Dodonpachi Daifukkatsu

[Sapphire225]

Experienced playing it at Otakon last year and realized that the Dodonpachi series probably has the hardest games on the planet.

It is a shmup game infamous for its difficulty, although not as well known as Touhou. But it is marginally much more difficult.

Anyway, I watched the Black Label version of the title game and saw the True Final Boss (and the the TRUE True Final Boss) which are insanely hard.

Here is a sample of the True Final boss: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVSVrcUW17E

Keep in mind, there is a harder boss after it that can be unlocked a certain way.

[Davidizer13]

Good to know that Cave is still trying to put Gothic lolita robot girls in everything they make.

...I miss Raizing's shmups.

[Sapphire225]

...I miss Raizing's shmups.

Not got the chance to play Raizing...Is it as hard?

[Davidizer13]

Not got the chance to play Raizing...Is it as hard?

Raizing's actually a company; they made Battle Garegga, Armed Police Batrider, Soukyugurentai, and the Mahou Daisakusen series (Sorcer Striker, Kingdom Grandprix, Dimahoo). It seems like they've moved away from shmups, in favor of fighting games like MvC3, but their shmups are some of the best ever made.

As for difficulty, they aren't as hard or as fast as Cave's stuff, but instead, they focus on visual style "rank," or difficulty that scales as you play. The better you do, the harder the game will be, - Garegga is especially infamous for this, because one of the tactics top players use is hoarding lives, then dying to decrease the rank.

The only real problem is that most of their shmups never got ported out of arcades (like Batrider), or their home ports got short print runs, so if you want a legal copy, you're probably going to get gouged for it on eBay. That seems to be the case for all shmups, unfortunately.