earn enough EXP to level your ship up, and get extra lives.

* ''VideoGame/MarsMatrix'' features brutal patterns as early as stage 3 (of 6) and a difficult item-chaining system that you are required to master to defend against and [[AttackReflector counter-attack]] enemy attacks, earn enough EXP to level your ship up, and get extra lives.

* ''VideoGame/MarsMatrix'' features brutal patterns as early as stage 3 (of 6) and a difficult item-chaining system that you are required to master to earn enough EXP to level your ship up and get extra lives.

* ''VideoGame/RaptorCallOfTheShadows'' isn't as infernally difficult when compared to other shoot 'em ups (especially since the game ditches the [[ScoringPoints scoring system]] in favor of a [[MoneySpider monetary]] [[RewardingVandalism rewards]] system as well as having your ship averting the OneHitPointWonder trope that so many others employ) but the [[DeathCourse entire Outer Regions episode]] (the third and final episode) may qualify for having a plethora of DemonicSpiders and malevolent ground defenses ready to rip your titular aircraft apart if you aren't well prepared. Specifically, there's an amalgamation of Mooks, both airborne and grounded, that fire a dizzying array of flak balls, missiles, plasma balls, and lasers towards unsuspecting players. Even on the easiest difficulty setting, you will still find yourself losing a lot of your shields, thanks to the unpredictable appearances of the Mooks. What's more, there's a ''lot'' of [[LawOfChromaticSuperiority red-coloured Mooks]] in this episode compared to the previous two (the first one has none of these coloured Mooks whatsoever while the second has only red-coloured helicopters with predictable patterns that first appear in the fourth wave and then making some recurring appearances up until the seventh wave), On [[HarderThanHard Elite difficulty]], the whole episode might as well fit this trope very aptly as it throws a ''ton'' of these Mooks at your face. Thus, it is highly not recommended to begin this episode until you are fully stacked on Phase Shields and Megabombs and have access to the most useful and powerful weapons your revenue can get; namely the Laser Turret, Pulse Cannon, Auto-Tracking Minigun, and especially the [[InfinityPlusOneSword Twin Laser]]. The latter two are going to prove very useful for the [[CoresAndTurretsBoss Cores And Turrets Bosses]], including the very FinalBoss in the last wave, and especially since the [[ThatOneLevel very last wave in this episode is ridiculously merciless at any difficulty level]] (even on Rookie). Oh, by the way, if you health reaches zero, your game is over as there are no extra lives or continues in order to make up for the aversion of the OneHitPointWonder trope, unlike other contemporaries in its genre.

* The ''VideoGame/RType'' series. What it lacks in BulletHell, it more than makes up for it with its challenging stage designs and enemy placements, which determined players ''must'' memorize. Credit feeding and/or savestating will quickly become your best friends in practicing the stages.

* And the less said about infamous titles like ''{{Pulstar}}'' or ''Viewpoint'', the better...
* Most of {{Cave}}'s shmups became notorious for their elaborate scoring mechanics, and their difficulty; their most successful titles have earned the attention of non-competitive shmup players and score-competitive ones alike, and are often [[http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.php?t=26325 ranked high]] in terms of player preference. It wouldn't be much of a stretch to say that Cave has defined its own standards of difficulty, where Nintendo Hard isn't enough to express it. For example, the VideoGame/{{Touhou}} community has created a hacked version of its 6th game that's inspired by ''VideoGame/MushihimeSama'''s Ultra Mode. Now, [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-EQOc4cWcYw for your viewing pleasure]]

*** The Asian and World arcade versions were somewhat easier than the aforementioned Japanese version, which was the basis for the PS2 port.

* ''VideoGame/{{Raiden}}'' derives its difficulty from fast enemy bullets and "sniper" tanks/gunboats that pop out and immediately fire a fast shot at you. [[DynamicDifficulty To elaborate, if you consistently perform well (i.e. constantly smashing through Mooks without even dying once), the game gets downright vicious by throwing these things at you frequently to ensure that you won't try to 1cc a single playthrough]]. In addition, dying reduces your firepower back to minimal, forcing you to pick up powerups again.