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 Shootersâ€), 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 Gamesâ€), 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.