Yeah, I beat Silver Surfer, back in 2008, twice. Was one very hard game for me. For one, the Silver Surfer is way too damn large a target, the game has two points of view, horizontal scrolling stages, and vertical scrolling stages, its not as bad on the horizontal parts, but the vertical areas give you very little room to move, nor enough time to react, but both are very difficult to get anywhere in, so easy to smack into a wall or one of the hordes of flying enemies cluttering up the screen. Plus, this for both perspectives, enemies sometimes take way too many hits, can't seem to fire fast enough to kill them all before having to take evassive action or get crashed into by them, same problem I have with Starship Hector, both games have a weak ass character or ship, and stronger than typical regular enemies. This is one of few shmups that a rapid-fire feature was necessary (at first) for me. But then I got good, playing it enough I was able to remember where every enemy would appear and would be ready ahead of time to either shoot the hell out of them, or avoid them, and it did help much not dying so much and keeping the options for added firepower.

So while at first I thought this game would be impossible for me to beat without turbo fire function, I surprised myself, I beat Silver Surfer! Twice! Nice!

Silver Surfer
08/20/08
1st game (1st time ever): beat it with 23 deaths / 2 continues used, score upon 1st continue 675.550 Magik Domain-Section 3
2nd game: beat it with 8 deaths / no continues used, score at end of game 609.400

And here I thought of Silver Surfer as one of the worst games I owned then, but then after having given it my all during the few days that I played it then, I was wrong, the game is actually pretty damn good. Its got its weak points, one being that you have no rapid fire (just lots of button mashing til your fingers fall off) and enemies take so many hits to start with, and actually I guess that's really my only big gripe, this being as how slow my finger speed is on my right hand, but I pulled it off to my surprise, getting better each time I played it. Problem is I have to play the stages in a certain order to get through them, such as I can't play Mephisto's or Firelord's stages first, because of the lack of decent firepower and slow firing rate of my fingers, and if I die on the first section of either, most likely I won't beat those stages. Typically I started with Emperor's stage since it isn't too difficult, followed by Mephisto if I ended Emperor with enough power, then either Firelord or Possessor, and ending with another easy stage Reptyl. After a while I was getting so good as to keep all my power through several stages in a row without even dying. Its all a matter of getting powered up and staying that way, at least through the difficult sections, but then this is typical of most shmups.

That was a good day, during a time in my life when I would whoop one game after a another, not only did I beat Silver Surfer, but also Wolverine on the same day, both games for the first time, and both very hard, but great games once you get good enough at them.