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alt title(s): Danmaku 
Bullet Hell (called danmaku or "barrage" in Japanese) shooters are a subgenre of Shoot Em Ups that test both your dodging skills and your resistance to seizures. They often feature a firework display being sick extremely elaborate and beautiful patterns of bullet flows, especially for bosses, with hundreds and sometimes thousands of bullets on the screen at once, requiring constant weaving and pattern memorization in order to get the elusive S++ ranks. Not so painfully slow when they cover the screen, eh, tough guy? These games also tend to have True Final Bosses.
Adding to the inherent Nintendo Hardness of the genre, some danmaku games, especially Touhou, actually reward you for getting as close to the bullets as possible. Being able to "graze" bullets by having them pass through your sprite but not your hitbox earns you extra points for your score, but ups your chances of dying immensely. Even if the game doesn't reward you for daredevil maneuvers, part of the joy in playing these games comes from the close calls and frantic dodges - surviving not just as a tactic, but as an art form.
Can overlap with Cute Em Up.
- The Touhou games are perhaps the best known example of Bullet Hell. The above picture is a screenshot from the battle with Yukari Yakumo, the second Bonus Boss of Perfect Cherry Blossom, who is unleashing her infamous "Boundary of Life and Death" spell card attack. And just when you think that card's the end of it, there's still one more to live through...
- Probably the very first example of a Bullet Hell was Recca on the NES, especially in the Zanki Attack mode. Enemies exploded into four or so suicide bullets when destroyed. And when enemies came in waves of ten to twenty...
- The main difference between Recca and most of the examples in this page, is that the bullets fill the screen AND they are absurdly fast.
- Almost anything ever produced by Cave, Including Don Pachi, DoDonPachi and especially later sequels, culminating in Dodonpachi Daifukkatsu. Cave shooters typically have two loops. The first loop will look feasibly beatable. To get to the second, you usually have to not die and not use more than a couple bombs (or some variation on that). The second loop will be No One Could Survive That. At the end or after the end of the second loop (depending on the game), you finally go up against the True Final Boss. And naturally, in most of these games, you have to beat the true boss to even see the "good" ending.
- Batsugun, one of Toaplan's last games before they closed in 1994, is the Ur Example. In fact, several members of Toaplan formed these companies after their closure: Cave (formed from the Batsugun team), 8ing/Raizing, Takumi, and Gazelle.
- Cho Ren Sha 68k has danmaku elements.
- Blast Works, which includes a bullet pattern editor in case the game is too easy for you.
- Blast Works is the Adaptation Distillation of Tumiki Fighters, a previous shmup by Kenta Cho, who worked on other freeware Bullet Hell games such as Noiz2sa, rRootage, and Parsec47. In fact, he developed an XML-based markup language called BulletML
 , an open-source markup language that lets you develop your own Bullet Hell patterns.
- Pure White Giant Glastonbury, a Game Within A Game, found on the way to the Rank 4 fight in No More Heroes.
- In Ikaruga you can absorb some bullets (due to the polarity system). And you have to. The clouds of bullets that get shot your way often have no spaces between them whatsoever. One would think being able to flip your shield and plow through it would make the game easier...and for the first level or two it does. Then you realize the next logical step is to shoot obscene clouds of both kinds of bullets at you at the same time. Commence cognitive overload.
- Mars Matrix
- Shikigami no Shiro, aka Castle Shikigami, and its two sequels
- Gradius, on its higher difficulties. Difficulty of dodging is enhanced at some times by the fact that there doesn't necessarily have to be a pattern.
- While not as bullet-happy as future offerings, Radiant Silvergun has its fair share of danmaku, especially from certain bosses.
- Ketsui, and its DS Boss Rush port, Ketsui Death Label have bullets that will curve, multiply, pause, and perform all sorts of other behavior, as if they're organic bullets. Death Label is perhaps notable for being one of the first danmaku games to grace a portable system, something that one YouTube user describes as "bullet hell in your pocket."
- Go Beryllium! found here, is a game based off the world of the very very small. Watch the video, then look closely above it for the download link.
- The Psyvariar series is an interesting variation in that the player is invincible, but is forced to "graze" bullet streams in order to get any substantial score.
- Triggerheart Exelica
- Warning Forever starts off simple, and then It Gets Worse. Admittedly, not as bad as Touhou at its worst, but still.
- 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.
- Big Bang Mini
- Though no shooter per se, one attack during the final boss fight of Mega Man X 8 simulates the "dodging" part of bullet hell pretty good.
- Most well made Fraxy bosses. Eboshidori in particular is awesome with these.
- Even Mushroom Kingdom Fusion gets in on the action(start at 2:30).
- It's a logical next step, considering the franchise. Some of those later castles can be a bitch.
- One of the bosses in The World Ends With You, Megumi Kitaniji (first fight; partnered with a brainwashed Shiki Misaki), has a Bullet Hell attack.
- His One Winged Angel form fires so many fireballs at once, it actually lags the DS.
- The bosses of The Red Star all fit into this category, despite the fact that the game is a side-scrolling Beat'em Up.
- Some of the more.... insane levels of the Gummi Ship sections in Kingdom Hearts 2 get like this, for example, this one especially when the boss comes in.
- Of course, using the Drain cannon turns half the bullets into ammo, letting Hunter-X feel the wrath of Bullet Hell as well.
- Frantic 2 is basically a flash version of Touhou. With bonus multipliers for grazing bullets.
- Freeware game Clean Asia! is a vectorised bullet hell shooter by Cactus.
- Zanac could be considered an early example. If you fire too much, the adaptive AI will send everything and the kitchen sink after you, filling the screen with enemies, bullets and missiles (every one with its own firing pattern). Also the boss fights can get very hectic bullet-wise.
- Vasara and its prequel Vasara 2 have a sci-fi take on jidaigeki. One interesting feature is that running into most things doesn't do Collision Damage, but you will definitely collide, which can work for you (obstruct a fleeing enemy’s path and kill more in one stroke for extra points) or against you (when accidental, it usually knocks you right into a bullet you just dodged).
- The battle with the Really Final Boss in Demonophobia.
- the Bit Trip series of Wiiware "rhythm" games, though each game has a separate mechanic. The first has you reflecting the bullets with what is basically a pong paddle, the second had you shooting the bullets from a point in the center, and the third had you collecting all the black bullets and avoiding the white ones.
- Knights In The Nightmare is a bullet-hell strategy RPG... thing.
- You Will Die is an indie game shooter for the Xbox 360 that consists of nothing but killing a boss over and over until you die. Every time you kill it, it adds more parts and weapons onto itself and becomes stronger. The game starts out fairly tame but quickly reaches bullet hell levels of difficulty if you can survive long enough.
- The Delicious Fruit room in I Wanna Be The Fangame. "The only cherry in this game" my ass. And you've got to surf on a slowly sinking "Psyche!" sign.
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