An intimidating genre, bullet hells demand an intense investment from any gamer worth their salt; to be able to navigate an endless net of death requires god-tier reflexes and a 3 second foresight into the complex bullet patterns that enemies weave. That being said, after enough practice, success can be achieved, and the ability to react evolves to mere memorization... right?

Enter Battle Garegga, a shoot em up that changes things entirely. Considered to be one of the best of its kind, the main draw of this game is a simple mechanic: the better you are at the game, the more difficult it becomes.Simply put, its a masocore gamers dream. The game features a Rank System, which tallies up player actions in real time, combining factors like score, how long a life has lasted, number of shots fired, and enemies destroyed to adjust the difficulty accordingly. While this was an invisible mechanic during the original arcade release 20 years ago, this re-release incorporates useful windows depicting rank, displaying all the data accrued. What makes this interesting is the combination of a risk-reward system in a fasted paced style of gaming, and to this day, there hasnt been anything like that at all.

A total cult game, its nice to see that the players of today are getting goaded into taking up a challenge like this; can they keep their rank up though - now thats a different story altogether...