What is a Shoot Em' Up? Defining the Genre with Shmup Junkie 

Plato: "It's a game about shooting them." Diogenes, holding up Call of Duty: "Behold Plato's shmup!"

Quite possibly one of the greatest questions the brilliant Socrates had while arguing against the super-armored sophists

The 2 chans that got me in to the genre. Pretty much only playing shoot em ups because these guys. These guys got me to appreciate so many new games at once that it fired me up to be playing games again. I had no idea so many great games even existed. Like it was a chapter in gaming I completely skipped over.

I recently made an indie top-down shmup with keyboard-and-mouse controls. A weird thing is instead of auto-scrolling, I went with the beat-em-up system. You're locked into a direction until you enter a room, then the screen locks on to that location, then the enemies spawn on a set of timers, and the screen won't move until you defeat all the enemies. It still feels very shmup like because you have to dodge everything in the space you are given rather than retreat far enough that the patterns become much less dense. So I think a more precise way to describe it instead of 'auto-scrolling' is space is artificially limited. Like the difference between boxing and a street-fight is in boxing you have that ring where you can't leave while in a street-fight you can run up and down the street and potentially turn it into cardio.

It’s like music genres where a definition works well for many years. But as the genre gets older, ppl will have to get creative with how they approach the genre so it sounds new. So that definition will get blurry over time. So now the genre becomes an umbrella of multiple subgenres that are variations.

Shmups are defined by 3 primary elements: the Unit being controlled by the player. The Enemies which are automated by the game. And the Field on which the unit and enemies interact. Since this could describe just about any game you'd have to define these a little better. The player or each player controls a single Unit on a 2 dimensional Field. The Unit has omni-direcitonal 2D movement on the Field which typically auto-scrolls or atomically progresses. As the Field scrolls Enemies, projectiles, and terrain obstacles appear. The player controls the Unit to navigate the Field avoiding and destroying Enemies, projectiles, and terrain obstacles using the omni-directional movement and the various weapons at the disposal of the Unit. Each level or zone - a sequence of levels - often end with a battle against a single powerful enemy referred to as a boss. The primary objective of the shoot em up is to avoid enemies, projectiles, and obstacles, power up the ship, and defeat the boss, with higher level play focusing on high scores and 1cc runs where only 1 life is used. Some games have a health bar or shield system while others have a strict 1 shot death. The methods for mastering shmup play involve memorizing enemy, projectile, and terrain obstacle patterns, understanding the limits of the Unit's hitbox and movement speed, and optimizing the use of the Units abilities and weapons. Then you could go into more detail about each of the elements: The Unit almost always faces directly upward in vertical shmups or forward in horizonal shmups. The unit typically has a primary shot which shoots directly forward. The Unit may have as many as 7 simultaneous weapons and abilities in some games. The unit has a hit box, which if struck by an enemy, projectile, or terrain hazard will be destroyed costing a life, unless the unit has a shielding or health bar mechanic. The Unit often has unique abilities or weapon which defines individual shmups. The enemies frequently drop various power up and resources for the player which enhance the ship or provide additional uses of limited weapons. The enemies may fire intricate patterns of projectiles which the player must dodge or destroy, this type of game is often referred to as a bullet hell shmup. The field was traditionally vertically oriented with a 3:4 aspect ratio and has cropped sides on current standard 16:9 monitors referred to as a vertical shoot em up; but may be horizontally oriented and displayed as full screen on current standard monitors - a horizontal shoot em up. The field is not open indefinitely and is restricted in the dimension perpendicular to the auto-scrolling direction which either no or limited movement allowed at the sides of the field. This restriction forces the player to engage with the enemies, projectiles, and terrain obstacles.

I was supposed to attend a lecture today on International Finance and it’s impact on Globalization and supply chain stabilization but that would have been a total waste of time, this Podcast has a greater impact on the world!

Two legends unite! Shmups is the ultimate genre of risk and reward, love and heartache, euphoria and dysphoria. I’m so bad at shmups, but I can’t get enough of them. Funnily enough, RU-vid certainly doesn’t understand what a Shmup is, as underneath this video it’s suggesting I play Doom 🤦‍♂️

Hmm. Caravan Shooters have an interesting relationship with this abstraction of auto-scrolling. Because a soft aspect of a caravan is the potential to impact wave frequency by killing them faster, which is effectively the player controlling the pace. Scrolling is definitely the most abstract and difficult to quantify of the classifications.

Love the content!!! Shmups are one of my favorite genres.

Traditional roguelikes have the same problem. Nowadays anything procedurally generated or with permadeath is called a roguelike. The OG roguelikers now need a new word.

ShooTinG ! I don’t think it’s embarrassing to not be able to readily define something when so many variables apply. Shooter has been hijacked for better or worse but that doesn’t mean it still doesn’t apply. I like to say shooting game out of respect as well as just to invite the question so as to be able to elaborate on the genre I love. Also Rogha Amored Force is godlike, super sick game.

54:29 I actually found a game like that: CielClou CielClou is a first-person bullet hell arena shooter that's structured very similarly to a shmup. Each level, you fight through waves of enemies, then once you defeat enough of them, you fight a multi-phase danmaku boss. On top of shooting and dodging, there's also resource management. You have two weapons, each with their own ammo pool. The Nail gun deals more damage and has enemies drop health and armor pickups as well as Shotgun shells, but it chews through its 400 ammo very quickly. To get this ammo back, you swutch to the shotgun and defeat some enemies with that, so they drop a bunch of ammo. This game's pretty forgiving, too. You have 100 Health and 100 Armor, and Armor works very similarly to how it does in Doom, reducing the damage you take quite significantly, but wearing off after taking too many hits. Most attacks do about 10 damage per hit, and the Nail gun lets you recover pretty easily, especially during boss fights, where finishing off a phase with the Nail gun has the boss drop a bunch of health and armor pickups, basically restoring you to full health/armor immediately. Meanwhile, doing the same with the Shotgun provides lots of ammo for the Nail gun, basically restoring that to full. Dodging bullets is also surprisingly intuitive. While you can't see your own hitbox, you can see the bullets heading towards you, and if a bullet looks like it'll hit you, it probably will unless you move out of the way. Here's a link to some gameplay: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-nHdKgg9qlpY.html And if you want to try it yourself, here's another link: nizakashii.itch.io/cielclou

It's a super interesting debate. If you talk to video game fans in Japan, they will undoubtedly call games like Space Invaders and Galaga STGs, as that's where the genre name started. Then after Xevious and Scramble came in existence these were then classified in the same genre, be it of the (auto)scrolling variety. The equivalent western term shoot 'em up originated a bit later in the 80s, introduced by influential British gaming magazines and this then was abbreviated (often begrudgingly as Mark says) to shmups. So to most people, shmups now means horizontally or vertically scrolling 2D shooting games. I myself have the habit to call every "STG" a shoot 'em up (because I'm old): from Galaxian to Robotron 2084 to 1942 to Fantasy Star to Raiden to Blazing Star to Mushihimesama Futari. They just fall in different categories or subgenres of 2D shooters. Smash TV is an arena shoot 'em up with free 8-way aim (where the zako don't even shoot but rush you horde style), Defender is a looping, bidirectional horizontally scrolling shoot 'em up, Desert Strike is a multiple objective based, multidirectionally scrolling isometric shoot 'em up, Gunvein is a vertically autoscrolling bullet hell shoot 'em up, etc. Or you could just short hand it and call them all shmups, STGs or 2D shooters. Then when we get to games like Space Harrier and Star Fox, they most definitely share a lot of DNA with 2D, autoscrolling shooters, so I tend to call them 3D shoot 'em ups. And Wolfenstein 3D and Doom are interesting as I think they are most definitely evolutions of arcade, into-the-screen shooting games like Operation Wolf and Cabal, but now you can freely walk around the environments. When Mark talked about proto-shmups, that also stood out to me. There is a discussion to be had about the phenomenon that part of the audience, including developers, tends to ignore or gloss over most 2D shooters made before the late 80s and part of the audience, again including developers, tends to ignore all genre advancements made after that (which is often how you get euroshmups, where devs create their own branch of evolution with the "advancements" they think they're making). That could be fodder for another podcast discussion (which I'd happily be a part of lol)

Regardless of anything I feel like In the Hunt has to be a shmup at the end of the day if not for any other reason that it’s almost impossible to categorize it otherwise. Also yes Timmy should return.

That dun dun dun edit when the guy asks you what a shmup is😂 also, I really like the further exploration of shmups on this channel into linguistics and etymology. Every hobby every needs its own syntax and lexicon to be able to actually accurately describe very specific experiences to others in the same community. this was a superrrr fun episode to listen to, you can navigate disagreements really well.

Ah! I get it, in the hunt is a 'sub' genre 😉

I'm two months late to this discussion, but I think your younger self may have been onto something by defining shmups as "Raiden-like" games. Consider a similar debate trying to define what an RPG is. Ultimately, an RPG is a game that includes rules or elements derived from Dungeons & Dragons, such as: a system (or systems) for increasing the player-character's attributes (including experience levels, equipment upgrades, etc.); magic spells (or similar special moves) that draw upon depleting resources, such as magic points or spell pools; turn-based actions; dice rolls (or some other quasi-random mathematical function) to determine the outcome of player actions; an in-game economy, including the ability to collect and spend in-game currency; dungeon exploration; etc. Games will often use some but not all of these elements. What separates an RPG from a game that simply has "RPG-elements" is how many of these elements appear in the game and how strongly the gameplay focuses on these elements. However, I don't think there's a hard and fast rule and about how many of these elements must appear before a game stops being an RPG - it's more of a spectrum between games that are very DND-like at one end and not very DND-like at the other. I think you could apply similar logic to shmups by considering how similar a game is to an archetypal example of the genre, such as Raiden. The key elements of Raiden's gameplay are: auto-scrolling; unrestrained eight-way movement; shooting enemies; dodging projectiles; multiple weapon types, all of which may be upgraded; one-hit death for the player; a focus on scoring as a key social element of gameplay; a limited stock of bombs that cancel enemy bullets within their blast radius; etc. We could say that a game that has all or many of these elements - a game that is very Raiden-like - is clearly a shmup, but as a game loses these elements (and becomes less Raiden-like) it will seem less like a shmup. With this in mind, let's evaluate In the Hunt again. In the Hunt has unrestrained eight-way movement, shooting enemies, dodging projectiles, multiple upgradeable weapon types, one hit deaths, and a focus on scoring. It lacks auto-scrolling (though it has a timer that compels the player to move forward, which is a similar mechanic) and bombs. All elements considered, I think In the Hunt is ultimately very Raiden-like and therefore a shmup. I think this is more of a holistic approach instead of treating certain elements as sine qua non, which seems to risk calcifying the genre and excluding games that are, on the whole, very shmup-like.

Awesome video as usual! A couple of thoughts: 1) The term I've heard most commonly to describe Descent and Descent-clones is "6 degree of freedom (6dof) games". Although I've always just called them "Descent games" because basically nothing else plays anything like them. 2) Serious Sam is one of the examples of an FPS that embodies the "arcade shmup spirit" probably more than anything in the entire FPS genre, since most everything involves dodging projectiles (hitscan enemies have to be dealt with very quickly in open areas), AND it even has score (in the shmup sense) and score modifiers (things like increasing monster health %, increasing base difficulty, and playing without quicksave/quickloads all increase your score multiplier). 3) What would you call Out Zone? Non-autoscrolling shmup? But then that would give it the same label as In the Hunt, and maybe you could say that it's kinda a vertical version of In the Hunt in spirit but they feel very different to me.

More content with Shmup Junkie please you guys are my 2 favourite shmup channels. 😀👌 But please try to think about not talking over him and interrupting him (im a adhd maniac myself so im the same way btw, i know its hard lol)

Hmm, let's see if I can give a decent shmup definition.. A game in which the player can freely move an abstract avatar in a two dimensional, but usually moving plane, to avoid and potentially destroy hazards such as enemies and projectiles, sometimes avoiding environmental hazards in the process. Great video BTW. You both are massive assets to the genre and we really appreciate the time and effort you put into it!

Learning about shmups

Interesting, thank you. I am more on the design perspective, what is intended primarily. For me Galaga has to be 100% shmup. My proposition in three rules : - Player attacks enemies mainly at a distance. For our threat it can be everything which can collide with us (ships, bullets, scenery). For our attacks the distance can be very short, like "melee" attacks but it's not a part of our sprite which deform itself to attack (in Street Fighter 2 you can hit an ennemie in the arm while he's attacking, we don't want that here). In some case the player sprite can momentarily crash into enemies to attack but for a short period of time and without deforming the sprite like in fighting games, it involves moving, not the attack button. - So the collision mask have to be constant and perfectly visible, unlike FPS. If there are several 'characters" to choose, the differences are mainly in the projectile type. No emphasis on size and speed differences like in other genres, to design one game around a constant type of player sprite during the gameplay. - Ennemi patterns have to be clearly identifiable in space and time, which means well designed around space and time, recognizable, unlike FPS where the notion of IA is more prevailing.

Genre definitions are really loose for many things, with many works that don't squarely fit in some or fit between some, and a multitude of subgenres to confuse things more. They best serve as a series of tags that can tell you if you might be interested in something, rather than a neat box that everything can be classified with. Just look at the difficulty people who call themselves fans of "Character Action" games go through - they can't even agree on a name for their subgenre!

Before I found out the SHMUP term, I use to just call them airplane shooters. I always had trouble explaining what type of game it was to people growing up. I was always like 'the airplane shooting game when you fight big bosses!' 😂 Now I use it more interchangeably than anything

Hi,Mexican fan here, I called them "juegos de navecitas"(little spaceship games),yeah I know not all of them you play as a ship or plane,but is easy to describe them like that here,thanks both for the great content

Great video and was expected there were many conclusions but none was definitiva. In the end Gameplay is what defines a shmup. Glad to see the discussion between 2 people of diferent generations and diferent tastes on shumps speaking about this topic because the opinions are more diverse. Best regards to both.

Great job on this video! I love how you used your three criteria while SJ used a game's core design to define shmups.

I haven't really played many shmups, but I really like the amount of detail you go into on games, especially the more game design theory videos. I've been playing Ikaruga, which is really good.

_MAJOR_ difference between how FPS and SHmups work in general: - FPS have 2 types of menaces in regards to bullets... they're either HITSCAN or PROJECTILE based. This is a major difference to take into account. Most attacks in FPS games are hitscan so there's little to no focus on dodging or manipulating the AI behind the bullets (not the case with _projectiles_). We also have to take into account that all attacks in FPS games are directly aimed at the player (since you don't have a hitbox really, you can't focus on dodging in the same way). - Shmups have both contact damage (for enemies in your plane, Xevious added the grounded enemies) and PROJECTILE based menaces. Now let's focus on projectile based attacks, or "bullets" to make it simpler. Bullets comes in different logic cycles: They're either aimed (hence why we "tap dodge"), aimed in reference (as to conceal your movement), static (which you have to learn) or random (which usually makes you "kill the threat" before it even happens). There are a lot of FPS that focus on projectile based attacks with Shmup-like logic cycles, but they're few and far in between. These FPS games tend to have a similar behaviour from the player in regards to how to use movement and space to manipulate said logic (Mothergunship and Tower of Guns come to mind). In any case, nice debate. I hope the comment section becomes more spicy as time goes on.

I think one type of game that molded their own genre are the likes of Forsaken and stuff. 6DOF basically. If you were to add the autoscrolling factor, they'd become a 3D Shmup

I just got back and got straight up to listening to this. Good talk, I think your criteria for what a "Shmup" is pretty much narrows it down. But. I usually do not like to talk about genres in videogames because they are the most fuzzy and abstract thing there is. So I try to push "Shmups" (or any kind of game) with more than just it's genre defining bullet points.

I played many SHMUP games, but Rayforce series are the most favorite because there are the depth of shooting mechanic different from other games that we cannot shoot ground units directly unless using lock - on attack.

I'm not one to dwell into labels too much as well, but I had fun with this discussion. Thanks for the footages too~

Surely they're all 'shmups', but the ones that fit the three criteria defined here are another sub-genre? Great video!

I'm giving my age away by saying that I've been playing these things since the 1970's and I hate the term Shmup. I've always used *horizontal or vertical scrolling arcade shooter* A Shmup is a pure game. You are not playing to enjoy the story or narrative, you are playing to achieve survival and score. Your purpose it to increase both - to get further and score higher. The story is bolted on as an extra for cutscenes etc and to brand and differentiate one game from another. Its roots are in Space Invaders. Every Shmup is an evolution of the Space Invaders formula. A first person shooter is just that. I'd never call Call of Duty a shooter, it's an FPS.

Very interesting topic. Makes you wonder what the limits of game genre categories even mean ultimately. For instance, what is your opinion on The Binding of Isaac? Have you played it, or played much of it? Because while it is a twin-stick arena shooter, it is also a roguelite dungeon-crawler rpg with heavy emphasis on resource management and decision-making, meta knowledge of items, item interactions, manipulation of chance elements and cryptic game mechanics to better secure a better outcome or opportunity down the line while being on timers, and whole lots of other weird stuff. Like it is a highly unusual and hybridized game, and the shooting/dodging is oftentimes quite secondary in design priority or emphasis (though it is always present), which seems very deliberate and a point of balance with all of its other mechanics that have absolutely nothing to do with any type of shooting game design whatsoever, though oddly enough there will still be moments where the game utilizes even bullet hell elements and autoscrolling in a traditional shmup vein. I just think it's such a singular game (or was before others started to copycat it) that it is almost impossible to categorize, even though it is still very much in the oldschool shooter genre family in very significant ways, and so is technically a "shooter". It even bends the rules of different game genre conventions through its hybridizations, not only shooting games.

Autoscrolling or not is like the difference between a 3D platformer and an Endless Runner. The mechanics and appeal are very similar, but everyone would agree crash bandicoot and temple run are different games. Under the same umbrella genre but distinct enough to be their own thing.

Great video guys, it’s always interesting to hear the differing perspectives from you both but Junkie has it nailed for me!! I’m in my late 40’s so completely relate to and agree with junkies comments on how he saw shooting games back when they were first introduced. The genre was always ‘shoot ‘em ups’ to me but to differentiate that genre now, STG or Shmups is how I describe them as it’s become THE defining term, like it or not (I still prefer the term shoot em up). I also agree that a games description should be defined by its core design features as junkie said. If the aim of the game was primarily to shoot everything thats a threat to survival and earn score as a result then that’s a ‘Shmup’. A shooting game in 3D (Starfox, Panzer Dragoon, Sin and Punishment) is still a ‘Shmup’ if it’s linear as the sole aim is still just to shoot everything that’s a threat to earn score or survive. If the aim is to navigate a level by finding the easiest or more direct route to the end then that’s a ‘Platformer’. Although I would call games such as Contra an ‘Action Platformer’, probably in relation to the action movies of the 80s and 90s where body counts were everything, and to differentiate between a Mario style ‘Platformer’ from an age rated point of view. Metal slug probably would still be described as a ‘Shmup’ but ‘Run and Gun’ seems to be the modern description, it displays very little platforming but you still control the pace of the action by scrolling the screen yourself and primarily shooting. This kind of sub genre description was used a lot for me when I worked in the industry at retail level so to better describe to the customer a genre of game. I’m not a believer of making a thing more complicated than it is but I guess that’s my age talking haha!!

Please more with Junkie and regularly.

my favorite shmup is nier automata, sonic frontiers being a close second

I've heard claim that the word shmup started in the July 1985 issue of Zzap64! magazine. Don't know if that is true or not, but its a good place for historians to start research. Great video guys!

Thank you so much for having this discussion about the criterias, essence, feeling, pacing and everything that could, should or should not define a shmup. That whas really very interesting. And thank you both again for your channels!

I have a definition for you: A Shmup is a genre of games in which the main objective/gameplay characteristic is to dodge projectiles enemies shoot at you. This is what I felt in love with when I discovered the Shmup genre, this is what the very essence of shmups are to me. Especially danmaku which further enhances this. But I think this is a legit definition, at least for the broader genre, of course subgenres like danmaku have more characteristics I guess. Challenge me! (I admit I posted this before watching the video!) I'm not sure we should include the fact that we shoot as well, because pacifist runs are definitely a thing in shmups, even though they aren't very popular or entertaining honestly haha (depends). Or we include the shooting from our perspective in the definition and consider pacifist runs as an exception/sub genre/category.

This is a deep topic y'all dived into. My introduction to the term "schmup" was when I got back into game collecting after a 5+ yr hiatus. I did an internet search for "shooter" & saw it was all FPS titles popping up & was like WTF!? Where are the "shooters!?" I think after watching some RU-vid videos or a Wiki search I learned the popular term is now "schmup" & I was baffled at how weird that word is. I never thought of the term "schmup" being a word that was taken from people that grew up in the 90s who played space ship shooters.

Great video as ever from the 2 of you! I think that having criteria and specificity is a good thing going forward. When this is left more open to interpretation, it becomes a problem on digital storefronts when trying to search by genre. This is rife on Steam and itch, where games get the wrong tag because they *look* like a certain genre but don’t conform to the specific gameplay standards that you would expect. This can make it really hard to find good shmups/stgs as you’re having to wade through games where one enemy fires a radial bullet pattern and it gets tagged as a bullet hell, when it’s actually a roguelike😅 This problem also exists for fighting games/beatemups/character action games. Case in point, Sifu is up for the “Best Fighting Game” award when it’s not even a fighting game…

I just realized rail shooters are a subgenre of a niche genre that no one actually knows the definition for anymore 😓

So, what are Centipede, Millipede, Galaga, Galaxian, Donkey Kong 3, Gyrus, Juno First, and even Dig Dug? How about twin-stick shooters like Robotron, Nex Machina, and Never Awake?

mark, check out silent bomber (ps1). it's hard to classify, but one valid description could be "what if bomberman was a character action game." it's got some rough edges but it's really unique and holds up pretty well overall.

It become an issue when online stores started flooding their shooters category with both shoot em ups and first person shooters... while technically both shooters they have different audiences. Shoot em ups is good enough already.

Great topic, Mark! Been bumping into this taxonomy issue a lot recently while looking through 90s game magazines. There's a fun period of time when Street Fighter II is considered a beat 'em up, and apparently Ecco the Dolphin was an action RPG. How do you feel about my classifications of the following outliers? Ninja Commando = manual scrolling shmup; Atomic Robo Kid = manual scrolling free-roaming shmup; Granada = arena shooter (the level design doesn't lock you into an arena, but most of the combat takes place in larger, semi-enclosed areas connected by corridors/passages); rail cart stage in Gunstar Heroes = auto-scrolling run 'n' gun (Treasure are the masters of genre alchemy). How'd I do?

I'm at the 47 minute mark, and this reminds me of what is an rpg debate, or even one my friend and I had years ago about what is a horror game. but shmups? I kinda always thought it was straightforward. The genre has some pretty unique characteristics that it alone has and I thought that is what made it stand froms others. Interesting how the perception is looked upon.

Awesome video guys! Keep up the great content :)

Space Invader type games I consider those shootemups too. There are also games that scroll but you can only move left and right. A game like Contra is a 2D platformer.

My issue with a lot of these conversations is that I don't see the value in applying prescriptive rules to categorization. To me, these are conventions more than rules. Like, shmups have autoscrolling, except there are a few that don't. Just like RPGs have experience points, except there are a few that don't. You're trying to categorize art, so there are going to be some items that don't fit exactly into your understanding of a bucket, but the experience is so similar here as to make it basically the same.

Interesting video. Really enjoy both your channels. Im not a shooter purist so the perspective is really cool to see. Im only about 16 minutes in. A shooter to me is usually an auto scrolling game where shooting is the main attack. I think that usually covers what I call shooters. I still call them that in my reviews and tutorials, which probably came from terms used in 90's magazines back then. Take two similiar games like Super Smash TV and Gun.Smoke. Super Smash TV stops the action in each room and has you clear out a room before proceeding. Gun.Smoke constantly scrolls, so I think of that game more like a shooter. Ninja Spirit is ALMOST like a shooter to me too. Especially since I mainly use the projectile weapons, your character jumps near full screen height and the screen constantly scrolls until the boss fights. Makes sense given its an IREM game which some of thier platformers had that influence. Dragon Breed is interesting since you can get off the dragon and often use it as a sheild when not shooting. In some games you scroll the screen and take out X amount of generators or enemies. Fantasy Zone is different like that. So auto scrolling removes alot of games that I might otherwise look at as shooters. Then you have games that really mix genres like Guardian Legend on NES. I would describe games like these as more hybrid games and probably not call them shooters. You can set parameters of course, and you probably go into this, where if a game is 50 percent shooter (reasonable no death gameplay length) then maybe call it a shooter. I would rather just be more descriptive and call them hybrid style games. Something like Sin and Punishment cant be classified with this standard since it mixes melee and dodging into the mix with the shooting. So theres that. This does become more complicated if your holding SHOOTER themed events, so I get where your going with that. More pure shooter games would probably work better for such events. I have seen some strange classifications which make people seem like they have no idea what the game is about. Ive seen Battletoads for NES labeled a beat em up many times. Sometimes the classification is so off it really stands out. Deeper into the vid I completely agree about 8 way directional movement being a main criteria. Thats the main reason Ninja Spirit isnt quite a shooter in my mind. I think the two biggest things that come to mind in a shooter for me are auto scroll and full movement. Maybe in a 3D rail shooter its more than 16 directions, but whatever the case. You also address kamikaze games and pacifist style games. That covers some other points I would bring up. If Geometry Wars was an auto scroller I think the only criteria it would be missing is enemy projectiles, since its pretty much dodging tons of enemies only. You cover everything very thoroughly, and it got me thinking, ha ha. Doom 2016 is probably more your style of shooter. That game had very clear to read projectile movements and enemies but also got extremely difficult on the Nightmare setting. Very little chance to use any of the environment as cover. For Doom Eternal I felt they completely fucked up the balance , pacing and added alot of shit that made the game feel more like a mess. All enemy types on every encounter made encouters feel less unique and alot of other shit I could ramble about. Loved Doom 2016 though and it does almost feel like an old space ship shooter in FPS form, mechanically. Only played it a little but Returnal seems almost like bullet hell patterns in an FPS style and has some interesting dodge mechanics. Thats in third person but similiar. Doesnt have that tiny hitbox like a bullet hell, but that would probably be extremely awkward to keep track of in 3D. Great fuckin video though. In conclusion Ive never related to the elitist mentality way back to the 8 and 16 bit console wars. Gameplay is king for me and I play anything that has compelling gameplay to me. Doesnt matter platform, visuals,genre. It comes down to compelling addictive gameplay. Other times its just the thrill of beating a high volume of games, so less about individual games. Its great that we have the variety available that we have today and a great place to discuss this shit.

🙂I'm early in the video but I'm right there with SJ. It might just be our age but a shooter was a shooter and we separated first person shooters by calling them... first person shooters :-). Just saying shooter (or shoot em up) and you were talking about what we now call a shmup. I still use the old school naming to separate the two but since I don't really have anyone that I talk with about these things there aren't too many chances for confusion. end of the video and what an excellent conversation. I didn't know how you'd fill an hour but it was really enjoyable. I thought Atomic Runner would be the challenge to any definition but wasn't thinking of In the Hunt. That's why SJ is the best when you need to talk about old school shooters.

There is one general term that all of these games fall under that was used back in the day: action game, also action/platformer or action/shooting. I bring this up because Shmup Junkie brought up hat a game genre is determined based on what it is programmed to do, and every subgenre presented here falls under the action game umbrella.

I’ve been playing a single screen shoot ‘em up called nova drift a ton lately and got me thinking about this a game. Got me to listen through again, enjoyable video and love the collaborations

I feel like you guys were talking past one another a little bit. Mark wanted to pin down objective criteria for what a shmup is and Junkie didn't want to do that. What I got out of the conversation is that a shmup must 1) auto scroll vertically or horizontally. 2) Have 8 way movement without gravity. All the ,"what about..." games are shooters and not shmups. That's the most concise way I've heard it defined. When I try to define it myself I get confused and give up. It's weird, you wouldn't think it's hard to define until you sit down and try to do it. Maybe it's a sign. Junkie is right. We shouldn't pin down the term. The shmup gods might smite us with 10 years of euro shmup for our hubris :(

For an an exemption to the first criteria: Sub-Terrania for the Genesis was definitely a shmup but the ship was confined by gravity.

This conversation sounds like me & other musicians arguing about deathcore vs black thrash vs technical death metal etc etc etARGH! I love it.

Did you ever see that VR showcase on steam... I think its called "the room" or something like that? One of the minigames is a shmup type game like space invaders, where the stage is a big sphere with waves of enemies coming in toward you. Your controller represents the ship, and you have full 3d movement with the same precision as a shmup. You just need to move your hand and arm to move the ship in any pattern imaginable. It was really cool, i wish someone would make a full game like that.

Run and gun started to define games quite litterally and not so much for the gameplay. Commando and Contra were both considered run and gun despite the fact that Commando originally came from Front Line, which in turns was inspired by Berzerk. From there, you can go back to Space Invader. It's by far the closest genre to shmup (8-way movements). While Contra came from Shinobi so the roots are obviously Jump Bug. Now Jump Bug with its auto scrolling has definitely some amount of "shmup feel" but the way it plays is like an action-platform game. It feels weird to consider Contra the same genre as Ikari Warriors but Mega Man or Castlevania, now it's a completely different thing. That's how we ended up with the top-down shooter term, especially now that they are so proeminent. But the legitimacy of run & gun for side scrolling action games, can it be questioned? Some people consider the volume of bullets you shoot as the defining factor. But another one is how likely you are to die from platforming. Which is very likely in a Castlevania, Ninja Gaiden or Megaman game. Unlikely in Contra, Rolling Thunder or Metal Slug. Impossible in Elevator Action or Alien Soldier. That's how those games separate themselves as years passed and you ended up with this intuitive feel: that one is action platform, this is a run'n gun, despite both of them being side scrolling action. It's not perfect though, because you still have games like Steel Assault being weirdly classified as action-platform despite the run 'n gun feel. It's funny how side-scrolling run 'n gun kinda became the horizontal shmup of the genre (memorization heavy, stage hazards), while top-down run 'n gun are the vertical ones (old ones even have a true yoko format). And just like I love vertical shmup a lot more than horizontal ones, I vastly prefer Ninja Princess to Contra. There would be a lot to say about how these genres evolved mechanically through history. And this is another case of "are modern ones really better?". I'd argue nothing beats Shock Troopers even today! Anyway, very interesting discussion! I completely agree with your 3 defining features.

I like SHMUP Junkie's intuitive take on the genre classification topic in general, but I also like Mark's attempt to nail down genre conventions to create concrete definitions. I'm firmly anti-intellectual in the realm of videogames. I think the influence of academia on games and gaming in general has been a detriment. You don't need a course to teach you to make games, you need to play good games enough to understand them. I don't want pseudo-intellectuals defining genres based on the wikipedia articles they've glossed over or their theoretical geneology for a game's origin. You need an expertise that comes from playtime and immersion in the genre to speak authoritatively on classification.

Funny enough I had a twin named Mark. Another funny thing is that even though shmups went from "shooters" to "shmups" they still get lumped in the "shooter" section with all the other third-person and first person shooters which actually makes them quite hard to find without being in the shmup community heh.

54:35 There is a third-person shooter focused on dodging bullets. It's called Vanquish. And I would say "In the Hunt" is a run-and-gun. It's much closer to Metal Slug than it is to Raiden, for instance.

The simplest definitions are usually best, it's ok if there's some exceptions. A shoot em up is primarily a 2D game with autoscrolling and you shoot things, usually controlling a vehicle or character that flies, although not always. It's contrasted with other shooters where the game doesn't autoscroll and you primarily run on the ground, i.e. Run and Gun.

You guys are the best! Love it!

36:35 that bit really makes it sound like you would want to call these games dodgers :p

"Shmups are so choice. If you have the means I highly recommend picking one up."

Sweet-ass cross-over. and nice Brutal Doom cameo :]]

Here to see Shmup Junkie!

Nonono, In the Hunt is a sidescrolling Commando-like with proto-bullet hell DNA! Doom (or Catacomb 3D) I would say evolved out of Catacomb and to an extent Dangerous Dave, mainly a 3D evolution of 2D maze/free-roaming shooters, although a major change is the hit scan (immediate hit) weapons. It's no longer about "no miss" there but managing your health while exploring for keys and hidden rooms.

I think in general I can agree with your criteria and genre segmentation, I just don't want the community to exclude games because of weird rules and whatnot. I think games like fantasy zone, in the hunt, etc shouldn't be discounted from shmup groups/events, so the idea of subgenre-ing them is cool (like manual-scrolling shmup, for example). It's certainly stricter than the Japanese STG definition, which is kinda funny. There's a 50/50 chance Japanese game stores put shmups in a "shooting" category next to CoD or sprinkled among the action games. 🤣

I thought a definition would be extremely simple but some of the edge-case games where really interesting to think about!

I would say expanding library of games genre made categories and it’s not just for Shmups. Dynasty Warriors used to called action games but now it is categorize as Hack n slash since it’s mowing down enemies, but that created another identity crisis on games like Diablo which also mow down enemies so people calling it looter rpg which is weird because dynasty warriors also grind stages for the loots.

Time to sit before da mastas

Nice video, thanks for making it. Can you please edit it down to the essential parts though, that would be like a 300% increase in quality? The video is like an hour and some minutes, it could and should have been 20 minutes. Just my 2 cents.

Whenever people ask, I just say that it's "a game like this" and then link to a video, or "a game like Touhou" or whatever they happen to maybe know. I thought about this for a while before listening, and I thought about the dodging aspect as well. Shooting is not where the challenge comes from in these games, and sometimes you don't even have to. You could define it as "a game about dodging bullet patterns" and it would be solid. Except that would end up including platformers, so I think the 8-way movement is necessary as well. When I was thinking about it, I just banned jumping completely, but I think the movement requirement is better. But it's interesting to think about whether it's possible for something to have jumps AND be a shmup. If you took any vertical shmup and added holes to jump over, and you could jump over projectiles, would that still be a shmup? Not sure. Horizontal wouldn't, because you would need gravity and would lose the movement and it would just be a platformer, but in vertical, you could keep the same movement, just with an added third dimension. Tricky, I can imagine that being done in a way that is still somewhat shmupy. Anyway, the focus on dodging bullet patterns is the most important part, and the autoscrolling contributes to that because it forces you to move through the patterns. That's what really makes games like GTA1/GTA2 and Hotline Miami not shmups, even though they are top-down shooters with 8-way movement.

I was really surprised the first time i tried IN THE HUNT. I was waiting for the scrolling at least 10 seconds because i thought it was an intro :) But, it's clearly a shmup !

Some features. Control an avatar in the 3rd person in a top down or side on view. With movement in a 2D plane. You shoot enemies and avoid their bullets. Aim is to get to the end of the game and/or score as many points as possible.

It's funny that this is still an issue because I already though "Shoot 'em ups" was a dismissive term and disliked that then when the FPS deal came into the picture I just defiantly said shooter, vertical/horizontal shooter, space shooter, etc... By the time I started hearing "shmups" I was too weary and used to disappoint to care anymore. I just accept it now but I don't really care for it and feel weird saying that term so I don't use it personally. But I wouldn't make a big deal out of it unless the subject happened to come up like it did here.

In Italy we call Fighting Games Picchiaduro (Hit Hard) if i were to say Fighting Game (Gioco di combattimento) to refer to a Fighting game the reaction would likely be: "Dude, 90% of games feature some sort of fighting"

I think forced scrolling is one of the basic things a shmup needs to have. Another thing is fixed enemy patterns.

I’m starting to think it has to do with symmetry. To eight-way inputs I would add four-fold symmetrical movement. An emphasis on a single direction gives the player embodiment a specific polarity that I haven’t felt outside shumps.

Which Game is This?? BTW love your content just binged every video!!

By watching this video again, something just came to my mind. Twin stick shooters are definitely a shooter game but why does it feel like it didn't originate from the thing that we call shmups??

Yes! Another long-form banger!

In Brazil in the 80s and 90s we called it "jogo de navezinha" (aka little ship game 👀)

About the criteria matching and sub-genres I'd like to point out that a game like "In the hunt" which doesn't "autoscroll" it's still a shmup like you suggested with non-autoscrolling shmup, in the tree would be under the shmup genre. Like all shmups (sub-genre) are shooters (parent genre), all shmup derived sub-genres are shmups.

I think pretty much all genre names are becoming worthless as the audience for video games expands, and platforms like Steam dominate. People don't want to spend the time to appreciate the history of the genres, and developers are incentivized to stretch genre definitions to get their games to show up in searches. We're at the point where people start getting offended if you don't agree that a game belongs to some genre, like you're being exclusionary. I thought shoot 'em ups were relatively safe compared to, say, adventure or roguelikes, but after seeing the state of the Shmup Sale on Steam, I now know I was sorely mistaken. I don't think ANY genre is safe anymore.

Steam did not watch this vid

In the core bucket -- they're all shmups (excluding FPS). You have to look at it the way of vs. fighting games. Take a game like StreetFighter, Super Smash, Tekken, Soul Calibur, Firepro Wrestling, or Boxing. They are all vs. games but with different mechanics, viewpoints, and methods of attack. Shmup is just the tip of the iceberg but they can branch into different interpetations with some of the familiar core elements.

That new logo is sick. I’d get that on a shirttt

I'd suggest to use auto-advancing or auto-progressing, since the point and the explanation around "auto-scrolling" is more on the side of the concept of time and game state progressing regardless of what you do. Like, how enemies are going to either pass by or pile up if you were to be invincible.

In Argentina we always called them "juegos de naves" (ship games or spaceship games) 😋. In places like Spain, they call them "Matamarcianos/ mata marcianos" (martian killers).

Honestly surprised by the amount of exceed 3rd shown in this video. It's one that I have a lot of weird nostalgia for and it was the first shmup I played that I enjoyed enough that I decided I wanted to actually get good enough to not just 1cc it but also beat the TLB (in the black package release) Something I'd be curious to hear a talk about is the definition of the term "bullet hell". It feels like it's become more of a buzz word and a redundant genre term especially on steam (I'm sure at least 90% of the games with the tag on steam aren't even close) but I'd be curious to hear views on that.

How soon Ilya forgot his wonderful summer of 2021 guest appearance on Region Free Gamers. 😅

Also: What's the the name of the game in the background with the fantasy setting where you play as that sorcerer (?) with the staff and the red tunic (e.g. at 1:04:44)? It looks amazing in terms of art style!