Hay guys, today I’m going back to my favorite bullet-hell shooters and looking at what made them fun. I’d like to hear what your favorite shooters are and why.

Here’s some of my personal highlights, which I hope to learn from:

Dodonpachi: Explosions and massive enemies everywhere. Extremely energetic art and music style.
Ikaruga: Amazing level design and scoring system that takes advantage of the game mechanics.
Touhou: Pretty bullet patterns from the bosses, and good range of difficulty levels.
Bangai-O HD: Rewards you for flying into very dangerous situations. Let’s YOU spam the bullets too.
Geometry Wars Evolved²: So colorful and chaotic that it takes skill just to see what’s going on.
Jamestown: Supports widescreen and 4 players, unlike most vertical shmups that are ported from the arcade.

In my opinion, Bullet Heaven 1’s best features were:
• Pretty, glowing bullet patterns.
• Quite casual and easy to get into for noobs to the genre.
• Cute art style that’s tied into the EBF games.

Am I right?
Because that’s probably what I’m going to concentrate on for the sequel.