Shmup Junkie Ranks Every SNES STG (2025)

Similar to his PC Engine, Mega Drive and Toaplan efforts, Shmup Junkie has done another massive 2 hr long ranking video, this time on the Super NES/Super Famicom shmup library. With some odd omissions; I'm not entirely sure why Hong Kong '97, Wild Guns or SD Gundam are shmups but Pocky & Rocky isn't. Or why Moon Cresta got mentioned but not reviewed.

S+

S

A+

A

A -

B+

B

B -

C+

C

C-

D

F+

F

Might've been a little generous with the S ranks, and Super R-Type doesn't belong in the same rank with Imperium. But overall pretty reasonable imo. Parodius is great, but personally I might lean toward having R-Type III as the top game, especially because it's unique to the library. People tend to go elsewhere for their Parodius.

Yeah, Wild Guns is a very cool gallery shooting / Cabal style action game, but it's not a shoot 'em up per se. I'm also not sure why it's rated lower than Parodius Da!, the worst of the three Parodius SNES games (which somehow gets rated higher than both Jikkyou and Gokujou), given that Wild Guns is arguably an example of a 10/10 game that's absolutely solid from start to finish.

Parodius Da! always felt considerably harder and more rough around the edges than the polish found in Gokujou and Jikkyou. I'm not sure I've played enough Gokujou to honestly rate one over the other, but I'm pretty confident most folks would place Parodius Da! below those two. Both Gokujou and Jikkyou feature far greater variety in terms of shot types, many of which feel better tuned to handle the absolutely vicious rank in the Parodius series than what's in the first game.

I had more fun with Firepower 2000 than Darius Twin or Phalanx; the jeep is really fun in that one, but maybe it's just me. Still feels like it might be rated a bit more low than it deserves.

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I'll have to check this out.

My Top SNES shmup is a dead heat between R-Type III and Axelay. Could be either on a given day.

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Pretty solid rankings I think, though admittedly what Junkie tends to rate highly in a shmup very much aligns with what I would too (give me adrenaline-fused gameplay and a banging soundtrack and I am happy).

He mentioned in some of the comments that he counts Pocky and Rocky more within the run and gun genre (along with Smash TV and the like) and he may do a later video for them. SD Gundam, while a stretch, at least has some free-scrolling levels in the game. Impressive to find a game even more boring to play than Deep Blue though. I had assumed it wouldn't be until he had tackled the NES library that he would find something worse!

Nice, I've added some to my list ^^

Btw, you missed "Super R-Type w/ SA-1 hack" on the A tier

BareKnuckleRoo wrote:Yeah, Wild Guns is a very cool gallery shooting / Cabal style action game, but it's not a shoot 'em up per se. I'm also not sure why it's rated lower than Parodius Da!, the worst of the three Parodius SNES games (which somehow gets rated higher than both Jikkyou and Gokujou), given that Wild Guns is arguably an example of a 10/10 game that's absolutely solid from start to finish.

He wasn't the one who reviewed Wild Guns, he had Mark MSX guest-review that and Star Fox 1&2.

I had more fun with Firepower 2000 than Darius Twin or Phalanx; the jeep is really fun in that one, but maybe it's just me. Still feels like it might be rated a bit more low than it deserves.

I loved Firepower 2000. It was really highly reviewed back at release too. I haven't played it since, so I can't really speak too definitively as to how it's held up. Based on what he says in the video, I think it may be because he rated the Mega Drive version low, and says the SNES port is improved but mostly similar. But I've never played the MD version at all so I dunno.

SPM wrote:Nice, I've added some to my list ^^

Btw, you missed "Super R-Type w/ SA-1 hack" on the A tier

Thanks. Watching the segment again he just kind of alludes to that, but I'll add it. It sounds like it counts.

His list, his rules, but I wouldn't have put hacked or overclocked games on it. That isn't the games in a form anyone would have played them on at the time on real hardware, and to do so now you have to use emulators or hacked hardware. It's sort of cheating because it's saying "this game would have been awesome if the hardware was faster or had this feature."

Plus, I think if you're ranking things based on now as opposed to then, then things like those Parodius games don't belong on the list in such high positions. The Saturn or even PS1 versions of those games are superior. The only way I view those as relevant now is if you are looking at things in a very console-specific way, but then allowing hacked versions of games on the list isn't in the spirit of that either.

I generally like his lists and his views on games as his opinions are a bit closer to mine than most reviewers since he's not huge on scoring or bullet hell games, but I feel he is off here.

I'll freely admit I don't think much of the console's shooter library in general though. What I like, in no particular order: Axelay, Super Aleste (Japanese version), Pop'n Twin Bee (best Twinbee shooter period), Cosmo Gang The Video. The three Parodius games are fine but not worth playing now compared to Saturn. Don't care for anything else. Wild Guns is awesome but it doesn't belong on this list.

Firepower 2000: I remember playing that in 2P mode with a friend; it had that "Euro" feel (not today's definition of Euroshmup though) which brought it down. Wasn't it originally an Amiga game, or am I thinking of something else?

Was a relief to see his review of Gradius III makes sure to point out a lot the game's flak for slowdown was unfounded.
The SNES port was clearly balanced around the slowdown being there, and the SA-1 hack definitely proves that IMO. While it's an improvement in some areas, it makes the overall experience much more unbalanced, with some really awkward difficulty spikes. I think it's crazy to actually rank it over the original game, even though it's an interesting experiement.

Also, lol:
"[Wild Guns] was an FPS before FPS was a thing"

The game came out in 1994, man FPS games could not have been any more hyped than they were at that point in time.

The way the list is graded is very odd. Several layers of excellence, a couple of mediocrity then a couple of bad. Especially when some grades have only one or two games in them. Wild Guns and Star Fox have no business on this list - if you're going to be that broad then you may as well include Doom, Wing Commander and the Strike series.

cfx wrote:Firepower 2000: I remember playing that in 2P mode with a friend; it had that "Euro" feel (not today's definition of Euroshmup though) which brought it down. Wasn't it originally an Amiga game, or am I thinking of something else?

Yes, it's a reimagining of SWIV on the Amiga - borrowing artwork and some enemies but the stage layouts are largely unique. No idea where it picked up the goofy Firepower 2000 name from, but in other regions (including its native Europe) it's called Super SWIV. Mega SWIV is a later port to the Mega Drive which adds an additional stage (but not a new music track, so the music order is messed up) and makes some minor changes.

It's quite easy in that a hit powers your equipped weapon down and you can swap weapons on the fly, meaning more hits to tank. Plus you pick up loads of bomb-like attacks which are largely overpowered. Stages are a little long and a couple of weapons at max power trivialise large sections. However it's not really a Euroshump in the derisory definition - no inertia (except the river stage when playing as the jeep), no lifebar to disguise undodgable attacks. It really is just a solid console shmup which is European-made. As previously stated it's definitely a lot more interesting to play as the jeep, the heli makes the game far too easy.

cfx wrote:His list, his rules, but I wouldn't have put hacked or overclocked games on it. That isn't the games in a form anyone would have played them on at the time on real hardware, and to do so now you have to use emulators or hacked hardware. It's sort of cheating because it's saying "this game would have been awesome if the hardware was faster or had this feature."

I see what you mean, but it's 2023. Some games are (fully) enjoyed thanks to autofire that wasn't there at the time on real hardware, others are (fully) enjoyed thanks to savestates or other tools that weren't there at the time on real hardware. Optional QoL features improve these games, especially when you aim for a difficult 1CC/score/random goal. No auto/no practice tools/too much slowdown can make the experience tedious.

99% of us discovering a game on that list are going to play it through emulation. As long as it's been made clear in the ranking I don't see a problem. I wouldn't be playing some of these games if it wasn't for those QoL features, like Gradius III AC, from D tier to A tier in my book thanks to overclocking the CPU. I see that happening with Gradius III SNES and Super R-Type as well.

SPM wrote:99% of us discovering a game on that list are going to play it through emulation. As long as it's been made clear in the ranking I don't see a problem.

That's kind of a funny point given that the Gradius SA-1 hack is completely irrelevant for emulators. You can just overclock the emulation and run the game without slowdown without needing to hack it at all. The SA-1 hack allows you to do the same thing on an actual SNES.

I'm also not sure if such a massive speedhack qualifies as "QoL". It's not a question of making Gradius III more "approachable" for sure, rather it's the exact opposite. Trying to argue the meaning of "QoL" anywhere is generally a can of worms, but I think this one is especially hard to argue.

Either way, in the video where junkie first brought up the hack he states basically the same thing cfx did, that he'd normally only include stock SNES releases - he just made an exception because he loves that hack so much.
I honestly feel like he's being harsher on the original Snes G3 in light of the SA-1 hack. As I've already stated I prefer the proper balanced original, even if it's definitely very easy on the default difficulty, and I probably wouldn't hesitate to call it the best STG on SNES.

Fuck, this made me remember that Thunder Spirits exists. I already don't feel great since I got sick the other day, and now today just became a little bit worse thanks to that.

Oh, and I also saw a dude 2-ALL arcade Gradius III the last time I was at Mikado. That was pretty cool.

@Sumez Yeah you've got a point there but I wasn't talking just about that hack in particular, but rather any QoL feature (for instance, they included different scores for Star Fox in the video: A tier for the original version and S tier when overclocked). Adding that info makes the list better because it shows people a potential "better" way to enjoy the games if they want to (and the OG is still there).

I agree that the hack on GIII SNES seems too fast. I'll probably play it overclocked to a reasonable degree instead ^^

Gamer707b wrote:Also, gotta check me out some Parodius games. The bosses remind me strangely of the colorful, wacky and inventive bosses of Cuphead.

You might get some kick out of this if you haven't seen it yet then:
https://youtu.be/RmGb-jU3uVQ?t=520

(8:40 in the video in case it doesn't work)

pja wrote:

Gamer707b wrote:Also, gotta check me out some Parodius games. The bosses remind me strangely of the colorful, wacky and inventive bosses of Cuphead.

You might get some kick out of this if you haven't seen it yet then:
https://youtu.be/RmGb-jU3uVQ?t=520

(8:40 in the video in case it doesn't work)

Wow!! That's cool. It's impressive that a lot of these old games were so well made that modern devs are still drawing inspiration from them decades later. Thanks for the link.

SPM wrote:I see what you mean, but it's 2023. Some games are (fully) enjoyed thanks to autofire that wasn't there at the time on real hardware, others are (fully) enjoyed thanks to savestates or other tools that weren't there at the time on real hardware. Optional QoL features improve these games, especially when you aim for a difficult 1CC/score/random goal. No auto/no practice tools/too much slowdown can make the experience tedious.

99% of us discovering a game on that list are going to play it through emulation. As long as it's been made clear in the ranking I don't see a problem. I wouldn't be playing some of these games if it wasn't for those QoL features, like Gradius III AC, from D tier to A tier in my book thanks to overclocking the CPU. I see that happening with Gradius III SNES and Super R-Type as well.

Yeah tbh, I greatly prefer G3 SA-1 myself. I was still able to clear it without any insane struggle or weird gimmicky tricks. I died of course, but it's Gradius, that's gonna happen. I still died far less in this than the AC version and at the same points I'd die at in the original growing up.
I think it would do Gradius 3 a disservice to not mention SA-1 considering how noteworthy it was and how much it enhances *most* of the experience if you're into that breakneck pace. It's like talking about Metroid Prime and not noting Prime Hack. Or remarking about a Bethesda game without mentioning it's mod scene. User created content and enhancements can just become intrinsic to a game's legacy or discussion. I don't see a problem with Junkie's addition of it.