Like this
This is propably the most unfun game to play for score there is. I'm not even dodging anything in this game, just moving to places for micluses, quickshots and such. Bosses you can just pointblank+bombspam to kill them in 5 seconds each. The end stages aren't really that important because there is no end of stage bonuses, which make them kinda worthless specially if you drop your medal chain.
Sim30 is lovely, I can't even see the bullets. In phase1 the bullets hide into the explosions.
certain micluses are dangerous for the player to reveal (especially if there are other enemies on the screen), and some advanced-ish scoring tricks involve revealing them first, then extending the event chain and then exploding them (micluses), so that their value is multiplied further. The game starts being fun when you can successfully enlarge your multiplier and gain nice rewards.. even if I still can't do that for Sim 05 (example: Quick Shot against a tank, after disabling its shots -> DX Medal after destroying the final wagon of the bottom onscreen train, if it has been shown all of its wagons -> Miclus from turret -> Quick Shot on the incoming plane -> Discovered the Fairies on the moving crane), I find that pursue to be fun :p
I'd advise against pointblanking bosses, outside of their initial appearances.. instead, I'd recommend watching its attacks on youtube, for example, in order to judge if you would rather spend a bomb to shut that pattern down, or dodge them safely. (why not pointblank? Some bosses, for example, RB Phase 1's, would've killed you if you were near it, after its side gunners fired their shots ;p)
I think I agree on you with Phase 1.. don't remember exactly how I died in it, the last time.. (however I like Sim 30, because of the amount of points it gives to me :p -- however I'd hate to play Sim 45, didn't reach it, ever, however my friend Ruldra said, during STGT'09, that it likes to kill his credits :p)
This game made me think about playing Battle Garegga for score.
Yes, it's THAT bad
Battle Garegga involved rank control measures (limiting your fire and item pickup, dying to decrease rank and get bomb pieces, scoring well to gain more lives.. hoarding bombs for Stage 2's flamingoes and Stage 7's midboss -- and perhaps the rails during the 4th boss, if you feel lucky :p --, otherwise, spending them a lot), RFJ *may* sometimes encourage you to lose both of your slave ships in order to temporarily decrease rank, while it discourages dying.
Both games give you a lot of bombs, which are mainly used for scoring (and sometimes used to prevent you from dying, in anticipation), and both games challenge you to see if you can maintain control over the game (if you're missing scoring opportunities, this means that the game's overwhelming you/forcing you to miss them), except that in RFJ you don't have to mind about managing rank, so you're free to spam shots and to not care about score-acquired extends and keeping a low life stock.
bonus: about how to score.. you have the DX Medals, you raise their value to 100k and then try to not let any of them go down the screen (DX medals that appear after you've let one fall down will be reset to 10k, and there's no way to immediately "restore" a broken chain, unlike in Garegga/Batrider). DX medals are raised in value (up to 100k), when you collect all of the onscreen medals (so, when you're building up your medal level, avoid exposing many medals at once.. however, raising it for the first time is easy, at the start of Sim 05). Also, when you chain messages (Quick Shot/Destroyed At A Time/Discovered the Miclus/Discovered the Fairy/DX Bonus, etc.), the affected elements give you a multiplied bonus, whose multiplying factor depends on how much messages are being chained (up to x9). Said chain ends when there are no more messages on the screen.
About bomb usage, sometimes it's used to create a no-shot area (example: Sim 15, against one of the larger tanks before the boss, they're near a Miclus hidden in a tree, and the player may spend a bomb to have the time to reveal it), or to deal damage on multiple targets (example: Sim 05's boss), in order to get Quick Shot/Destroyed At A Time bonuses (Quick Shots are earned if you manage to destroy enemies before they shoot. Doesn't matter if you've "sealed" their shots by standing near them, before destroying them. At least this "sealing" technique works on the tanks, dunno about the other enemies :p). You can read more about the game's mechanics, here:
http://web.archive.org/web/20020224150902/alluro95.tripod.com/raiden/rfjsecrets.htm (and also, look for YCW's
replay on youtube with Judge Spear). Should you or anyone else have questions about stages/bosses, feel free to ask.. I'd feel bad if I failed to help.
Isn't Dimahoo supposed to be regarded as like, one of the worst designed shooting games of all time? At least I thought I heard that once. 
I think I've read it too :p
