History Main / Bullethell

* Queen Larsa of MushihimesamaFutari has earned to respect of many gamers that have merely seen her in action. She may be the [[NintendoHard hardest boss in any video game]] and [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQZuidKexBQ this clip which proclaims her such has almost 2.5 Million views]]. [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70iFdnI-xfA Just watch her performance on the hardest difficulty.]]

[[{{Touhou}} http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/yukari_can_see_you.jpg]]
[[caption-width:288:[[DodgeThis Dodge this.]]]]

->- '''CharlieBrooker''', ''Charlie Brooker's Gameswipe''

->- ''Youtube commenter on Mushihime-sama Futari's TrueFinalBoss''

** Infamous because there are simply so many bullets, [[BeyondTheImpossible the players brain can't even SEE THEM ALL.]]

** ''{{Mushihime-sama}}'' and its sequel, ''Mushihime-sama Futari''. If you've ever played it, you might notice how it slows down a lot. That's not intentional slow-down to help the player. ''That's the system actually lagging''. The arcade hardware is roughly comparable with eighth generation systems.

** And the somewhat related ''GigaWing''.
*** Giga Wing is an unusual case in that it doesn't reach truly bullet hell-level until the last stage (and the TRUE last stage, of course); in fact, the first three stages look like an ordinary Capcom shooter. You also have a continually-recharging reflect barrier which not only saves your life but is key to racking up huge scores (in fact, the latter is what you're supposed to use it for). If there were such a thing as "proto-danmaku", this would be it. It does have a brutal requirement for getting the good endings, though.

** Not too much in the way of bullets, but there's no real pattern. It evens out.
*** There ''is'' a pattern. It ''actively adapts to your tactics''.

** Actually, the boss battles are typically the least bullet hell parts. In most of them, their attacks cover a relatively small area at a time. The difficulty usually comes from the bullets going either directly at where you are or the bullets covering an area you're likely to fly through, or from you just not watching your ship.

Bullet Hell (called ''danmaku'' or "barrage" (literally "bullet curtain" in Japanese) shooters are a subgenre of {{Shoot Em Up}}s that test both your dodging skills and your resistance to seizures. They often feature extremely elaborate and beautiful patterns of bullet flows, especially for bosses, with [[MoreDakka hundreds and sometimes thousands of bullets on the screen at once]], requiring constant weaving and pattern memorization in order to get the elusive [[RankInflation S++ ranks]]. Not so [[PainfullySlowProjectile painfully slow]] when they ''cover the screen'', eh, tough guy? These games also tend to have {{True Final Boss}}es.

** And that's just the ''Normal'' difficulty. Only the truly insane have played it on Lunatic.

However, the genre is not as {{Nintendo Hard}} as it seems. The player's [[HitboxDissonance hitbox is often very small, sometimes only one pixel]]. In addition, [[ATeamFiring the majority of enemy bullets are sprayed wildly and have no chance of actually hitting the player]]. Finally, the player is always given some variant of the {{Smart Bomb}}, which will remove bullets from the screen. Most modern bullet hell games give the player another way to avoid being killed, such as hypers in [=DoDonPachi=]. Though by no means easy, a bullet hell game can be cleared without memorizing patterns or continuing.

* [[MarvelVsCapcom ''Marvel Vs Capcom 2'']] is known for having a heavy emphasis on projectile combat to the point that some folks feel that it's more a shooting game then a fighter. One valid strategy for competitive play is to choose characters and assists that can effectively fill the screen with projectiles and force the opponent to block and take [[CherryTapping chip damage]].

* Part of [[MetalSlug Metal Slug 3]]'s final mission involves the characters hopping into a spaceship and attacking (increasingly harder) waves of alien ships, before storming straight into the mothership to take out its internal defences. Normal side-scrolling gameplay then resumes.

* Nanotek Warrior, a playstation game, may qualify. While the perspective is different (the player ship is running down a cylindrical tube, which you can rotate over completely) and there are less bullets, enemies ''cover'' the entire tube/level and you'll need some impresive reaction times to dodge everything. One ad campaign for the game even stressed that having eyelids was a ''liability''.
** Curiously, the typical "evil invasion" in Nanotek Warrior comes not from outer space, but nanomachines who've gone rogue. Even ones designed for use in hospitals.

* Part of [[MetalSlug Metal Slug 3]]'s final mission involves the characters hopping into a spaceship and attacking (increasingly harder) waves of alien ships, before storming straight into the mothership to take out its internal defences. Normal, sidescrolling gameplay then resumes.

** ''{{Mushihime-sama}}'' and its sequel, ''Mushihime-sama Futari"''. If you've ever played it, you might notice how it slows down a lot. That's not intentional slow-down to help the player. ''That's the system actually lagging''. The arcade hardware is roughly comparable with eighth generation systems.

** ''{{Mushihime-sama}}'' and its sequel, ''Mushihime-sama Futari". If you've ever played it, you might notice how it slows down a lot. That's not intentional slow-down to help the player. ''That's the system actually lagging''. The arcade hardware is roughly comparable with eighth generation systems.

** ''{{Mushihime-sama}}'' and its sequel, ''Mushihime-sama Futari''
*** How ridiculous do these games get? [[http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=meegHdD0dAk&feature=related See for yourself.]]
*** And the sequel's last boss, if anything, [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQZuidKexBQ ups the ante.]]
*** Which is further upped in its [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVQdbcsXDrE special edition.]]
**** Just to get an idea of how many bullets that is... notice how it slows down a lot? That's not intentional slow-down to help the player. ''That's the system actually lagging''. The arcade hardware is roughly comparable with eighth generation systems.

** Some parts of Touhou are so complex that your brain will actually ''[[YouCannotGraspTheTrueForm stop interpreting data on some parts of the screen]],'' and ''[[HighOctaneNightmareFuel you can feel it happening]].''

* ''Clean Asia'' (from Cactus, famous as the creator of MondoMedicals) has gameplay pretty squarely in the Bullet Hell genre, but is a bit of a subversion in that the enemies aren't much harder then your standard vertical-scroller bosses.

** ''Deathsmiles''