Bullet Hell



"The person who had done this might as well try to dodge water particles while taking a shower or radioactive particles during a nuclear fallout."

- YouTube commenter on Touhou Ultra mode.

Bullet Hell (called danmaku or "barrage" - literally "bullet curtain" - in Japanese) shooters are a subgenre of Shoot Em Ups that test both your dodging skills and your resistance to seizures. To put it simply, they're vertically scrolling shooters where all the enemies have lotsa (but not enuff) dakka. They often feature 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.

However, the genre is not always as Nintendo Hard as it seems. The player's hitbox is often very small, sometimes only one pixel. In addition, the majority of enemy bullets are sprayed wildly and have no chance of actually hitting the player. Finally, the player is almost always given some variant of the Smart Bomb, which will remove bullets from the screen. Most modern bullet hell games give the player another way to avoid being killed, such as hypers in Do Don Pachi, Touhous deathbombs, or Giga Wings Attack Reflector. Though by no means easy, a bullet hell game can be cleared without memorizing patterns or continuing. In fact, Bullet Hell games tend to be just as difficult as older, less bullet-intensive games.

In addition, the bullet patterns are not the only elaborate things in these games. The scoring systems often require as much dedication to master as the bullet patterns. Some common elements including "grazing" (where a bullet passes through your character sprite but not your vital hitbox), collecting items dropped by enemies, and not dying. Like the bullet patterns, the scoring systems have become more complex as time went on, going from a very simple Combos based scoring system in Don Pachi to systems that take multiple pages just to describe the most basic elements like Hellsinker. The scores attained have also been subject to inflation.

The types of projectiles fired by enemies and bosses will almost always be colourful Energy Balls to make it easier to tell them from the background, and so you can distinguish them from your own bullets.

Can overlap with Cute'Em Up. Usually unrelated to Platform Hell - these games are consistent about following their own rules and don't depend on cruel surprises.


 * Recca, the Ur Example. On NES. And it goes even more hellish in the Zanki Attack mode, where enemies explode into four or so suicide bullets when destroyed. But wait till they come 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.
 * You could cancel the bullets with your ship's bomb as it charges though...
 * Batsugun, one of Toaplan's last games before they closed in 1994, is the Trope Maker. In fact, several members of Toaplan formed these companies after their closure: Cave (formed from the Batsugun team), 8ing/Raizing, Takumi, and Gazelle.
 * Almost anything ever produced by CAVE, including Don Pachi, DoDonPachi (the Trope Codifier) 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 who makes the entire rest of the game look like a cakewalk. And naturally, in most of these games, you have to beat the true boss to even see the "good" ending.
 * Cave is almost infamous for creating its own niche of hard games, even by Bullet Hell standards. How hard are they? Even "professional" gamers complain about the games being insanely difficult. According to someone, it took 9 months before someone managed to do a full clear of Do Don Pachi Dai Ou Jou, Hibachi and all. Other rumors put the number of people that beat the entire game within a year of release at 5 people total.
 * Driving this point home is that shortly after Dai Ou Jou's release, the Black Label version was released (allegedly in response to some complaints from high-level players), and the notable changes were being able to keep your extra lives after the first loop and being permitted to continue on the last stage of loop 2 (both of which do NOT occur in the original release, which means running out of your initial stock of lives to Hibachi is a game over). They also added a separate 1-loop mode which ends with Hibachi (with continues permitted at any time) just so the veterans could actually get some practice against it.
 * Behold a terror like nothing you have seen before. DoDonPachi Daifukkatsu Black Label Hibachi. This is Bullet Hell crystallized into its purest form. The result? A Cosmic Horror that is the future for nightmares. Oh, and it's currently rumored that there's another boss after that one.
 * Now Presenting: ZATSUZA, And in his Arcade Difficulty.
 * On special content for Dodonpachi Daifukkatsu Black Label Retail Disc, comes a return of the Ketsui boss Evacaneer DOOM now known as HIVAC for this encounter, and he's not happy to see you.
 * Death Smiles
 * Mushihime-sama and its sequel, Mushihime-sama Futari
 * How ridiculous do these games get? See for yourself.
 * And the sequel's last boss, if anything, ups the ante.
 * Which is further upped in its special edition, with unnervingly tranquil music that serves to hinder your focus on the hell on screen - worse than even the ultra diabolic Zatsuza (Well, on Novice Difficulty anyway).
 * Note that God Mode in Black Label is actually considered much easier than Ultra Mode in the original version, due to the fact that the developers cranked up the deliberate slowdown. Additionally, its True Final Boss's final pattern has a safespot.
 * Guwange, unique in that it uses a true Jidai Geki setting (compared to series like Touhou).
 * ESP Ra.De and its Spiritual Successor Espgaluda.
 * Progear no Arashi, or its Barely Any Export For You localized version Progear, for Capcom?s CPS-2 arcade system. It has a Steampunk setting. It is also slightly unusual for the Bullet Hell subgenre in that it is laid out horizontally.
 * Now we have its Spiritual Successor Akai Katana.
 * 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."
 * The Touhou games are perhaps the best known example of Bullet Hell these days. 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 (which is an upgraded version of the final attack belonging to the normal Bonus Boss, Ran Yakumo), in which she fires nigh every kind of bullet in the game. And just when you think that card's the end of it, there's still one more to live through...
 * Even worse in that Yukari is generally considered one of the easier bonus bosses, especially compared to the likes of Flandre or Koishi.
 * There's also Touhou Danmakufu which allows you to create your own Touhou-style danmaku games, including bosses with custom-made spellcards.
 * 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, Parsec47, and Torus Trooper. 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 in No More Heroes.
 * And again in the sequel with Bizarre Jelly 5. Notable for
 * 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 that the next logical step is to shoot obscene clouds of both kinds of bullets at you at the same time. Commence cognitive overload.
 * "I've heard the Ikaruga can squeeze between bricks in a wall without touching them."
 * That's actually a necessary tactic if you're attempting to get the "Dot Eater" rank in Chapter 2...
 * Mars Matrix
 * Giga Wing is an unusual case in that it doesn't reach truly bullet hell-level until the last stage (and the TRUE last stage, of course); in fact, the first three stages look like an ordinary Capcom shooter. You also have a continually-recharging reflect barrier which not only saves your life but is key to racking up huge scores (in fact, the latter is what you're supposed to use it for). If there were such a thing as "proto-danmaku", this would be it. It does have a brutal requirement for getting the good endings, though.
 * Shikigami no Shiro, aka Castle Shikigami, and its two sequels.
 * Gradius, on its higher difficulties. The difficulty of dodging is enhanced at some times by the fact that there doesn't necessarily have to be a pattern.
 * To demonstrate it at its zenith, just watch this video of Gradius V on Loop 256.
 * If you think that's bad, try these boss exhibitions.
 * Gradius spinoff Otomedius Gorgeous, for the Xbox 360, has so many bullets and enemies on screen in higher loops that it causes the X-Box 360 to lag.
 * The fire stage in Gradius III AC, where the already plentiful large fireballs split into indestructible shrapnel when shot. Also set in Planet Heck.
 * While not as bullet-happy as future offerings, Radiant Silvergun has its fair share of danmaku, especially from certain bosses.
 * 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.
 * It inspired Flash Beryllium.
 * 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
 * G.REV's Senko no Ronde series is a mix of Bullet Hell Shoot 'em Up meets Fighting game.
 * Warning Forever starts off simple, and then It Gets Worse. On the higher levels, bosses don't even need projectiles to kill you. They just need to inch slightly to the side.
 * Big Bang Mini:
 * Paris. You have the sheep that launch 8 homing missiles at once, the birds and owls that throw very fast feathers directly downwards, and the paper planes that launch very fast aimed attacks.
 * The Paris boss's final stage. You have to avoid 2 sets of radial attacks.
 * The Abyss boss's second, third and final stages. The second you have to avoid richocheting missiles and fast and sudden aimed shots, the third you have to avoid very fast radial attacks, and the final you have 2 sets of very dense, very big radial attacks to avoid. Harsh stuff.
 * Most well made Fraxy bosses. Eboshidori in particular is awesome with these.
 * 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.
 * On the topic of Flash Games, if you play your cards right in Upgrade Complete, you can inflict this on the opponent. Sweet, sweet, revenge...
 * Upgrade Complete 2 (yes, there is a second one)'s way of upgrading the ship makes it very easy to achieve all three kinds of projectile hell.
 * StarCannon, an online game on Fun Orb, easily qualifies for this trope, with generous quantities of lasers of all shapes and sizes from all bosses and most harder enemies. Just dodging the enemies themselves as they swarm onto the screen is a challenge in the later levels. A True Final Boss awaits those who complete the game on Hard.
 * 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 Jidai Geki. 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 Bit.Trip series of Wiiware "rhythm" games, though each game has a separate mechanic, and they're as much about hitting the bullets as dodging them. 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 nominally a strategy RPG, but the enemies fire streams of bullets at your cursor to try and force you to end your turn early. It makes commanding your troops problematic, to say the least.
 * That's actually average. Boss fights are the ones you should be worried about, since those can knock off "time" very easily. Boss fights have very elaborate bullet sequences, sometimes on par with other Bullet Hell games. For example, one boss creates a swirling emblem that subsequently shatters into a rain of fragments that are nigh-impossible to avoid.
 * 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.
 * In Boss Rush, you are the main cause of this.
 * Beat Hazard mixes Bullet Hell with levels generated procedurally from the music that plays in the background, much like Audiosurf.
 * In the Hunt is normally a shooter that doesn't give the player too many bullets on screen, and most of which can be destroyed... until you see the Final Boss's "Indestructible Red Mines Attack" (starts at 1:11 here). Coupled with the fact that your hitbox is kind of large, and you'll see why it's Nintendo Hard...
 * Prismatic Solid will literally bombard the player with ridiculous storms of bullets that really only be defended by using the Attack Drone to shield your ship from enemy fire.
 * A few of the bosses in G Darius have attacks like this, notably the Embryon and Great Thing.
 * Soldner X tends to reserve its Bullet Hell moments for boss battles. The sequel, Soldner X 2, increases the tempo and makes the whole game like this, with Dynamic Difficulty thrown in for good measure.
 * A lot of games from Cactus display characteristics of the genre; the straightest examples are perhaps Protoganda: Strings and its sequel. Clean Asia has gameplay pretty squarely in the genre, but is a bit of a subversion in that the enemies aren't much harder then your standard vertical-scroller bosses. Similarly with Burn the Trash and Ad Nauseam 2. Minubeat subverts this by allowing you to destroy all enemy projectiles at will.
 * Platine Dispotif's Gundemonium series. Somewhat unusually for the genre, the main-series games are side-scrolling. Only spinoff Hitogata Happa is vertically-scrolling.
 * Sin and Punishment is a game along the lines of Space Harrier or Wild Guns, but it will occasionally throw absurd amounts of fire your way, especially on the higher difficulties. Its sequel, Sin and Punishment Star Successor, runs with it, and there are very few bosses that don't fire huge amounts of bullets your way for at least one of their attack phases. Both games have hitboxes too large (roughly the size of your rather sizable character model) to put true Danmaku levels of bullets on-screen at a time, but they can sometimes present a remarkable simulation.
 * XOP is a freeware Western example.
 * The sequel XOP Black is an even better example, featuring denser bullet curtains and secret bosses, on the basis it wasn't intended for commercial release so the creators could be as brutal as they liked.
 * Fat Cat isn't nearly as hard as some of these examples, but it takes the cake in that many of the later bullet patterns really aren't possible to dodge. You control two characters, one small, fast, and Immune to Bullets and one large, slow, and decidedly not, and in order to keep the latter alive through the endgame, you need to rapidly circle the former around it and scrub the bullets before they hit it.
 * e Xceed is a doujin series that is heavily influenced by the above games.
 * Nanotek Warrior, a Playstation game, may qualify. While the perspective is different (the player ship is running down a cylindrical tube, which you can rotate over completely) and there are less bullets, enemies cover the entire tube/level and you'll need some impressive reaction times to dodge everything. One ad campaign for the game even stressed that having eyelids was a liability.
 * Curiously, the typical "evil invasion" in Nanotek Warrior comes not from outer space, but nanomachines who've gone rogue. Even ones designed for use in hospitals.
 * Sentimental Shooting features the typical bullet-hell gameplay, with one notable exception: The background is a picture of a girl, and her clothes are destroyable by your (apparently tiny) ship's guns. The real objective is not just to survive and destroy the boss, but to shoot all her clothes so you can proceed to the second stage, where the girl's underwear is destroyable. A more original way to turn a bullet hell game into a Hentai game than by just showing some h-scenes in the cutscenes, you have to give the devs that much.
 * Cyvern: The Dragon Weapons is another rather obscure one. Which features cyborg dragons that shoot missiles, drop bombs, and have one heck of a Breath Weapon.
 * Hellsinker is a very strange doujin game with plenty of unusual gimmicks and, oddly enough for the genre, a very involved story.
 * An Epic Battle Fantasy spinoff: "Bullet Heaven". Kinda similar to Touhou, but with RPG Elements.
 * Some of the bosses actually rip off spellcards almost directly! (The second Bonus Boss rips off a few of Flandre's. The third has 2 phases of Utsuho's Mega Flare minus the shrinking bullets (the second phase coming from below, which in turn resembles a couple of SA's bonus boss's spellcards (in the fact that the second is the first one in reverse).
 * Space Arcade starts out easy, but gets very bullet-hellish in its later levels.
 * Stella Vanity. Even in the current trial, Easy is comparable to Touhou's medium, Hard is comparable to Touhou's lunatic, Nightmare is comparable to DDP Daifukkatsu's Ura loop, and Pandemonium has you looking at something like this for 70% of the stage.
 * Prelude to the Destined Calamity (aka the "OLD" version, released at C81) manages to have mooks that trip the software slowdown by themselves on Easy. Not Elite Mooks, Your usual cannon fodder mook. Suffice it to say, you better learn how to cancel enemy bullets fast.
 * Sugar Shooter
 * Blue Wish Resurrection
 * Stages 4 and 5 from Genetos dive into danmaku territory.
 * Blastral is an easier danmaku game, recommended for those wanting to get their feet wet.
 * Dream Trigger 3D, a launch title for the Nintendo 3DS. Not only is it Bullet Hell, it also has INSANE mechanics.
 * Jamestown Legend of the Lost Colony
 * Magical Cannon Wars
 * Trouble Witches is bullet hell series with emphasis on Magic Barrier system and utilizing Magic Cards to gain Star Coins and earn points.
 * My Little Pegasis: Kizuna DoPonyPachi, a danmaku fangame based on My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic

Non-shooter examples of Bullet Hell-style projectiles

 * Mushroom Kingdom Fusion gets in on the action (start at 2:30).
 * One attack during the final boss fight of Mega Man X 8 simulates the "dodging" part of bullet hell pretty good.
 * Another Mega Man example: The black devil in X5 resembles a bullet hell very closely in its attack pattern.
 * Mothraya in ROM Hack Rock Man 4 Minus Infinity. As it takes damage, its patterns increase in difficulty.
 * The Delicious Fruit room in I Wanna Be The Fangame.
 * One of the bosses in The World Ends With You, Megumi Kitaniji (first fight; partnered with, has a Bullet Hell attack.
 * His One-Winged Angel form fires so many fireballs at once, it actually lags the DS.
 * A few bosses from An Untitled Story. Plus rooms with endless waves of falling purple globs, or ghosts.
 * Bunny Must Die.
 * Engage to Jabberwock is a hybrid of Zelda-style dungeon exploration and bullet-hell projectile fights.
 * The fight with Tor in Iji.
 * While fighting Dracula in I Wanna Be the Guy, he occasionally fires a spiraling pattern of fireballs apples delicious fruit. The fight against Mother Brain can get very hectic (and frustrating) as well. There is also an Unexpected Shmup Level near the end of the game, and considering what kind of game this is, it's not hard to tell how that turns out either.
 * Actually, to those who play shmups often, the Unexpected Shmup Level was one of the easiest rooms in the game.
 * While primarily an ARPG, Nie R often has bosses that fill up the whole screen with danmaku. When mooks later on get the same ability along with one of your companions, some fights look akin to a particularly flamboyant fireworks display. The DLC turns all the danmaku to No.7's head, which might either be horrific or just creepily amusing.
 * Many of the bosses in the Ys remakes on Nightmare difficulty.
 * Touhou has a few fighting game spinoffs, with quite a few characters fighting with danmaku as they normally would.
 * This causes many problems when they are ported to MUGEN, as the vast majority of 'proper' Fighting Game characters just aren't equipped to deal with such projectile-heavy gameplay.
 * Mega-Freaking-Mari, FULL STOP.
 * The boss battles in Crescent Pale Mist.
 * The Ninja miniboss of Area 3 in Contra ReBirth has as one of its attacks a Bullet Hell pattern of laser shuriken.
 * Epic Battle Fantasy actually did bullet hell BEFORE the actual bullet hell spinoff! One of Lance's attacks in the third game is named Bullet Hell. There are indeed a lot of bullets in the animation and it hits a number of times (not that it means much, considering there's no damage cap.) The hell part becomes more applicable once you consider the attack is fire elemental.
 * Mischief Makers: The first and second battles with Lunar (the wolf with the machine-gun). The first battle is in a snowfield, where he fights you by shooting his weapon of choice and launching bombs, too; the second battle has Lunar on his motorcycle, launching missiles, shooting fire blasts, and also firing a giant laser whenever he gets the chance.
 * This Puella Magi Madoka Magica doujin game is about maneuvering Soul Gem away from the rain of tears. It starts out fine, but after a while, there'll be so much of it that the difficulty hits this trope.
 * Super Mario War: there is a fanmade level like this.
 * The Twin Val'kyr boss in World of Warcraft: in a Shout-Out to Ikaruga you choose either white or black colour and have to catch the bullets of your colour so that they won't harm others. Mixed up with occasionally all raid having to switch to one colour to absorb a massive bomb or deal more damage to one of them. However, with advancement of gear and now level cap, people begun to just stand there and annihilate them with superior firepower.
 * Wartech: Senko no Ronde has this for the boss fights. Also, the normal characters can power up into B.O.S.S. mode and perform this sort of attack while powered up.
 * Distorted Travesty and it's sequel mixes this with Platform Hell with bosses throwing huge waves of bullets around. In fact the two short flying levels that more closely resemble traditional Bullet Hell are relatively easy, seeing as the rest of the game doesn't give you the luxury of bombs...
 * The fight with  in Kingdom Hearts 2 may count. Near the end, Sora and   are surrounded by umpteen of those shots he fires, and you have to button mash triangle and square to avoid damage, where the two do insane maneuvers to dodge.
 * Every other boss battle in Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure involved Kaos alternating between him attacking with spells that are basically full blown bullet hell patterns based around Water, Life, Undead and Fire and spawning Evil Knockoffs of three of the Skylanders of each of those elements, with the final phase of the fight having him do both at the same time. This gets cranked Up to Eleven in the final battle.
 * A rare example where the player is given this ability: Warriors Orochi 2 adds newcomer Himiko, a shamanistic goddess. Her floating clay dogu can send out several dozen bullets in various flashy patterns, in addition to lasers. Her R1 special doubles the bullet count for a period of time.
 * Spiral Knights when Gunpuppies show up. Oh joy.
 * If you're doing it wrong, Roarmulus Twins boss fight can play out like this.
 * Saint Seiya: Sanctuary Battle has the boss fight with Virgo Shaka. To say it's pure Hell is an understatement - Shaka's projectile spam is ridiculous, and chances are you will die many, many times there. Cancer Deathmask can be very annoying too with his floating skull summons, but at least Deathmask's attacks don't paralyze you and expose you to further attacks by him. Shaka's do.
 * Hyperdimension Neptunia mk2 has a DLC character by the name of Cave. Yes, that CAVE. True to the company she represents, she has an attack called Black Label, in which she unleashes bullet hell on the enemy.
 * Shinywuffles, naturally. I mean, just look at this.


 * All There in the Manual: You will often need it to understand the scoring system, and to find any information about the plot, such as it is.
 * Bonus Boss
 * Often a True Final Boss or three.
 * Colour-Coded for Your Convenience: This distinguishes different types of energy shots from each other and from the player's.
 * Continuing Is Painful: A single death will generally severely damage your score, often resetting any combo you have built up, and using a continue will generally start you over at zero.
 * Hitbox Dissonance
 * Later games will clearly show where your hitbox is.
 * Bullets themselves have this at times.
 * Energy Ball: Most enemy shots take this form.
 * Macross Missile Massacre
 * Marathon Boss
 * Mook Maker: May have the usual type, or more commonly bullets that fire smaller bullets.
 * More Dakka: The most common form of attack, trying to see if players can dodge a swarm of bullets rather than just a single one. It has the best chance of working if the bullets are tightly packed and/or fast.
 * Nintendo Hard
 * Pinball Scoring: Up the backside. This is especially prevalent in games that allow you to cancel bullets (without using a Smart Bomb), as canceling bullets gives you some form of points (combo increase in DoDonPachi DaiFukkatsu Black Label, bullets turning into gems in Mushihime-sama Futari).
 * Recursive Ammo: One of the many sources of additional bullets and changes of attack direction.
 * Roboteching: Don't count on bullets continuing to move in the direction they are fired. Some types will home in, others will change or even reverse the way they're moving just to screw with you and give something else to worry about.
 * Scenery Porn: The curtains of coloured bullets raining down can be beautiful and hypnotic, shame they are trying to kill you.
 * Self-Imposed Challenge: Such as not using bombs or continues.
 * Stuff Blowing Up: Somewhat averted. Many games in the genre tend to de-emphasize pretty explosions in favor of bullet counts.
 * Video Game Lives
 * Violation of Common Sense: You're supposed to dodge bullets by going into them. It makes more sense if you watch pro videos. And you're supposed to do this extremely often on harder bosses.