This is the message that pops up right before the final boss in the amazing Shmup by Treasure, Radiant Silvergun. Here's a picture of the boss, named Xiga:
This boss throws a LOT of stuff at you. This guy legitimately tries to kill you; he is absolutely no joke. This is the last of MANY bosses in Silvergun, and he's easily the hardest. So, why am I talking about an old Sega Saturn game? Because it's a shmup, that's why, and a darn good one too.
"Shmup" of course means "shoot-em-up" and stands for the genre of games where you have a tiny spaceship (or plane, or dragon, or magical human) and you have to take down about a million enemies while avoiding everything on screen except the powerups. If you get hit, you're dead. If you run out of lives, the game is over (no, you haven't really beaten the game if you use continues to do so. That's lame). Commonly, the genre involves dodging intense patterns of colorful but deadly bullets, like this game here named Dodonpachi:
Everything on screen will kill you if you touch it. Your ship is the tiny green one at the bottom. There's no wussy life bars or hit points. There's no storyline or fancy 3D graphics to get in the way of the sheer mayhem and action.
This is a genre that lives primarily in arcades, and even then primarily in Japan because that's where the new ones come out. However, every now and then a great one comes out to a console in North America and Europe. Take Ikaruga, for example. You've probably heard of it because it's consistently rated as one of best games on the Gamecube. Reviewers complained it was too hard (all shmups are hard, that's the point, play it for long enough and you'll get good at it) and that it was too short. Let me address this last one in detail because it plagues most shmup reviews by mainstream game press. These guys credit-feed through the game, using continues left and right, and when they beat it in 30 minutes they say "what, it's over? that was fast."
They don't understand the point of the genre. As with most arcade games, you've never really "beaten" it until you have done so without continuing at all. The way the game was meant to be beaten. Ikaruga can be played all the way through in about 30 minutes. To 1-credit-complete the game (1CC to those knowledgeable folks), it took me about 25+ hours of play (believe me, it's logged on my memory card). And by the way, that was on the eastiest settings in the game. It will take me another dozen hours probably to beat it on the normal settings, the way the game appeared in arcades.
Another thing reviewers often mention about shmups is that they are a "Throwback to a bygone era" or some such nonsense. Shmups are being played and released all the time. Not as often as the cookie-cutter FPSes coming out every week nowadays (to consoles, no less! More on that in the future), but still usually once or twice a year a big-name shmup releases. With the advent of downloadable games services like Xbox Live Arcade or WiiWare or the Playstation Network, many of the most popular games have been shmups. I'm looking at you, Geometry Wars.
The one reason everyone praised Ikaruga, and why everyone loves Geometry Wars, is the gameplay. It is about as pure as gaming can get. Shoot them, while avoiding projectiles. You need to move into the line of fire of enemies in order to kill them, and thus risk getting shot. Risk-reward system. There's challenge. Self-improvement. There are skills to learn. The games require reflexes. Knowledge of the games over long periods of play time will improve scores. Incentive to play better and longer. If you want replay value in the game, you won't find more than in a shmup. You're replaying the same levels over and over and over, improving your score, learning the enemy patterns and how to stay alive. It's just plain addicting.
I'll end this with a quote from Winston Churchill:
"There is nothing more exhilarating than to be shot at without result"
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