Raiden Fighters 2 (Arcade) - Expert Course All (Judge Spear, 86 millions)

Played on MAME 0.256

So something I had not touched yet in Raiden Fighters 2 are the hidden modes you can play: Special and Expert. Special mode is just a basic boss rush while Expert is a much harder version of the regular game, rank is higher and enemies fire suicide bullets upon being destroyed.

The suicide bullets are always aimed and can be sealed most of the time but they still change things a lot. In stage 3 I skip out on several trains because they would require a bomb otherwise. The only way to seal these is being at the top of the screen, and even then as Judge Spear, sometimes the first part dies a little too late and fires back at you (you can see that at 4:52, I deliberately use my slave as a shield otherwise that would've been immediate death). Also enemies that are too large can't be sealed at all. This makes the sky stage a complete menace when going for the fairies at the end, since the large aircrafts will leave a cloud of suicide bullets upon being destroyed.

Because of the heavy bomb usage there I had to trigger a fairy in stage 5 to get an extra bomb. So oddly enough the hardest part of Expert mode is the middle portion of the game as the last 2 stages are mostly the same.