Shoot 'em ups (also known as shmups or, chiefly in Japan, STGs) are a subgenre of action games. There is no consensus as to which design elements compose a shoot 'em up; some restrict the definition to games featuring spacecraft and certain types of character movement, while others allow a broader definition including characters on foot and a variety of perspectives.
The genre's roots can be traced back to earlier shooting games, including target shooting electro-mechanical games of the mid-20th-century, but did not receive a video game release until Spacewar! (1962). The shoot 'em up genre was established by the hit arcade game Space Invaders, which popularised and set the general template for the genre in 1978, and has spawned many clones. The genre was then further developed by arcade hits such as Asteroids and Galaxian in 1979. Shoot 'em ups were popular throughout the 1980s to early 1990s, diversifying into a variety of subgenres such as scrolling shooters, run and gun games and rail shooters. In the mid-1990s, shoot 'em ups became a niche genre based on design conventions established in the 1980s, and increasingly catered to specialist enthusiasts, particularly in Japan. "Bullet hell" games are a subgenre of shooters that features overwhelming numbers of enemy projectiles, often in visually impressive formations.
Definition A "shoot 'em up", also known as a "shmup"Buchanan, Levi, Top 10 Classic Shoot 'Em Ups , IGN, April 8, 2008, May 26, 2009 or "STG" (the common Japanese abbreviation for "shooting games"), is a game in which the protagonist combats a large number of enemies by shooting at them while dodging their fire. The controlling player must rely primarily on reaction times to succeed.Ashcraft, p. 70 Beyond this, critics differ on exactly which design elements constitute a shoot 'em up. Some restrict the genre to games featuring some kind of craft, using fixed or scrolling movement. Others widen the scope to include games featuring such protagonists as robots or humans on foot, as well as including games featuring "on-rails" (or "into the screen") and "run and gun" movement.Game Genres: Shmups, Professor Jim Whitehead, January 29, 2007. Retrieved June 17, 2008. Provo, Frank, Bloody Wolf , GameSpot, July 7, 2007. Accessed June 17, 2008 Mark Wolf restricts the definition to games featuring multiple antagonists ("'em" being short for "them"), calling games featuring one-on-one shooting "combat games". Formerly, critics described any game where the primary design element was shooting as a "shoot 'em up", but later shoot 'em ups became a specific, inward-looking genre based on design conventions established in those shooting games of the 1980s.
Common elements Shoot 'em ups are a subgenre of action games. These games are usually viewed from a top-down or side-view perspective, and players must use ranged weapons to take action at a distance. The player's avatar is typically a vehicle or spacecraft under constant attack. Thus, the player's goal is to shoot as quickly as possible at anything that moves or threatens them to reach the end of the level, usually with a boss battle. In some games, the player's character can withstand some damage or a single hit will result in their destruction. The main skills required in shoot 'em ups are fast reactions and memorising enemy attack patterns. Some games feature overwhelming numbers of enemy projectiles and the player has to memorise their patterns to survive. These games belong to one of the fastest-paced video game genres.
Large numbers of enemy characters programmed to behave in an easily predictable manner are typically featured. These enemies may behave in a certain way dependent on their type, or attack in formations that the player can learn to predict. The basic gameplay tends to be straightforward with many varieties of weapons. Shoot 'em ups rarely have realistic physics. Characters can instantly change direction with no inertia, and projectiles move in a straight line at constant speeds. Lasers and other energy beams may make right-angle turns or may "track" the movement of the ship that fired them. The player's character can collect "power-ups" which may afford the character's greater protection, an "extra life", health, shield, or upgraded weaponry. Different weapons are often suited to different enemies, but these games seldom keep track of ammunition. As such, players tend to fire indiscriminately, and their weapons only damage legitimate targets.
Types Shoot 'em ups are categorized by their design elements, particularly viewpoint and movement:
Fixed shooters restrict the player and enemies to a single screen, and the player primarily moves along a single axis, such as back and forth along the bottom of the screen. Examples include Space Invaders (1978), Galaxian (1979), Phoenix (1980), and Galaga (1981). In Pooyan (1982), the fixed axis of movement is vertical, along the right side of the screen. In Centipede (1981) and Gorf (1981), the player primarily moves left and right along the bottom, but several inches of vertical motion are also allowed within an invisible box.
Multidirectional shooters allow 360-degree movement where the protagonist may rotate and move in any direction such as Asteroids (1979) and Mad Planets (1983). Multidirectional shooters with one joystick for movement and one joystick for firing in any direction independent of movement are called twin-stick shooters. One of the first games to popularize twin-stick controls was Robotron: 2084 (1982).
Space shooters are a thematic variant of involving spacecraft in outer space. Following the success of Space Invaders, space shooters were the dominant subgenre during the late 1970s to early 1980s. These games can overlap with other subgenres as well as space combat games.
Tube shooters feature craft flying through an abstract tube,Reed, Kristan, Gyruss , Eurogamer, April 19, 2007. Accessed February 17, 2009 such as Tempest (1981) and Gyruss (1983). There is still a single axis of motion, making these a subset of fixed shooters.
Rail shooters limit the player to moving around the screen while following a specific route;Goldstein, Hilary, Panzer Dragoon Orta , IGN, January 10, 2003; July 17, 2008 these games often feature an "into the screen" viewpoint, with which the action is seen from behind the player character, and moves "into the screen", while the player retains control over dodging.Kalata, Kurt, "Space Harrier" , Hardcore Gaming 101. Accessed February 2, 2010 Examples include Space Harrier (1985), Captain Skyhawk (1990), Starblade (1991), Star Fox (1993), Star Wars: Rebel Assault (1993), Panzer Dragoon (1995), and Sin and Punishment (2000). Rail shooters that use light guns are called light gun shooters, such as Operation Wolf (1987), Lethal Enforcers (1992), Virtua Cop (1994), Point Blank (1994), Time Crisis (1995), The House of the Dead (1997) and Elemental Gearbolt (1997). Light-gun games that are "on rails" are usually not considered to be in the shoot-em-up category, but rather their own first-person light-gun shooter category.
Cute 'em ups feature brightly colored graphics depicting surreal settings and enemies. Cute 'em ups tend to have unusual, oftentimes completely bizarre opponents for the player to fight, with Twinbee and Fantasy Zone first pioneering the subgenre, along with Parodius, Cotton, and Harmful Park being additional key games. Some cute 'em ups may employ overtly sexual characters and innuendo.Ashcraft, p. 82
Scrolling shooters Vertically scrolling shooters present the action from above and scroll up (or occasionally down) the screen.
Horizontally scrolling shooters usually present a side-on view and scroll left to right (or less often, right to left).Smith, Rachael, "Sidewize", Your Sinclair, October 1987 (issue 22), p. 38
Isometrically scrolling shooters or isometric shooters, such as Sega's Zaxxon (1981), use an isometric point of view.
A popular implementation style of scrolling shooters has the player's flying vehicle moving forward, at a fixed rate, through an environment. Examples are Scramble (1981), Xevious (1983), Gradius (1985), Darius (1987), R-Type (1987), Einhänder (1997). In contrast, Defender (1981) allows the player to move left or right at will.
Blast 'em up is a term used in shmup community to describe subgenre of straightforward shooters that don't include advanced scoring mechanics. Players gain score points simply by shooting enemies and collecting score items, the ultimate goal of these games is to clear them on one credit. By default this shmup subgenre is represented by older, classic titles like Gradius, R-Type, Darius, Raiden which were the dominant style of shmups before popularization of the bullet hell subgenre.
Caravan shmup is a shooter built around score attack and time attack type of gameplay. Typically caravan shmup is played for high score in a set short amount of time, that usually lasts from 2 to 5 minutes. This type of gameplay originated from Hudson Soft's Star Soldier series and was adopted by companies like Compile and Naxat Soft. It became staple for PC Engine shmups to include caravan mode as extra alongside regular game mode. The term "caravan" comes from Hudson's National STG Caravan tournaments that were organized in Japan from 1985 to 1994 and popularized this type of gameplay. Aligning with these events yearly iterations of Summer Carnival series were released on PC Engine which were official competition titles.
Euroshmup is a semi-derogatory term that describes game design philosophy which was typical for Western made shmups (usually European) in the 80s and 90s. These design principles are seen by hardcore shmup fans as flawed and janky. This comes from the fact that at the time in Europe shmups were released on home computers like Amiga, Atari ST, and PC (hence a name of this subgenre) instead of arcades so they didn't follow the arcade game design like Japanese titles. Some defining characteristics of Euroshmup include: usual game's horizontal orientation, lifebars, underpowered weapons, player's movement featuring inertia, shops and ship upgrade systems, simple level designs and lack of balance. Euroshmups are also seen as less challenging than their Japanese counterparts. Examples of this subgenre include Tyrian, Raptor: Call of the Shadows, Jets'n'Guns.
Run and gun games have protagonists that move through the world on foot and shoot attackers. Examples include the vertically scrolling, overhead view games Front Line (1982), Commando (1985), and Ikari Warriors (1986). Side-scrolling run and gun games often combine elements from platform games, such as the ability to jump: Contra (1987), Gunstar Heroes (1993), Metal Slug (1996) and Cuphead (2017). Run and gun games may also use isometric viewpoints and may have multidirectional movement.Provo, Frank, Bloody Wolf , GameSpot, July 7, 2007. Accessed June 17, 2008Dunham, Jeremy, First Look: Alien Hominid , IGN, July 27, 2004. Accessed June 17, 2008Bielby, Matt, "The YS Complete Guide To Shoot-'em-ups Part II" , Your Sinclair, August 1990 (issue 56), p. 19
Bullet hell
is a subgenre of shooters in which the screen becomes crowded with complex "curtain fire" enemy patterns. It is also characterized by collision boxes that are smaller than the sprites themselves, to accommodate maneuvering through these crowded firing patterns.Ashcraft, p. 66Sheffield, Brandon, Q&A: Capcom's Kujawa On Revisiting Classics, Bullet Hell , Gamasutra, April 22, 2008. Accessed March 2, 2009. This style of game, also known as "manic shooters" or "maniac shooters",Ashcraft, p. 77 originated in the mid-1990s as an offshoot of scrolling shooters. The DonPachi and Touhou Project series are early titles establishing the principle of bullet hells.