YMMV / Fire Shark

• Complacent Gaming Syndrome: Despite this game's reputation for its flamethrower weapon, which is regarded by many players as a Game-Breaker, pro players in fact mainly stick to the blue Spread Shot as it can consistently shoot in a wide angle at all levels. This is because the flamethrower doesn't get side shots until level 3, and even then its side blasts turn back and forth so it can't always blast everything in sight. The same players also generally avoid green vulcan items at all costs because it has no side coverage whatsoever.
• Contested Sequel: On one hand, you have players who love this game because of the iconic flamethrower weapon and the absoultely fantastic synthesized metal soundtrack, considering it to be a vast improvement upon Sky Shark. On the other hand, there are people, even fans of Toaplan's other games, who dislike this game because of its sadistic difficulty, not helped by the game's intentionally-unhelpful powerup system that can force the green beam onto the player, and prefer Sky Shark for being simpler yet much more fair and refined.
• Demonic Spiders:
  • Tanks, when the Dynamic Difficulty gets turned up. They can be likened to the tanks in the Raiden series, aka "Sniper Tanks"- what with the Improbable Aiming Skills, extremely fast bullets, and firing almost immediately as soon as they appear. For the water equivalent, we have gunboats.
  • Powerup blimps of all enemies become this once you have a maxed-out weapon blue or red shot, as they will frequently drop green weapon items just to make you switch to it and lose your wide-range coverage in a game where enemies need to be destroyed as soon as possible or else they will snipe you.
• It's Hard, So It Sucks!: Fire Shark is one of Toaplan's more divisive games due to being one of the hardest games they put out, if not one of the hardest commerically-produced shmups period (rivaling even the likes of Mushihime-sama Futari on Ultra and the arcade version of Gradius III). In addition to absolutely mean enemies that fire lightning-speed bullets, the game is infamous for its powerup system that intentionally tries to screw over the player. The American Fire Shark build (as opposed to the Japanese Same! Same! Same! original) build attempts to alleviate this by removing the checkpoint system and dialing down some of the enemy behaviors, but it's still a sadistic experience for many players. The Genesis port of the game is generally regarded as superior simply for being based on the 1-player edition, but having a much more reasonable difficulty curve.
• Nintendo Hard: The game is already this by nature of being an arcade shooter, but it soon quickly turns sadistic with how often enemies flood the screen and their absurdly fast bullets even on the first loop. Add in a power-up system that requires three P items to level up, a slow initial plane speed, and the inability of certain weapons to effectively cover the screen, and you've got what is frankly one of the hardest shmups in existence, with not even most modern Bullet Hell games matching it in terms of utter difficulty. Toaplan would later make a "2P" variant, which serves as an alternate build in Japan and the only release of the game in the US, with lowered enemy difficulty and the checkpoint system removed, but it's still not easy. It's rather telling that in the Genesis version, despite its Normal difficulty being tuned to be easier than arcade, the game still defaults to Easy difficulty.
• Polished Port: The Genesis version, developed by Toaplan themselves, uses the same mechanics as the "1P" build (checkpoints and no Co-Op Multiplayer), but it also has a much more reasonable difficulty curve while otherwise staying faithful to the original. It also adds a rapid-fire function, something that the arcade version does not have unless you hard-wire it into the cabinet yourself. For those who missed out on this version in its heyday, fret not, as it’s available as part of the Hishou Same! Same! Same! collection for Switch and PS4, albeit as DLC if you purchase the digital edition rather than the physical one.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • Having to collect 3 'P' tokens to upgrade shot power (as opposed to only one token in other Toaplan games) isn't a well-liked mechanic amongst many players.
  • The 'S' (Speed-Up) tokens bounce on the screen with the top of the screen as the "ground", and they move so fast that if you have no speed upgrades, it's entirely possible to be unable to catch up to them. Assuming an enemy doesn't snipe you first.
  • The end-of-stage score bonus (and scoring is important in this game, as you gain extra lives through it) is proportional to how many lightning icons you picked up on the life that you finished the stage with times the number of bombs you have. Which means if you have no bombs at the end of the stage — and you likely will — you get no bonus!
• Scrappy Weapon:
  • The red flamethrower weapon is easily a Game-Breaker with how powerful and wide-reaching it is, and the blue Spread Shot weapon isn't as flashy as the red weapon but is still quite reliable and more common. Meanwhile, the green vulcan weapon is easily the most hated weapon of the three, as while it inflicts a lot of concentrated damage, it has no spread whatsoever, making picking it up a death sentence in later levels in a game where enemies that are allowed to live for more than one second will snipe you. To add insult to injury, the item for it is more common than the other two weapons and sticks around longer than other items, and if you have a maxed out shot and you fill the powerup meter, item blimps that would normally carry powerups will instead release weapon change items...most of which will be green. As such, green items are to be treated as extra bullets.
  • Even the flamethrower isn't safe from this trope. A level 3 or 4 flamethrower may rain death upon your enemies, but at level 1 or 2 it only shoots forward beams with all the problems of the green vulcan.
• Sequel Difficulty Spike: A massive one over Sky Shark. Despite the player having more firepower options, the perks are easily outstripped thanks to rapid enemy bullet speeds coupled with difficult placements, a powerup system where just powering up one level requires 3 'P' tokens, the player having a very slow initial plane speed that has to be improved by collecting fast-moving 'S' tokens, and weapon change items lingering on the screen for a long time meaning the player can be forced to switch an undesired weapon. The game is more than twice as long too, with 10 stages that take 45-50 minutes as opposed to Sky Shark's five stages that take only 15-20 minutes.
• Underused Game Mechanic: In the Hishou Same! port, none of the M2 Gadgets or most convenience features besides savestates and rapid fire are available for the "alternate" versions of the game (US Fire Shark and JP 2P Same! Same! Same!), which are better-regarded by players due to the lowered difficulty. If you want the full package, you have to play the brutally difficult "1P" Same! Same! Same! version of the game.