PCE shooters have lost their magic for me...

[Necromancer]

It's only natural to make the hitbox smaller if the players want more and more intricate bullet patterns.

Well hell, why not delete the hit box all together?  Think of all the fancy bullet patterns - it'll be like the finest lace, only made of bullets!

[Starfighter]

i don't say that they're easy, they're just different in play mechnism. but how they have developed, i don't really have to like.

Of course not. I'm not trying to change anyones mind - I'm just saying what I think about the games. It more or less comes down to this - if people like to play bullet hell shooters without any dramatical change or innovation, then they should continue to make them. Like everything else pretty much. But I do wish they would stop making the music on MTV....

[Starfighter]

Well hell, why not delete the hit box all together?  Think of all the fancy bullet patterns - it'll be like the finest lace, only made of bullets!

Woah, that sounds AWESOME! I would love to try a shooter with no hit box. Make the game more of an experience than a highscore chase... Yeah, I have to think further on this.

[Arkhan]

Don't make excuses for the genre.  The tiny hit box is there for one reason and one reason only: to make it easier to weave around stupid bullet patterns.

Uh, I'm not making an excuse.  That's how I imagine bullet hells while playing them. 

ship flying into a hail of gunfire, dancing around, barely squeaking by, while shooting everything down. 

Maybe that's how the original bullet hell creators imagined it too.

I like bullet hell games.

[soop]

Well, logically speaking, you can only see from one angle.

And there are many games where bosses are invulerable apart from a weak spot.
so it makes sense that if you were only gonna make one ship, you'd make it out of the good stuff.

Although I'd fire the designer who makes all the blueprints for these things and insists on including a weakpoint.  What a jerk.

[Necromancer]

Uh, I'm not making an excuse.  That's how I imagine bullet hells while playing them.  

ship flying into a hail of gunfire, dancing around, barely squeaking by, while shooting everything down.  

Maybe that's how the original bullet hell creators imagined it too.

I'm sure they were thinking it makes total sense to make a ship invulnerable to enemy fire... except in one tiny spot.  They probably design Death Stars on weekends too.

[Arkhan]

Uh, I'm not making an excuse.  That's how I imagine bullet hells while playing them. 

ship flying into a hail of gunfire, dancing around, barely squeaking by, while shooting everything down. 

Maybe that's how the original bullet hell creators imagined it too.

I'm sure they were thinking it makes total sense to make a ship invulnerable to enemy fire... except in one tiny spot.  They probably design Death Stars on weekends too.

Your imagination blows then.

It's not your standard shoot em up.  It's something different.  You're flying into a mess of bullets and dodging them.  Consider the bullets "passing through you" as you, the pilot, performing sweet evasive maneuvers and flying up/down/tilting out of the way of the bullets.  Near miss excitement.

The other alternative for the imagination impaired would be to let you have your ship go up/down/tilt for real.

I'm sure that would play great as an overhead view game.  Definitely.

[SamIAm]

Well hell, why not delete the hit box all together?

Give the player score-checkpoints that they have to achieve in order to continue play, and you just might be onto a great new idea. Have to evolve it some more, though.

Anyway, I think the real "curtain-fire" shmups do get dull after a while, but a lot of the bullet heavy shooters from over the years are fairly moderate. Again, I'd encourage anyone to check out Ketsui. It's not for everyone, but IMO it's Cave's finest, and it fits in the "moderate" category.

Oh, and it's interesting to note that while only some games have a highlighted hitbox, some others that don't still include a ship diagram with the hitbox inside the instruction manual and/or on the arcade cabinet inserts (whatever they're called).

A lot of people have disagreed with me on this, but I still say that Sapphire's hitbox being just slightly on the large side is one of the game's only downfalls. Shrink the hitbox by a pixel on each side (you can increase the enemies to balance the difficulty) and make better (and quieter!) sound effects, and the game would be even more of a legend.

[Necromancer]

Your imagination blows then.

It's not your standard shoot em up.  It's something different.  You're flying into a mess of bullets and dodging them.  Consider the bullets "passing through you" as you, the pilot, performing sweet evasive maneuvers and flying up/down/tilting out of the way of the bullets.  Near miss excitement.

The other alternative for the imagination impaired would be to let you have your ship go up/down/tilt for real.

I'm sure that would play great as an overhead view game.  Definitely.

"Blah blah blah.  I love these games so any and all criticism is 100% crazy talk."

[Arkhan]

"Blah blah blah.  I love these games so any and all criticism is 100% crazy talk."

Well, the criticism is "you have a tiny hitbox so you can dodge stupid patterns"... and yeah, that's crazy talk.  It means you're missing the point of the game and implying the whole thing is stupid.  Why not criticize something else about a bullet hell game, like shit graphics, dumb characters, bland music, boring levels, or something to that extent?

God forbid anyone apply any form of reasoning or imagination to a design element of a genre with something other than "its there so you can easily dodge stupid things"

whats funny though is, usually, when I go on these tirades, at least 1 person always goes "oh hey, you made me see it in a different light! sweet!"

See: China Warrior.

[Starfighter]

dumb characters, bland music

This is painfully true! I haven't really found a character I like in the genre but as far as music goes I at least found one game that tickled my balls - Espgaluda! Especially from the first stage.

[spenoza]

I think the bullet hell genre really arose as an attempt to show off how many sprites the creators could push around on screen. I think it was initially a contest over who has the biggest penis. More bullets! More explosions! More score multipliers! Look how much CRAP we can throw on the screen and still keep track of!

All about numbers of sprites and collision routines. It grew out of that to become something more than that, but I'm pretty sure that's how it started.

I sometimes find bullet hell games fun, but usually not because they are bullet hell games. I find bullet pattern dodging really frustrating. I mean, no shooter is realistic. The bullets move too slowly and are sprayed out. Bullet hells, however, are even less realistic. I have trouble imagining flying into a hail of fire when the hail of fire makes concentric rings going out in every direction in lace-like patterns. I have no point of connection with that at all. Take something unreal but fun and make it even more crazy and unreal and less fun in the process.

Doujin bullet hells are the worse, though.

[Starfighter]

Doujin bullet hells are the worse, though.

Why?

I haven't played so many, but I love eXceed 3rd Jade Penetrate, Mountain of Faith, The Embodiment of Scarlet Devil, Perfect Cherry Blossom, Blue Wish Resurrection and Chorensha 68k (those last two are even free to download - hint hint to curious readers). All good fun!

[spenoza]

Chorensha x86 is OK. Hate having anime chicks as bosses. Can't get behind that. I find it very incongruous. I can handle obvious cute 'em ups, but it has to either be that or legit aircraft. The whole anime/manga girl otaku obsession thing kinda bothers me. I spend a year in Japan and have studied the culture extensively, and Japan's acceptance of gender inequality and obsession, not to mention their acceptance of child pornography, is a major problem.

[Starfighter]

I agree to 100%, I really hate the themes in many shooters. I usually try to see beyond that and focus on the fun - but yeah, I can really understand why it becomes a no-no.