I'm convinced that any arcade game that allowed for infinite continues knew that its difficulty level existed purely to separate you from your quarters and offered you a way to at least buy your way to the ending.

In The Hunt has the bones of a great horizontal shooter if it wasn't so obnoxiously obvious at every turn that it's just designed to kill you every inch of the way to the end. Despite piloting a submarine, most of the levels only have a percentage of the screen filled with water, and if they are mostly traversable they're chock-full of obstacles and hundreds of enemy ships all trying to ceaselessly murder you. This could just be considered challenging if it wasn't for the fact that your submarine is painfully slow, never manages to feel meaningfully powerful, and loses any powerups you did pickup upon death which is one hit of anything.

It's a shame that the game is such a money grab because the visuals are fantastic and there are some really cool set pieces and bosses throughout the game, but Irem makes it painful to enjoy any of this.