Bullet hell

History

The bullet hell genre traces its roots to Toaplan, a Japanese arcade game developer that ceased operations. In 1993, Toaplan released Batsugun, which after its first level introduced increasingly complex and hypnotic bullet patterns. To improve fairness, only a small part of the player's ship served as the hitbox rather than the entire vessel, a design principle that remains standard in bullet hell shooters. The 1995 title DonPachi added a fighting game-style combo system that required players to defeat enemies quickly or lose score, a feature that influenced later entries.

Around this time, the Touhou Project, recognized by Guinness World Records as the most well-known and prolific fan-made shooter series, was conceived by doujin soft developer ZUN, who initially created the games to showcase his music. The second Touhou game, 1997's Story of Eastern Wonderland, was its first bullet hell shooter, and the 2002 Embodiment of Scarlet Devil, released on Windows, gained a large Western audience. In 2001, Ikaruga attracted international attention through its GameCube release, introducing many Western players to bullet hell.

In the modern era, more bullet hell titles have appeared on mobile platforms than ever before. While the genre remains heavily Japan-centric, Western-developed exceptions include Jamestown: Legend of the Lost Colony. Some games from other genres have incorporated bullet hell elements, blurring genre definitions. RPG hybrids such as Knights in the Nightmare (2008), Undertale (2015), Nier: Automata (2017), and Deltarune (2018–2026) feature combat systems with bullet dodging.

Enter the Gungeon (2016) is a twin-stick shooter roguelike with smart bullets, and Returnal was cited as injecting bullet hell style into a third-person shooter roguelike. These hybrids open the genre to players who might not otherwise try pure bullet hell games due to their difficulty.