What I enjoy doing is rolling two pairs of dice to select two of my 80 favorite shmups (pictured above), and then I pick one of those two to play based either on my mood or on which one I've put less time into so far.

I play almost all of my shmups on either the highest or second-highest difficulty, using the DIP switches and/or in-game difficulty selection.

If I die quickly and am hungry for more I'll often restart the run and try to get a better score unless the prettiest stages with the best vibes are late in the game (as with *Ibara*), in which case I'll indulge in some credit feeding.

While the primary reason I keep the difficulty high is to keep the gameplay engaging even at the very start of the game, another of the benefits of playing on high difficulty is that I get frequent opportunities to reroll the dice if my runs are only a few minutes long.

If I'm playing on Steam Deck and thus not using one of our leverless controllers, I might consider dropping the difficulty a bit to account for the reduced precision.

I love seeking mastery, and I'm sure there are many in this community who understand this mindset. In my case, I find I'm less likely to burn out if I enjoy spreading my improvements across a variety of games with an eye toward playing them all for many years to come.

My Playstyle