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Not so. The original Project Touhou game, as well as others such as Exceed - Gun Bullet Children had a very small limitation on how many bullets could be on-screen at any one time due to technological and development constraints, but they are considered bullet-hell games because of their playstyle. Given the age of Space Harrier and the visual style it used, it really pushed some technological constraints but was still restricted by the old hardware which resulted in the decreased amount of bullets the game could contain on the screen, but it is still by and large considered a bullet-hell game.
Hmm, you are right, and I do apologise for jumping to such conclusions. I simply get a little... intimidated when developers claim 'the first of [insert new genre]' in their game when the game has such similarities to others made in the past. Then again I also get defensive when people call Borderlands an RPG when it's clearly just an FPS with a loot and levelling mechanic. If those things make an RPG then Call Of Duties multiplayer is also an RPG. Anyways...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoot_%27em_up#Types
If we were to be judging by the wikipedia description, it would mean though that bullet hell games are restricted to only vertical, horizontal or isometric viewpoints, whilst all other shoot'em'ups that involve moving into the screen are considered rail shooters, such as Space Harrier which I mentioned (and yes I will take the blame for calling it a bullet hell game where, after looking up the information, it is not considered to be part of that genre) as well as Starfox 64 as you mentioned.
That being said, whilst a lot of rail shooters are extremely hectic sometimes, like Panzer Dragoon Orta, your trailer does show a significant volume of the amount of enemy fire on the screen at any given time compared to other known games of the genre, which does make calling it a rail shooter feel like understating the purpose of the gameplay. It'd be very narrow-minded of me to say all bullet hell games are restricted to the normal 2 dimensional gameplay of the ones available on the market, and if it is actually possible to promote a new gameplay style for bullet hell games then I'm all for it, so by all means.
Also, I'm sure you probably know of this already, but there is also a fanmade Touhou game that operates in 3D (the earliest conception I can find of it is in 2011, so perhaps they got the idea from your game)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKuhVmLGwHM
Anyways, I apologise again for my rudeness earlier, and I wish you all the best with future games, and hopefully this style of game can become more popular and allow larger variety of gameplay styles to those of us who like bullet hell games. (Also I'll be buying your game now, 'cos I'm intruiged)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3GPIL98T4E
And Phantasma's Super Nova attack in Armored Core:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTeuYtq3FZk
Although in the latter's case, it's mostly just for show, there are only 3 shots from the burst that have any chance of hitting you.
--- Genres are an interesting part of medium though. And in a technical sense it doesn't take too much for someone to make the first of anything if they simply are able to successfully cobble together two cool concepts on their own and make them gel well. I could be wrong about this, but I think touhou iamp was the first fighting bullet hell game, and in contrast Acceleration of Suguri was the first bullet hell fighting game. And yes, I did make the determination to distinguish the two, which is at it's best subjective. But I do it on a technical basis: AoS is a modified version of the original engine, which was purely a horizontal bullet hell game, to be more in the format of a one-on-one duel system. Where as IaMP takes design after classical fighters like Street Fighter, but then throws in bullet hell attacks to separate it from other fighting games.
So in conclusion, is Bullet Life *really* the first game of it's kind? I haven't checked every single website on the internet, so maybe I will never know absolutely, but I am maximally certain that it is. But, I'd like to reiterate, IaMP wasn't the first fighting game, and it wasn't the first bullet hell game either, and in theory any qualified fighting game developer could have easily made a fighting game that executed it better, but they didn't. And as a result TSA gets to claim to have created something new, a genre that is a mixture of two other hard-core genres.
And, yes, that fan-game is totally inspired by Bullet Life. I know this because at the time BL was originally released, there was this Japanese youtuber/niconicodouga uploader that I would frequently leave comments on, and I gave him a copy of the game, and he made a video on it. He wasn't disappointed "It's like Touhou but 3D" he would say. Shortly after he uploaded it, I imagine that someone in Japan heard that and then thought, Well if the feel can be captured in 3D, why not make a 3D TH fangame. He has since removed his youtube channel. But I'm still convinced that the 3DTH is inspired by Bullet Life. The real telling part isn't that they are the same genre of game, but rather that they even went as far as to take my white cube wire-frame straight from Bullet Life. I'm not mad, I'm just saying: Dead Give-away.
I do find the vagueness of genres nowadays something of a problem when it comes to describing games, especially with the hundreds of new game styles indie developers have managed to create. If we were to go by Steam's genre listings, the majority of games would fall under 'action adventure' simply because there is no other genre to describe their playstyle. how does one describe Minecraft without the genre of 'Crafting Survival', you'd have to say 'Action Adventure' because it contains both of those things, but it's a very different kind of game to say... Grand Theft Auto 5, which is labelled with exactly the same 'Action Adventure' genre. Likewise there's no easy way to label something like Binding Of Isaac. It's not quite a schmup, but it's not quite anything else either, people call it a Roguelike, but a Roguelike can be anything, as we've seen flying sims, rpgs, platformers, fps and all manner of games get labelled as Roguelike and they're all very different from one another in every regard apart from the permadeath.
With that being said, it often bothers me when I see a new bullet-hell game released on Steam and reviews as well as forum posts regard it as a schmup. Whilst bullet-hell games are sort of a sub-genre of schmups, they're different enough to be set apart. One would not call Afterburner a bullet-hell game, but one would also not call Deathsmiles a schmup, because that generates expectations for either a lot or not a lot of bullets on the screen and the definite challenge either of them provides. Then again, having too many genres can be very detrimental and intimidating to more casual or new gamers and make finding what kind of game they want more difficult (and the same can be said for having too few genres like we have right now), so it's a bit of a double-edged knife.
Bullet Life actually also has a 1-v-1 vs shmump in it. by the way.
Regardless, in the 6 years of research that I have done on it, Bullet Life is the first game to intentionally take the design of Bullet Hell genre into 3D presentation.
I have to agree with both posters on this (only bothered to read the wiki). What one is and what one actually declares sometimes matters. And I was thinking the same thing, Space Harrier would be, in my opinion, the first 3D bullet hell shooter. Regardless how many bullets were on screen at the time, was quite possibly the limitation of the hardware or the term simply was not coined back then.
Then again who would call 1942 a top down bullet hell shooter by today's standards or any standards? It was just a vertical scrolling top down shooter or something along those lines at least. (Terms all blend in my head at this point... ^^! ) But Space Harrier did not claim it and if no others did, than this would be it. Unless the popular consensus is different. And no I would of never considered Star Fox 64, a good game in it's own right, a bullet hell shooter.
Playing this game's first stage at least does remind me of Space Harrier regardless though.
Fun fact, as the wiki states, Space Harrier was suppose to feature a full fledged jet fighter opposed to a human. How one makes up less polygons I have no idea. The fact that the character can fly or my favorite, run, I would assume would make it more to implement than a simple flying jet fighter.
Also had this been a hell shooter... a true to form one that we all know the term to mean... would it of done as good and been so well received? Some times game makers only make a game that the majority can play. (And although some do push the boundaries, it is rare that they will try to drown their potential customers so to speak.) If something is too hard or unforgiving, others wont play it. Having 50 or so bullets on the screen at once may of been too much for the general public. (Much less the current hardware.) Heck I am hard pressed to get too far in what it does have to begin with, yet am fairly decent with hell shooters for the most part. ^^!