Evolution of Shooting Games
The Evolution of Shooting Games
John Raymond Lim
High 3F, Xavier School
School Year 2007-2008
1
Evolution of Shooting Games
I
Introduction
A
Videogames as Interesting Inventions
1) Entertainment of Many People
2) Exercise of Health-oriented Individuals
3) Simulation of Virtual Worlds
4) Stimulation of Learning Processes
B
Definition of Shooting Game
C
Limitations of Research Paper
Lack of Sufficient Sources
D Thesis Statement:
There are four critical turning points in the evolution of shooting games: the early
age, the golden age, the declining age, and the modern age.
II Body
A
Shooters in the Early Age
1) Development of Shooter, “Spacewar!”
2) Introduction of Space Invaders
Popularity of Space Invaders
B
Shooters in the Golden Age
1) Development of Shooting Games
a
Development in the Late 70’s
b
Development in the Early 80’s
2) Reception of Shooting Games
a
Shooters in 80’s Japan
Popularity of Several Shooters
b
Shooters in Western Hemisphere
Reception of Japanese Shooters
2
Evolution of Shooting Games
c
C
Era of Console Popularity
i
Increase in Game Development
ii
Surge in Console Releases
Shooters in the Declining Age
1) Decline in General Popularity
a
Difficulty of Current Shooters
b
Improvement in Game Graphics
c
Introduction of Easy Role-Playing-Games
D Shooters in the Modern Age
1) Beginning of Danmaku Shooters
a
Definition of a Danmaku Shooter
b
Appeal of Danmaku Shooters
2) Shooters on Current-generation Consoles
Development of Console Shooters
III Conclusion
A
Shooters in the Near Future
B
Factors for Good Shooters
3
Evolution of Shooting Games
4
The Evolution of Shooting Games
Introduction
Videogames are interesting inventions. They serve many purposes, depending on
who is using them. The most common use, the one that most people assume is the only
purpose of a videogame, is playing a videogame for entertainment purposes. Technically
speaking, however, almost all videogames have been crafted for the purpose. Another, more
practical kind of videogame is the kind that is developed for exercise. Authors of the book,
Serious Games: Games that Educate, Train, and Inform, David Michael and Sande Chen,
state that “a number of serious games now exist that target healthcare and well-being, like
the “exergaming game, Yourself!Fitness, and the biodfeedback game, The Wild Divine
Project, which combines breathing techniques and meditation with biofeedback. These new
genres are recent developments.” (2005). Another field that videogames have ventured into
is actual simulation of a “virtual world”. Faculty members of the School of Education at the
University of Wisconsin, Madison, and founding members of the Games and Professional
Practice Simulations (GAPPS) research group at the Academic Advanced Distributed Learning
Co-Lab, David Williamson Shaffer, Kurt R. Squire, Richard Halverson, and James P. Gee said,
“These videogames “let players think, talk, and act in new ways…. Players come to inhabit
roles that are otherwise inaccessible to them.” (2005). Finally, another new use of
videogames has also been found – as learning tools. A BBC article stated,
Teenagers learn more from video games than they do books, a survey suggests”
(“Video games”, 2000). Psychologist, Dr. David Lewis, who carried out the
aforementioned survey, said, “These [video games] would be especially helpful to
teenagers turned off by formal classroom teaching requiring a lot of reading….Not
only that, but they become far more involved with videogames and enjoy the
Evolution of Shooting Games
5
learning experience to a much greater extent than when studying similar topics from
books, or even video tapes. (“Video games ‘valid’”, 2000).
Similarly, Professor Angela McFarlane, the director of TEEM (Teachers Evaluating
Educational Material), said that “adventure, quest and simulation type games have a lot of
benefit … [they] create a context in which children can develop important skills.” (“Video
games ‘stimulate’”, 2002). Clearly, the many uses of videogames already make them an
intriguing topic.
This paper, contrary to what the reader may assume, aims to track the progress of
the history of the oldest genre of videogames – the shooting game – also referred to as a
shooter, an STG, and less commonly, a shmup. For the purposes of this paper, we shall
define a “shooting game” as a videogame wherein the player has limited control over their
character’s/ship’s movement. While there are both 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional
shooting games, the latter is rarely, if at all, discussed; therefore, we will be restricting the
discussion to the former kind only, where the player is forced to move onward as a scrolling
background pushes the player forward. However, he/she may still move up, down, left, right,
or diagonally, but only within the confines of the game’s screen while firing at enemies
which commonly appear to hamper the player’s efforts to finish the game, commonly with a
“boss” character, often a very large enemy with high resistance to player attacks and
possessing a large amount of firepower, which the player must overcome to move onto the
next level.
Because the shooting game is a topic very rarely touched upon by most educational
institutions, the amount of easily available print resources is almost little to none. Coupled
with the fact that shooting games in themselves are a niche genre, with very few companies
currently developing games within the genre, credible and comprehensive sources are often
very hard to come by. Therefore, many of the sources of this research paper will be internet
articles, both by dedicated fans, and by working professionals. Another main source of this
Evolution of Shooting Games
6
research paper will be a French documentary centered on the history of shooting games
itself. This is not to say, however, that the information presented here is baseless conjecture,
but that the reader should take these facts regarding the sources into consideration as he
reads this paper.
The history of shooting games has been a long and convoluted one; however, there
are four very prominent “eras”. Within the history of shooting games, there are four main
phases of evolution in the history of shooting games: the early age, the golden age, the
declining age, and the modern age.
Shooters in the Early Age
During the early 1960’s, the first shooting game was developed by students of MIT,
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Wayne Witanen, J. Martin Graetz, and Steve
Russell. Spacewar! was revealed to the public during 1961, and, while proving to be a
successful hit during the institute’s annual open house, the game’s coverage was highly
limited because the game ran on a machine that cost roughly 120,000 Dollars. (Hunter,
2000).
Later in Japan, Space Invaders was developed. This proved to be a big hit.
“Wherever you went… you could find arcade cabinets”, said Saku Tanaka, a director, in
Ruchet and Dupire’s documentary. (Ruchet, & Dupire, 2006). Rolling Uchizawa, one of the
journalists of Famitsu, a Japanese videogame magazine, also said in the documentary, “We
[Uchizawa and his friends] would see businessmen sitting down with a pile of coins… at a
table [playing] for hours shooting aliens with their small ship.” (Ruchet, & Dupire, 2006).
Space Invaders was in fact, so popular, that it caused 100 Yen coin shortages in Japan.
Some juvenile crimes also occurred, such as a girl stealing 5000 Dollars from her parents
and gangs robbing money from stores, just so that the girl and other delinquents would be
able to play Space Invaders. (Behlau, n.d.)
Shooters in the Golden Age
Evolution of Shooting Games
7
Serious development on shooting games began during the late 1970’s. Taito, a game
development company, unleashed Space Invaders in the arcades and the first blockbuster
game swept the world. In the Western hemisphere, “Atari demonstrates that Taito isn't the
only company that can make popular shooting games by releasing Asteroids into the
arcades.… Atari also [enabled] players to enter their initials along with a qualifying score,”
according to Ted Stahl’s online articles on the matter. (Stahl, 2007)
One decade later, during the 1980’s, Williams, a Western game developer, redefined
the shooter with Defender. In an article about the history of shooting games, the game was
described as “fast… [with] graphics [that] are extraordinary.” (Stahl, 2007). The game
constantly used “new gaming concepts like smart bombs and onscreen radar.” Ted Stahl,
the author of the article, Timeline of Video Games: Chronology of the History of Video
Games, said that Defender was “the first title to create a simulated world that existed and
evolved outside of the player's view.”
In a documentary about the history of shooting games, it is mentioned that in the
1980’s, shooting games were the most popular genre of video games and that this was a
time of rapid expansion and heavy development for both arcades and developers alike.
Namco, a game software development company, launched Galaxian, a shooting game,
followed by Galaga, another shooting game, around the 1980’s. The same company, in 1982,
launched Xevious, which had a green background, a silver ship, and a generally broader
palette of colors, rather than the blues, greens and reds of both Galaxian and Galaga.
(Ruchet, & Dupire, 2006).
Of all the games that were developed and released in Japan within the 80’s, the two
salient games that most Japanese players would identify as the games that marked them in
the 80’s are Gradius, developed by Konami, a Japanese game development company, and
R-Type, developed by Irem, another Japanese game developer. There were many main
features of these games. One was the boss designs for each game. Another was the varying
Evolution of Shooting Games
8
level design. Yet another of the features was the radical game mechanics, as well as the
complexity for each game. (Ruchet, & Dupire, 2006).
As mentioned earlier in the paper, in an article about the history of shooting games,
it is mentioned that in 1980, William, released arguably the first horizontal shooting game in
the West, Defender, which was a huge success. Konami and Irem, released highly
successful shooting games: Gradius in the mid 80’s and R-Type in 1987, respectively. While
both games were popular in Japan, they were also highly popular in Western arcades. Later,
more Western developers created shooting games like Katakis, developed by Factor 5, a
game software developer, and published by Rainbow Arts, a videogame publisher, in 1988.
The game, like many others, was successful; enough to merit a “port”, the creation of an
adaptation of the software for other hardware systems, to both the Commodore 64 and
Amiga, both home computer systems. (“Intermediaware – shooting”, n.d.)
During the late 1970’s to the late 1980’s, the development of shooting games began
to speed up from their popularity, thanks to the development of both Space Invaders and
Defender. (Stahl, 2007). Eventually, consoles, machines designed to run videogames from
media such as game cartridges, were created. In a documentary on the history of shooting
games, it is mentioned that during the late 80’s to the early 90’s, many consoles were
released, such as the Nintendo Entertainment System – the NES (also called the Famicom, a
Japanese portmanteau of Family Computer) – the Master System by Sega, and later on, the
Super NES (also known as the Super Famicom) and the Megadrive, by Nintendo and Sega,
respectively. All of these consoles had a very rich catalogue of shooting games, most of
which originated from the arcades and were ported, adapted, for the consoles. On the PCEngine, released by NEC, a Japanese computer manufacturer, even more successful titles
can be found, such as Gunhed, Super Star Soldier, Final Soldier, and Soldier Blade, all
developed by Hudson, a game development company. (Ruchet, & Dupire, 2006).
Evolution of Shooting Games
9
Around this time, in the late 80’s, Sega released the Megadrive, a more powerful
system with many shooting games in its library. This was released earlier than the Super
Nintendo Entertainment System, also called the Super Famicom, a portmanteau of Super
Family Computer, to gain a foothold on the market. (Ruchet, & Dupire, 2006).
While all this was happening, there was a surge of shooting games – a “festival of
shooters”. The system is not being innovated upon anymore, so many shooters are
beginning to look the same, but quality is beginning to improve. Games such as Darius and
Silk Worm are released, along with the continuations of Gradius and R-Type, all of them
becoming very successful. In the late 80’s, Sega releases the Megadrive, a more powerful
system with many shooting games in its library. This was released earlier than the Super
Nintendo Entertainment System, also called the Super Famicom, a portmanteau of Super
Family Computer, to gain a foothold on the market. 5 years later, the Sega Saturn is
released; with and even more powerful graphics engine enabled 2D games to look radically
improved over previous games. In fact, Treasure, a Japanese developer, released Radiant
Silvergun, a game considered by many to be the greatest shooting game ever made, on the
said console. (Stahl, 2007).
Shooters in the Declining Age
Saku Tanaka described the decline of interest in shooting games: “We must say that
dragon quest [sic] [is now the more popular game]. With RPG’s, [there’s] no need to have
good reflexes, anyone is capable to complete the game. Whereas the shooting games are
getting harder and harder, and very few people are capable to see the end of them.” To add
to this problem, “The most talented players are asking for harder and harder shooting
games…. Finally, … shooting games has become a genre reserved only to ‘hardcore
gamers.’” (Ruchet, & Dupire, 2006).
Furthermore, the same consoles that have had shooting games developed for them
were the consoles in which Dragon Quest was played. To add to this, a week after the
Evolution of Shooting Games 10
Saturn’s release, Sony releases its own console – the Playstation. Because of its ease of
programming and capability for 3D, gamers abandon 2D for 3D graphics, in turn, bringing
down the popularity of shooting games in consoles. (Stahl, 2007).
Shooters in the Modern Age
In a documentary on the history of shooting games, it is mentioned that in Japan,
the new shooters that have appeared are called Danmaku shooters, literally meaning a “hail
of bullets” or “bullet curtain”, which is to be taken at face value – the player must dodge a
wall of bullets that fill the screen. Donpachi, a danmaku shooting game developed by Cave,
a multi-faceted company which develops arcade and cellular phone games and designs
fashion accessories, is often credited as the pioneer of danmaku shooters. However, experts
have found that the very first game responsible for starting the “danmaku craze” is Battle
Garegga, another danmaku shooting game developed by Raizing, a game developer, in 1996.
Because of its incredible success, Cave decided to venture into danmaku shooting game
development as well. (Ruchet, & Dupire, 2006).
In Ruchet and Dupire’s documentary, Saku Tanaka explains the reasons behind why
Dodonpachi, the sequel to Cave’s Donpachi, as well as one of the most highly acclaimed
shooters of all time, was such a great shooting game: “When one sees the many projectiles
on screen, one would have the impression that he/she won’t be good enough, but one can
manage to play for quite a long time because the projectiles are relatively slow, which
allows the player to dodge them.” It is further explained that the “hitbox”, the part of the
ship that is vulnerable to attack from the enemy projectiles, is usually much smaller
compared to the rest of the ship. Some shooting games also incorporate smaller “hitboxes”
into the enemy’s bullets, which makes dodging easier. Saku Tanaka adds, “it’s glorious to
think that in spite of all the bullets, in spite of the hell raging furiously around us, we can
survive and fight, that’s the pleasure of playing Dodonpachi [italic mine].” (Ruchet, & Dupire,
2006).
Evolution of Shooting Games 11
Shooting games returned to consoles. While the danmaku shooters remain mostly in
the arcades, other companies begin to take advantage of the 3D capabilities of consoles,
though it is just “a purely visual contribution” because “because most of the time, gameplay
doesn’t change compared to what we find in 2D games.” (Ruchet, & Dupire, 2006).
Despite the fact that shooting games are becoming rarer and rarer on consoles,
“excellent games like the famous R-Type Delta” have been developed for the said consoles.
In fact, it’s Konami himself who [itself that] will knock at Treasure’s door to ask them to
make the 5th episode of Gradius, who [which] will impose itself directly as the best shooter
for the PS2.” Furthermore, Cave and other game development companies such as G-rev
have released “ports” of their arcade games onto consoles - most notably the Playstation 2.
(Ruchet, & Dupire, 2006).
Conclusion
The history of shooting games is complex and convoluted. These videogames have
come a long way, from the early years, being popular in the golden age, and experiencing
turmoil during the declining age. Now, in the modern age, the future of shooting games is
unpredictable. Because of its being a niche genre-type game, the chances of it becoming
popular are very slim. The fact that most console shooting games, coming from developers
such as Cave, known for its very punishing difficulty in shooters, and G-rev, will make the
possibility of shooting games becoming popular rather low. However, in Ruchet and Dupire’s
documentary, Rolling Uchizawa said that, “I’m sure that one day we will see shooters that
will be mega hits, the trends come and go, even if the shooters are outdates [outdated]
today, it will [sic] come back one day.” (Ruchet, & Dupire, 2006).
Finally, after briefly going through the history of shooting games – “shooters” - we
are brought to this question: “What makes a good shooting game?” The criteria that make
up what a good shooting game vary from person to person. In Ruchet and Dupire’s
documentary, Tsuneki Ikeda, head of the arcade development department of Cave, said,
Evolution of Shooting Games 12
“For me it [the game] has to be in the middle of good bullet patterns and freestyle. The
player has to be able to react in real time to an unexpected situation and he needs to also
be able to learn how to get past some [bullets’] passages.” In the same documentary,
Hiroyuki Maruyama, the studio director of G-rev, another shooting game developer, said, “In
a good shooter, you shoot, you kill the enemy and he [it] disappears in a good explosion.
Yes, that’s what’s good; it might seem obvious like that, but that’s what a good shooter is.”
(Ruchet, & Dupire, 2006).
Evolution of Shooting Games 13
References:
Behlau, D. (n.d.). Space invaders - the classic videogame. Retrieved November 25, 2007
from: http://www.spaceinvaders.de/
Einhander_recon.jpg. (n.d.). Retrieved January 15, 2008 from: http://
www.retrogaming.it/psx/einhander.htm
Hunter, W. (2000, September). The history of video games: From “Pong” to “Pac-man”.
Retrieved November 25, 2007 from:
http://www.designboom.com/eng/education/pong.html
Intermediaware – shooting games – absolute blue – shooter history. (n.d.). Retrieved
November 25, 2007 from: http://www.intermediaware.com/index.php?id=123
Michael, D., & Chen, S. (2005, October). Serious games: Games that educate, train, and
inform. Boston: Course Technology.
Mushi-ST3Boss.jpg. (n.d.). Retrieved January 15, 2008 from: http://www.click-stick.com/
Ruchet, S. [Producer], & Dupire, J. [Director]. (n.d.). Japon: Histoire du shooting game.
(http://shmup.canalblog.com/ Trans.). [Documentary]. France: Game One.
Shafffer, D. R., Squire, K. R., Halverson, R., & Gee, J. P. (2005, October). Video games and
the future of learning. Phi Delta Kappa, (87), pp. 105-111.
Stahl, T. (Ed.). (2007, November 19). Timeline of video games: Chronology of the history of
video games. Retrieved November 25, 2007 from:
http://thocp.net/software/games/games.htm
Video games 'stimulate learning'. (2002, March). Retrieved January 22, 2008 from
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/uk_news/education/1879019.stm
Video games 'valid learning tools'. (2000, April). Retrieved January 22, 2008 from
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/uk_news/education/730440.stm
Evolution of Shooting Games 14
Pictures 1 and 2: A Comparison Between a “Traditional” and a “Danmaku” Shooter.
Picture 1 (“Einhander_recon.jpg”, n.d.).
Picture 2 (“Mushi-ST3Boss.jpg”, n.d.).