Played through Retro/Grade and beat it on beginner difficulty some time ago. Had a hard time beating levels on Pro difficulty, and played mostly through Challenge Mode to sample future levels at harder difficulties.
Well, tonight, I took on
X-Treme Mode on a whim through the regular game. I'm on Level 2 right now.
...
It makes sense in context. Given the type of game it is, I regularly play on average difficulty, and have difficulty past expert (my hands hurt playing Guitar hero on hard mode). I just did it on professional (or expert in GH terms), and beat 8 levels, acing one of them in the process. Ho-Ly Crap! Since when did I become awesome all of a sudden? My inner child must've come for a visit, and wanted to have fun. Actually, the boss fights were more fun this time around. I can't wait to take on the first/final boss on X-Treme.
Summary: I took down the game like the walls of Jericho.
EDIT:
In Touhou terms, I just decided to skip right into Lunatic/Extra mode, and am at the mini-boss fight before the final boss. I have a hard enough time with regular difficulty as-is. For no apparent reason, I just beat a crapload of levels beyond my limits of difficulty, where even my ego knows where to draw the line, where games becomes more annoying than fun. You know, endless continue tedium; the bane of arcade gaming.
EDIT EDIT:
Speaking of Touhou, Playing some intense songs in Sounddodger+ (mostly boss battle music from Final Fantasy and some other games), I dodged some seemingly impossible walls of bullets and iron maidens (being shot at all sides, and/or being killed by one or all spikes in the onslaught), along with surfing a wave during orbit (curtains of bullets lining the round walls, resembling waves in the process, flying closely to said wave, mind you, navigating in circles.) to the point it bordered on CMOF and CMOA territory with me saying something along the lines of "How am I dodging all these?" in a scared tone as I'm dodging the shots like a pro. I had less than a centimeter's clearance on all sides as I was quickly dodging all kinds of shots, large and small, and a wing of 12-24 tracking shots that were following me through this wall of bullets. I felt very much like Vash the Stampede dodging all those shots. Needless to say, despite all the intensity, I'm still averaging a 90% rating on all these crazy-intense songs. And then I rediscovered OCRemix. Now the fun really begins.
Speaking of which, I ought to try out the Trigun soundtrack for this game.