The Birth of Bullet Hell, and the Rise of Cave Batsugun, like many other arcade shooters, had its monitor in a vertical orientation to allow the player to see further ahead.Īnd so it was that in 1993, the now-defunct Japanese developer Toaplan unleashed Batsugun onto unsuspecting arcade-goers around the world. It was becoming more and more apparent that the shmup genre needed to evolve in a significant manner if it wanted to compete with the latest flashy 3D efforts that were drawing crowds. Some of these were more successful than others - Sega, for example, found great success with the third-person quasi-3D gameplay of 1985's Space Harrier, but its earlier experiment with isometric projection in 1982's Zaxxon failed to leave any lasting impact on the genre.Īs time moved on and graphical technology became increasingly impressive, however, the resolutely sprite-based nature of most shmups started to look more and more dated, particularly as 3D polygonal graphics started to become more widespread. Influential classics of the genre that still hold up well today made their first appearances, while developers experimented with different ways of presenting the core shooting gameplay. Throughout the 1980s, widely regarded as the "golden age of arcades," the shmup genre flourished and expanded. Meanwhile, Xevious is widely credited with popularizing (not inventing - that honor goes to the 1981 Atari game Caverns of Mars) the vertically-scrolling shmup genre, and is also notable for being one of the first games to incorporate more realistic background graphics rather than the abstract, sci-fi settings of its spiritual predecessors. Scramble was the first game in the genre to incorporate forced scrolling that the player had to keep up with, and also the first in the genre to incorporate a progression of distinct levels. While Defender was a great game that still holds up surprisingly well today, it was Scramble and Xevious that had the most noticeable influence on what we know as shmups today. Fixed-screen shooters of the Space Invaders mold remained popular, with titles such as Galaxians, Galaga and Phoenix successfully building on the formula established in Taito's classic, while developers such as Williams, Konami and Namco experimented with incorporating playfields that were larger than a single screen width in 1980's Defender, 1981's Scramble and 1982's Xevious respectively. All together now: Beee boooo beeee boooo.įollowing the release of Space Invaders, game developers explored a variety of different ways to make shooting endless hordes of enemies more fun, and in the process begat a number of shmup subgenres. All the key ingredients were there: a single player sprite tasked with battling against seemingly insurmountable odds gameplay that involved dodging incoming fire as much as shooting accurately and the ever-present feeling that if only you had just one more go, you'd be able to best your high score. Space Invaders' predictable waves of enemies and ever-increasing difficulty may not bear much resemblance to the shmups we play today, but it was a starting point for a genre that would blossom into a variety of different play styles over time.
It wasn't until Taito's 1970 release of Space Invaders that the genre started to gain some degree of mainstream recognition, though.
Indeed, what is widely regarded as the very first computer game - 1962's Spacewar! - involved the now-familiar sight of spaceships floating around and shooting at each other, albeit in a competitive two-player scenario rather than pitting a single player against the game itself. Shooting games - also known as shoot 'em ups, shmups or STGs depending on how "into it" the person you're talking to is, and not to be confused with first-person shooters - are one of the most venerable genres of video games, having been around since the medium's inception.