Arcade Button Mashers!

I never got the appeal of the "Bullet Hell SHMUPs" genre that started popping up in the arcades in the 90s. I just saw a game that cost 50 cents that had lots of confusing shit happening. Surely you just get wasted right away because it's so hard compared to Galaga, and I know I suck at Galaga even though I torture myself with it daily.. So tonight I tried Fire Barrel on my MiSTer. No reason for that one vs any other SHMUP title, I think it was on some list of best arcade games or overlooked gems or something.

Anyway I had no idea how easy it is to feel like you're getting good value for money on this stuff. Even on the MiSTer it feels like a good deal. You quickly start blasting away with rapidly increasing weapons until hey I'm shooting guns, firing in 6 directions plus rockets and homing missiles. And there's fire everywhere. If you catch a bullet you will rapidly get leveled back up. Galaga is damn near impossible for the Average Maroon to play for very long.

I'd been playing a bit of side scrolling Rygar type games recently and they're fairly unforgiving, I last maybe a couple level-ups so far before I have to move on.

But feed a couple quarters in for continues and Fire Barrel feels like a pretty good value for dollar pretty quick. As I'm looking for screenshots it doesn't seem like it was super beloved or anything, there's just rudimentary "This was a SHMUP from 1993" type information.