The shoot-em-up (smartly shortened to shmup) emerged in the 60s as a subgenre of the shooter category, with Steve Russell’s Spacewar! being the first introduction of the intense and oftentimes adrenaline-intoxicating gameplay we’ve come to know of the subgenre. In the early 90s, we saw a niche of games, affectionately called “bullet hells” or “manic shooters,” take the…
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Various sub-weapons add weight to the choice
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Ships add no real variance to combat
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Bosses are boring or tedious and never engaging
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Enemies are no match for you, regardless of power
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Firing all weapons is done by pressing a single button
