What makes a good shoot em up? It is easy to focus on unique quirks and tricks from each title and start justifying from there. It is not without reason, at least in Cave case, since these ideas are usually well thought out to be praised on their own. But those don’t make a good shooting game. Not fundamentally.
Mushihimesama strips away from everything. Three lives, three bombs, five levels. Unexplainable numbers that keep appearing in the genre again and again. Does the number three come so far back from the very first arcades? Why five levels instead of the eight, like the number of bits, of Mario? Arcane conditions we will never understand that, regardless, seem indispensable to perform the ritual with success.
Numbers are essential in games, they are the unavoidable abstraction that keeps coming back again and again, a whole world, its looks, its movements, can be explained in numbers. Bullet hells is one of the genres where numbers matter the most. These numbers, the important ones, cannot be seen. The old school math, the one where to measure distance you don’t bring up a formula but make a throw and see how right you were. But in reverse. You see hundreds, thousands of dots on the screen and draw the mathematical graph in your mind to pray for your safe position. Because only a god can move your body safely in between hell. It is the reverse of ball sports, there are too many objectives to keep an eye on and your goal is to keep away from them. It is one versus the world at dodgeball.
Perhaps this is why Mushihimesama uses insects, instead of the most common military/mecha premises. Somehow primitive, seen every day in everyone's life since humanity exists. Somehow inexplicably alien. Undeniably instinctual. The bugs coordinate in their hivemind to act as one hell machine, and your study of their behavior begins moving your body without thinking, without looking at yourself anymore, just knowing that you are doing it right. With that same instinct, I know Mushihimesama is a great shooting game, and the reasons are still unclear.
What is found between the bullets is not death, but life.
Mushihimesama strips away from everything. Three lives, three bombs, five levels. Unexplainable numbers that keep appearing in the genre again and again. Does the number three come so far back from the very first arcades? Why five levels instead of the eight, like the number of bits, of Mario? Arcane conditions we will never understand that, regardless, seem indispensable to perform the ritual with success.
Numbers are essential in games, they are the unavoidable abstraction that keeps coming back again and again, a whole world, its looks, its movements, can be explained in numbers. Bullet hells is one of the genres where numbers matter the most. These numbers, the important ones, cannot be seen. The old school math, the one where to measure distance you don’t bring up a formula but make a throw and see how right you were. But in reverse. You see hundreds, thousands of dots on the screen and draw the mathematical graph in your mind to pray for your safe position. Because only a god can move your body safely in between hell. It is the reverse of ball sports, there are too many objectives to keep an eye on and your goal is to keep away from them. It is one versus the world at dodgeball.
Perhaps this is why Mushihimesama uses insects, instead of the most common military/mecha premises. Somehow primitive, seen every day in everyone's life since humanity exists. Somehow inexplicably alien. Undeniably instinctual. The bugs coordinate in their hivemind to act as one hell machine, and your study of their behavior begins moving your body without thinking, without looking at yourself anymore, just knowing that you are doing it right. With that same instinct, I know Mushihimesama is a great shooting game, and the reasons are still unclear.
What is found between the bullets is not death, but life.
2 Comments
:palm_down_hand:
Kipik
9 months ago