As we are all finally learning, with moral clarity comes absolute terror. The enemy is massive, the enemy is powerful, the enemy is cruel without a hint of mercy, remorse, or even camaraderie among their own. As we've seen time and again,  there is no crime they can't pin on those they've killed, those they've taken. This isn't a war story of complex motives, shifting values, and regrettable decisions. The simplicity is defined by horror they perpetrate to remind us that they  can  perpetrate on any one of us, anywhere. Now, as someone said describing a time much like our own, is the time of monsters . But we know monsters, we've been consuming media about fighting them our entire lives, which, for basically everyone below a certain age, naturally includes electronic games. Look, I don't want to be  that  nerd saying "video games prepared us for this moment," but I  am  the kind of nerd who will say we've been telling stories about times like t...

It's been just over two years since I first talked about SHUMPs as part of " Pew-Pew Zoom ," a series of posts on the history of narrative in video games set in space. (At some point I'll have enough experience to cover 4X and other strategic space game genres as well.) Since then, I've found myself bit by the SHMUP bug and put a lot more time not only into playing these games, but learning more about their history and the culture surrounding them. So this week, I thought we'd do a quick update on the fastest growing genre in my game collection and the discoveries I've made along the way. To start with, while my first SHMUP post was almost endearingly retro-brained (the most recent game I mentioned will turn 30 this year) and that, even though I've acquired many newer games, most of my actual play falls in the era I originally covered: the late 80s and early 90s. My genre associations were largely with the 16-bit era of consoles, so most of my foray...

A few weeks ago, I delved into the narrative elements of early space-based aracade games , but I still want to keep exploring the frontiers of what space games have to offer. "Pew-Pew Zoom" will be closer looks at different aspects of space games, and I felt nowhere would be a better starting point than the humble (yet often very, very strange) SHMUP. So dust off your controllers, stack up those quarters, and GET READY! To start, we should probably define the rather odd, but fun to say, acronym "SHMUP." While it's a shortening of the age-old term "Shoot 'em Up" (which, prior to the advent of electronic gaming, primarily referred to films and TV shows, particularly Westerns and war stories), the term is generally referred to a specific kind of shooting game: one where the player guides a vehicle, such as a spaceship, fighter plane, blimp, or hummingbird , at a set speed across scrolling levels in two dimensions, avoiding enemies and their weaponry,...