YMMV / Super Aleste

• Breather Level: Areas 3, 6, and 9, short space station stages with loads of destructible tiles, jazzy music, and fairly easy bosses.
• Funny Moments: In the Japanese version, when you get a Game Over you see an illustration of the pilots poking at a busted miniature of their ship, as if they were playing with it like a toy.
• Game-Breaker: The Laser Power-up. Homes in on enemies, can pierce through obstacles, clear out groups of enemies, relatively strong, the works. Oh, and it's also available at the first stage. There are situations when you might prefer one of the other weapons, but the Laser is pretty much always a good choice regardless of the situation. (Area 8 is the one exception, because you need something that won't hit the walls.)
• Good Bad Bugs: Charge charges up faster if you toggle it into "no bullets" mode. If you start charging in this mode, but then toggle bullets back on, the charge will still increase at the same rate.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: The game is published by a company called Toho. Guess what else can be spelled as "Toho" and involves shmups? And in the Japanese version, the hardest difficulty level is labeled "Lunatic", making Lunatic difficulty Older Than They Think.
• Nightmare Fuel: Area 12's background is a slowly-throbbing alien mass of giant red nerve endings and bubble-like cells.
• Scrappy Weapon: The "Scatter" weapon. Every other weapon usually has some good points in its favor, but Scatter's low rate of fire and low damage make it underpowered to the point where picking it up is likely to get you killed.
• Suspiciously Similar Song: This Japanese-exclusive theme sounds similar to "Fine Time", "Blue Monday", and "The Perfect Kiss" by New Order.
• That One Level:
  • Area 8, a junkyard with derelict ships that release hazardous shrapnel upon being hit.
  • Area 11 is a high-speed stage; expect to get wall-squished at least once. Fortunately, there's no endboss.