Talk:Bullet hell

Merge

I disagree with this merge. The articles houdl be together, but not under bullet hell. In english its commonly refered to as a manic shooter, and I think thi sithe language that should be used on the English wikipedia. --Larsinio 16:54, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

Seconded. Manic shooter is a more conventional name, too. Also, what happened to the information that was on the Manic shooter page? Spottedowl 17:12, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

• All the information in "manic shooter" was redundant with, and practically identical to, the information here. The little information that was different was merged into this article. A google search for "bullet hell" turns up ~500 hits, and "manic shooter" turns up ~600 hits, so yeah, it looks like "manic shooter" is a slightly more popular term for the subgenre. I just merged them into this article because this one was older. I do feel that they're both names for the exact same subgenre, though. Luvcraft 18:48, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

I don't recall the exact criteria of a manic shooter, but in my opinion, some bullet hell games such as Imperishable Night are too slow-paced to warrant the term 'manic'. -Seventh Holy Scripture 00:07, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Moved. —Nightstallion (?) ^{Seen this already?} 08:23, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

Manicness

This article is kind of... specific. I haven't played many games in this genre, but of all the ones I have, I've never seen this 'single-pixel glowing hitbox', nor all the stuff they say about bosses below that. Are they common? Spottedowl 13:49, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Call this a sub-genre?

This is bordering on silliness. This isn't a sub-genre of shooters but merely their natural evolution over the years. You can see this trend gradually forming (to a lower or higher degree) based on the year of a game's original release. There isn't a shooter released within the last five years that doesn't almost totally conform to this supposed sub-genre. To give this its own classification is to discount the importance of shooting games' overall history. Even the Gradius series has evolved to incorporate this (in part V). Mr.bonus 18:34, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

R-Type Final is one such shooter. Your point is a good one, though. I think I don't know enough modern shooters to be able to comment, but I wouldn't describe Gradius V as overly manic - at least, no less manic than its predecessors. It was made by Treasure, though. Spottedowl 19:25, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

You hit the nail on the head with that; "one such shooter", R-Type Final is just about the only shooting game made in the last 8 years that doesn't swamp the player with bullet patterns. Some games do it more than others, true, but that isn't enough to say that they belong in their own sub-genre. And Treasure has decided to evolve the Gradius franchise along this line (whereas the whole point of R-Type Final was not to do so), Gradius V fills the screen with bullet "patterns" for the player to negotiate, whereas the bullets that are fired at the player in Gradius 1-4 (no matter how numerous) are haphazardly placed. I just don't believe that this should have its own page rather than being a footnote in the Shoot 'em up page. Mr.bonus 19:54, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

It's been a while since I played Gradius V, but I really don't remember it having anything like the bullet patterns of games like Psyvariar or DoDonPachi. I remember it being quite hard, but not actually manic. Could you perhaps summarise this 'natural evolution of shoot 'em ups' by giving a few examples of key games in the evolution (Batsugun, for example)? Spottedowl 16:45, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

Not true (to original poster); bullet hell is one of the sub-genres that have evolved out of shooters, but there are plenty of other, equally-valid descendants of shooters; "on-rails shooters" like Rez and the Panzer Dragoon games are definitely shooters but definitely not bullet hell, and like the other respondents have said, there are also plenty of more "traditional" non-bullet-hell shooters still being made like Gradius V and Guxt. Similarly, rhythm and blues is the natural progression of jazz, but that doesn't mean that they shouldn't both have their own articles. Luvcraft 03:03, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Game Examples

I agree with what is said here under "Manicness" and some concrete clarification is probably necessary here.

It would help to point out some game examples that strongly resemble the features attributed to this sub-genre under "Typical features". I've played several manic shooters (various ABA titles, Perfect Cherry Blossom, Warning Forever, Area 2048, z-lock, etc...) but I don't think I've played one yet that used "buzzing, grating or scratching" as a gameplay mechanic although that sounds interesting. I should mention that since most of these games are japanese and include little or poorly translated documentation, I may have experienced this and not known it. Since I'm usually dodging an insane barrage of bullets, I don't often play close enough attention to the scoring schemes.

Some games like z-lock reward a player for staying in the "thick" of a directed barrage in an effort to make the player push his/her luck so-to-speak but this is a bit different than what is described in the article.

Quite a few manic shooters use grazing to affect the player's score, health, etc. Generally, if a projectile is within the character's sprite but outside of the hitbox it can be considered grazing, or at least that's what I've experienced. Regarding "manicness" above, it seems like it is mainly newer games which have any indication of where the hitbox is located, an example being the more recent Touhou games. Atomskninja 21:17, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Also, I think that having a few scnarios were the screen is almost completely covered don't make a game a manic shooter. Ikaruga, for example, does have bosses which shoot very much bullets and that retire after a time limit, but most stages don't have as much bullets (instead, there is a surprisingly large number of collidable objects compared to other vertical shooters).

Geometry Wars?

Would Geometry Wars really be considered a danmaku? In GeoWars, you can move in 2D, but the game doesn't scroll at all: the play area is static. Also, you can shoot in any direction, not just up. And none of the enemies in the game actually shoot at you, so there is no bullet dodging. You simply fly around the rectangular map as enemies spawn in, and you die by coming in contact with an enemy. The game has no definite end; you play until you run out of lives. There are no "stages"/"levels" or boss battles.

Really, why is it listed as an example? The only similarity between it and the other games is that you can move your character and shoot in order to gain points. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.145.172.84 (talk) 10:38, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Name revert?

Is "manic shooter" really the right place for this article? "Bullet curtain" is the original Japanese term, and "bullet hell" seems to be in much wider use.

Google hits (as of writing):

• Bullet hell : 10,200
• Bullet curtain : 1,940
• Manic shooter : 718 - and this article's #1

Seems to me like "manic shooter" is a term that might've found currency on certain messageboards, etc, but doesn't reflect how most people are actually describing this type of game. I'd certainly never heard the term before. Also, the article contains no references supporting the use of "manic shooter". And anyway, a lot of these games are arguably less manic than average, because they involve such a fine grain of deliberate ship movement. Thoughts? Tzaquiel 17:12, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Well, since I had doubts about the original move (and have never heard 'manic shooter' either), I'm in favor... but I wonder how Luvcraft's Google search for 'bullet hell' in March turned up only a twentieth of the hits it does now. Have they gotten that much more popular in eight months? -Seventh Holy Scripture 19:39, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

It should be moved to bullet hell because it's common. I've never heard the others. Voretus^talk 16:40, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Those Google counts above look suspicious to me. Excluding Wikipedia pages, I got 744 for "bullet hell", 1,350 for "bullet curtain", and 580 for "manic shooter". The numbers for "bullet curtain" go down to 1,290 when you take out "curtain rod" and "curtain pole", which seem to be unrelated. The Google test is, of course, unreliable... -GTBacchus^(talk) 06:18, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

I got the same Google counts as the above. Bullet hell is also the most common name among English fans, in my experience. This page isn't actually on RM, by the way. Voretus 21:27, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Have you considered "Danmaku"? I get 321,000 hits. Ziiv 05:39, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

time-based boss battles?

I don't know of any bullet hell games with time-based boss battles (except Hitogata Happa, where if you don't kill the boss BEFORE the time limit the boss goes into hyper mode). Could someone provide some examples? Luvcraft 22:36, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

The Touhou Project, for example. _dk 22:39, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

OH! That would explain why I have so much trouble beating them. :) Luvcraft 22:47, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Nah, it's still possible to beat them the normal way, without the time running out. Voretus 19:27, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Usable game list

The current example games is just simply unusable. It would be far easier to include both the games and the platforms. It's damn annoying to have to go to the linked games to know the supported platforms. So, let's not revert this stuff, dudes, unless you have a really good reason and can explain it. "It messes up the layout" is just plain rubbish.

Please explain to me how saying that it messes up the formatting is rubbish if it messes up the formatting. Voretus 16:51, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

Sorry for this offensive formulation. What I meant is that it not a good reason for not including this kind of data because it is included in other articles like Ddr_games. We could use a similar formatting and enjoy this new useful list. A separate article with the list of games in this sub-genre could be nice too. Damaki 16:58, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, some formatting like that would be excellent. I reverted the one edit because it caused the image to cut into the center of the list in Internet Explorer. Voretus 17:02, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

I think that the best way to achieve this would be a to create separate "Bullet Hell Game List" WIP article, then, merge it with the original when it is good enough. Damaki 17:13, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

Here it comes : Bullet_hell_games_stub.

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BetacommandBot (talk) 05:33, 18 February 2008 (UTC)