There were many side view shooters that came out early in the life of the SNES.  This game has worse graphics than Gradius III and Super R-Type (though certainly they are still pretty good), and has some slowdown that plagued early games.  The biggest problem is that it takes far too many hits to kill enemies, and there is no autofire.  I'm sorry, but when it takes more than one hit to kill the first enemy you encounter, and they come in a huge swarm, it is just too hard.