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Bullet hell

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File:Mushi-ST3boss.jpg
A screenshot from the "bullet hell" game Mushihime-sama. The purple dots are all enemy bullets.

Bullet hell (also known in English as "Manic Shooter" and in Japanese as danmaku (弾幕, lit. "bullet curtain")) is a sub-genre of shmup video games in which the entire screen is often almost completely filled with enemy bullets. To compensate for the low margin of error presented by a screen full of bullets, the collision box of the player's ship is usually restricted to a single pixel in the center of the ship (which is usually clearly marked, more so than normal when bullets approach closer to it). Despite that, games in the bullet hell subgenre are often extremely difficult and require a long time to master.

Most of the well-known commercial bullet hell shmups are developed by the Japanese video game company Cave. The genre is also very popular in doujin soft, particularly via the Tōhō series.

Buzzing

Buzzing is a mechanic that makes bullet hell video games even more challenging; it offers rewards (bonus points, stronger attacks, etc.) for allowing enemy bullets to "graze" the player's ship without hitting the ship's collision box.

See also

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