YMMV / Hellfire (1989)

• Best Known for the Fanservice: Hellfire S is often remembered among gamers for the alluring intro cutscene involving the game's protagonist Kaoru.
• Breather Boss: After the absolute hell of the Stage 3 midbosses' erratic movements and attacks, it's a relief to many players that the endboss just stays relatively still, fires bullets straight ahead in simple trajectories, and has an easy-to-reach weak point. Depending on your shot level when you get here, it will perish in 10 or even 5 seconds.
• Funny Moments: The way Yea Right difficulty (the name of which is an example in and of itself, really) is unlocked in the Genesis version. Set the difficulty to Hard and wait about a minute. Not only will it change to Yea Right, the game will immediately start, as if conscripting you into that difficulty level!
• It Was His Sled: Kaoru's Heroic Sacrifice at the end of Hellfire S.
• It's Easy, So It Sucks!: Although the PC Engine CD-ROM² version is praised for its excellent arrange soundtrack and expanded story, it gets criticism from players for being noticably easier than the arcade version or even the Genesis version, even when playing on Normal (the harder of the two difficulty levels).
• Player Punch: The ending of Hellfire S, in which Kaoru pulls off a Heroic Sacrifice.
• Polished Port:
  • The Sega Genesis version, developed by Toaplan themselves features a rapid-fire feature that doesn't break the weapon-changing mechanic and unique Smart Bomb and Attack Drone items not found in other versions of the game.
  • The Zero Fire compilation for PS4 and Switch features stellar ports of this game (as well as those of Zero Wing and Demon's World). Like past M2 ShotTriggers releases, it features gadgets that provide additional information, an Arcade Challenge mode that's great for practicing stages, save states, a Super Easy mode, a Custom mode that lets the player adjust the game's difficulty parameters to their liking, and online leaderboards. It also features every known version of the game: both arcade versions (although only the 2P version gets the gadgets, leaderboards, and Arcade Challenge), all of their regional toggles, and both console versions of the game (with both the Japanese and American variants of the Genesis port for good measure). The 2P arcade version additionally has new options that fix up the problems with the Change button or even introduce new weapon-change mechanic types to suit the player's style.
• Tear Jerker: Kaoru's death at the end of Hellfire S.
• That One Boss: Both midbosses of Stage 3. The first one is an eye monster with Floating Limbs that it spreads out, and each segment fires bullets at you. So not only do you have to deal with enemy fire, you also have to make sure not to bump into its segments, which can also block your shots. Then the second one is a trio of eye monsters that can easily corner you with their erratic movements.
• Underused Game Mechanic: In the Zero Fire compilation, the gadgets, leaderboards, and alternate control styles are only available for the 2P arcade edition of the game (including the Super Easy and Custom variants), not the 1P arcade edition, much to the disappointment of those who prefer the 1P edition (due to the checkpoint-based gameplay being seen by some as more fair than being, say, respawned at a boss or enemy-dense area without powerups and the increased shot limit for the multi-direction shot types which can make the game easier). They're not available for the console adaptations either, but that's to be expected since they run on entirely different hardware (and thus be a whole different ballgame for M2 to disassemble).