shoot 'em up

shoot 'em upnoun

• 1

  broadcastingfilmliteratureA piece of media which depicts considerable gunplay.

  • My wife won't watch this movie; it's a shoot ’em up.
  • The arcaders have it easy. All they need to do is drop a quarter into a machine to find out how good the latest shoot 'em up game really is. But for the home computer owner, it's another story.
• 2

  broadcastingfilmliteratureA piece of media which depicts considerable gunplay.

  • Bullet Hell: DoDonPachi exemplifies the term better than any other shoot 'em up, providing a snowstorm of fiery pixels to both simultaneously dodge and eliminate.
  • In a shoot'em up, the player usually looks from above on her player character (most commonly in the form of a spaceship). The spaceship is constantly moving forward, but since the perspective is relatively fixed on it, the traversed space is actually moving from top to bottom or left to right, and the player has no ability to influence that movement.