I felt my fingers cramping up as I twisted and turn to avoid a hail of bullets that threaten to shoot down my plane and render the mission failed. Waves after waves of enemies go down and I managed to snag a couple of power ups and was approaching the stage boss.

It was immense, almost half of the screen and it fires off energy balls and missiles that not only threaten to blow up my plane but also to induce an epileptic seizure with the bright explosions and frantic sounds. Welcome to bullet hell!

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I think that is the allure of Shoot em up games where speed and reaction time is very important. The ability to see that wave of seemingly impossible to dodge waves of bullets and escaping by a very narrow and precise placement of your ship just gives you a rush of excitement.

This gave rise to a very niche market called Bullet Hell games that was very challenging and filled your screen with a mandala-like pattern of bullets that you needed to dodge. You had to be very patient o learn the patterns as you die and die again and again before you get very precise dodging skills.

It appeals to both casual and dedicated players who want a face paced game that challenges their skills.

Here are some of my memorable shooting games. The list though will be of older titles and no First Person Shooters which can be another topic in the future.

Macross

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I grew up playing video games and one of my favorites was Macross for the Super Family Computer. It's full title was
The Super Dimension Fortress Macross (1985 video game) and in it you control one of those VF-1 Valkyrie variable fighters machines that let you change from a jet, Gerwalk [hybrid of a jet and a robot, kinda looks like a squatting humanoid) and its Battloid form (full upright humanoid and looking like a bad ass)

It was a side scrolling shoot em up game that gave you the ability to move all around and adjust your speed according to what mode you are using. The Jet was fast although you are liable to hit enemies with your body more than your bullets.

The Gerwalk, although it looks weird, gave enough speed and control to be effective as the Battloid was slow and made you into a bigger target to hit. Later on, when I played this game again in an emulator it was easier for me to navigate through the stages in Jet mode as I gained more gaming experience and had better eye and hand coordination.

When you sprayed that missile barrage it still very satisfying!

Galaga

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Galaga was another game that I absolutely loved. It was beautifully rendered, with different rows of enemies that behaved differently and a "boss" at the very top.

Imagine me figuring out that if you get the boss to capture one of my ships and subsequently "freeing" it that I would have double the firepower! Although it also meant that I was easier to hit with two ships.

I remember having competitions with my friends on who could get the highest score and be on the highest game level. The two ship combo was one that made reaching the high score but it made it harder to reach higher levels because you were sacrificing one of your lives.

It was a fun game to compete in.

Twin Bee

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This was a far cuter shoot em up game that featured bright pastel colors and vegetables, fruits, and kitchenware as enemies.

This could also be played by two players in the same time so this was a favorite game that me and my brother played. During research I stumbled into the information that apparently the two ships have unique names Player one controls Twinbee and Player Two controls Winbee. This concept is the same as having Mario and Luigi who just had different color palletes to differentiate them before.

You could get power ups in shooting the clouds and the bells that would be released would change color as you hit them with your bullet. It was hard to keep hitting it till you get the power up that you want as well as dodging your enemies.

One of the things that I really enjoyed with Twinbee was using your partner's ship for a variety of moves. You could line up horizontally or vertically to be able to get a more powerful shot. Although I used this to annoy my brother more as I would hijack his ship and make it as a meat shield against bosses!

Contra

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Although some people insist that shoot em up games are only for ships and outer space some people also consider side-scrolling adventures like Contra as both an action game and a shoot em up.

What gamer doesn't know the Konami code (Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left Right, B, A, Select, Start) Although Contra was the not the first game that used it, it was very popular because it gave players 30 lives which were more than enough to have casual gamers finish the game.

I was only able to play the Family computer version of the game and it was said that the arcade version had the two heroes with more distinct features such as Player one, Bill sporting blond hair, having a white tank top and a blue bandana while Player two, was dark-haired, shirtless and wearing a red bandana. In the Super Family Computer version [NES] they lost these and could only be distinguised by the color of their pants and both became shirtless.

In my opinion, the two characters were like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone who rose to fame in the 80's for portraying tough commando-like characters in Predator and Rambo respectively.

I remember playing this with my brother and given the Konami code it was easier for him and he did not need to steal my lives!

What was fascinating about the game was it had different facets of the shoot em up genre incorporated in its gameplay. You first started in the jungle where it was a side scrolling shooting version that made it possible for you to move in any direction as you can jump up, down, left or right while aiming your rifle in 8 different directions. We would usually have me take the top route while my brother covered the bottom part.

Although both of us scrambled to get the Spread gun! If I wanted to troll my brother I would shoot the power up capsule and he would unwittingly catch the Fire or the Laser weapons.

The inside the base stage was limited that you could only move to the left or right and jump to avoid bullets. You could also lie flat on your stomach to aim at low targets.

The next stage was the waterfalls section where you need to jump up the different platforms in order to move up the stage. I usually trolled my brother by jumping to fast and he would be stuck in the bottom and "die" because the game considered that he fell. I was a terrible brother haha. Don't even get us started in the Mario Party games.

Each stage has a boss to beat and as always in these games they had an attack pattern that you could exploit.

The ending was off fighting an Alien-like queen that even created these facehuggers albeit they were bigger. After killing it you are treated to a short image of your victory and mankind safe once more.

There were other games like Gradius, Panzer Dragoon and the iconic Zone of the Enders which combined my love of mecha (robots) and a dazzling bullet hell format. I might write another post that featured the N64, Playstation and Sega console games that I played. I might also add PC games like Wing Commander into a future post.

The world of gaming is so vast and the titles you can play are so many with so many genres and subgenres.

What's your favorite Shoot em up game?