Fire Shark

Fire Shark, known in Japan as Same! Same! Same!, is a 1989 Shoot'Em Up arcade game developed and published by Toaplan. The player controls a biplane and builds up a score by shooting a variety of military targets.

In the year 19X9, on an alternate Earth, a global super-power known as the S Corps, which specializes in a heavy industrial army, begins invading various countries. All seems lost when a phantom pilot flying a super-powered biplane called the Tiger Shark flies in to save the world from domination.

Fire Shark shares quite a few similarities to Raiden, though it came out one year earlier.

Tropes used in Fire Shark include:

Awesome Yet Practical: The Flamethrower weapon at max level. It basically shoots two straight streams of damaging flames out in front, while another two on each side sweeps the entire area (except directly behind the player), allowing you to sweep away most regular Mooks. Best of all, it does a massive amount of damage per second.
Battleship Raid: Present in this game, you get to fight regular battleships as well as boss fights like these.
The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: Besides the Dynamic Difficulty, the game will also make the Power-Up-dropping enemies attempt to give you the blue weapon, the weakest of the three weapons. The powerups also stay on the screen and bounce around, making you have to dodge enemy fire AND powerups which you don't want to replace your flamethrower with.
Continuing Is Painful: Everytime you die in the Genesis version, you're sent back to a checkpoint area powered down by 1 level, have your speed lowered, your bombs reset to three and you weapon changed to the rather weak Spread Shot.
Dual Boss: The fist boss pits you against two tanks, another boss pits you against three land vehicle things, and yet another boss pits you against three durable planes.
Dynamic Difficulty: And how: if you survive for long enough, the game makes all the enemies bullets a lot faster. And the tanks become sniper tanks like that of Raiden...
Engrish: When beating the game on hard mode: "CONGRATULATIONS! YOU'RE GREATEST PLAYER !"
Everything's Even Worse with Sharks: Inverted, you're the "Fire Shark", and you kill stuff with your godly flamethrowers! Played straight from the enemy's point of view.
Excuse Plot: As above.
Fire-Breathing Weapon: The Flamethrower weapon, enough said.
Flunky Boss: Almost all the bosses are accompanied with basic run-of-the-mill Mooks. Unfortunately, that also includes Tanks and Gunboats...
Giant Mook: The large tanks and planes that you have to fight. Funnily enough, many of the large aircraft can take much more damage than many of the large land vehicles.
Improbable Aiming Skills: Tanks, when the Dynamic Difficulty gets turned up. That fact that their shots get faster too doesn't help one bit.
Mutually Exclusive Powerups: The three weapon powerups. Really annoying when the enemies start dropping blue powerups everywhere, when all you want is to keep your flamethrower...
Nintendo Hard: Happens when the Dynamic Difficulty is turned up.
One-Hit-Point Wonder: Your plane is downed in one hit.
Playing with Fire: The flamethrower (red) weapon. 6 streams of deadly fire that sweep the area, which would make the game a cake-walk if not for the Dynamic Difficulty.
Power-Up Letdown: The blue and green powerups, when you have the flamethrower. You do not want to replace the rarely-found flamethrower with a weaker weapon.
Recycled in Space: The Truxton series, also by Toaplan.
Rule of Three: You're given three lives to start, you get 3 bombs per life, there are three different weapons, and you need to collect three power up icons to get an upgrade in your weapon.
Smart Bomb: Present in the game, and looks very similar to the bomb weapon in Raiden.
Spread Shot: The blue weapon. VERY similar to the red weapon in Raiden, it shot a huge amount of shots in a spread when fully powered up. However, each shot was quite weak.
Suspicious Videogame Generosity: At the end of stage 10, you see three power-up carrying blimps. I wonder why...?
Tank Goodness: Many of the regular Mooks, as well as some bosses.
Video Game Flamethrowers Suck: COMPLETELY AVERTED.
Wolfpack Boss: The city boss, three large planes, and the snowfield boss, three land vehicle things. If you don't kill the previous one in time, you'll be assaulted by 2-3 of them!