Definitions for "Shmup"
Short for shoot-‘em-up. Semi-official classification for video games in which a large amount of shooting is involved, and the gameplay is executed in a 2-dimensional style (though the graphical objects onscreen can be 3-D), and controlled strictly from a third-person perspective. Most shmups automatically scroll the background in a certain direction to create the impression of movement as the player progresses, and involve taking control of a plane or spacecraft (as such they are sometimes called “Space Shooters”), as well as collecting various power-ups, but there are many, many exceptions to this. Though some use the term “shooter” by itself to refer to shmups (in Japan, in fact, shmups are usually called “Shooting Games”), this sometimes gets them confused with first-person shooters or light gun shooters. Different gamers have vastly different hard-and-fast definitions of what a “shmup” technically is, but the above covers most of the essentials. Players and/or fans of the genre are often called shmuppers or shmup-o's.
a side scrolling (or vertical scrolling) shooter like Ikaruga