bullet hell

English

Alternative forms

• bullet-hell

Pronunciation

• Audio (US):

  (file)

Noun

bullet hell (countable and uncountable, plural bullet hells)

1. (video games, chiefly attributive) A genre of two-dimensional shoot 'em up in which the playfield is almost filled with a barrage of enemy bullets.
   • 2003, Billy Bissette, “SAY IT AIN'T SO!!!”, in rec.games.video.sega (Usenet):

     Mars Matrix is a bullet hell game that is pretty well designed.

   • 2008, Brian Ashcraft, Jean Snow, Arcade Mania: The Turbo-charged World of Japan's Game Centers:

     A few of the game cabinets are connected to flat-screen TVs so bystanders can stop and ogle. Grimy VCRs are hooked up to bullet-hell shooting games...

   • 2019 February 25, Jordan Erica Webber, “Point and shoot: what's next for photography in video games?”, in The Guardian‎^[1]:

     The camera is a convenient nonviolent replacement for a gun, a principle perhaps taken most literally by Shoot the Bullet (2005), a bullet hell game in which you clear bullets by photographing them.

Translations

Translations

• Japanese: 弾幕 (ja) (danmaku)
• Marathi: बुलेट हेल m (buleṭ hel)