Happy Birthday PS2... and I Hate the Term "Shmup"

A quickie post here. Apparently the PS2 was launched in the U.S. 10 years ago this week and in honor of that b'day I want to mention a PS2 post I saw on the excellent blog Retrogaming with Racketboy - "the PS2 Shmups Library" - mostly to bookmark it here for my own purposes because I am a big shooter fan and would like to try out some of the games mentioned in the post one of these days. I've never played a PS2 shooter.

One other thing. I used it because it is in the title of the blog post, but I absolutely hate the term "shmup". I see it fairly often online these days so apparently it is fairly common - at least among the younger crowd I'm guessing, but I'm 41 so I'll just stick with the good ol' generic "shooter". And if I want to get more specific to avoid confusion I'll just add a word - for example, "River Raid on the Atari is a great vertical shooter, but if you like horizontal shooters you gotta check out Chopper Command" - see what I did there kids?

I would love this t-shirt except for that ridiculous word across the top


I'm a little more comfortable with the unabbreviated version of the word - "shoot 'em up" - which clearly has entirely too many syllables to bother saying in toto, but even that term feels kind of stupid to me and essentially adds nothing. At first I thought this was just an age thing - old dog and new tricks and all that, but I just learned the term "bullet hell" not too long ago and I'm fine with that one. So I concluded that I am only resistant to those new video game terms that just sound fucking stupid - like shmup.

Hmm - I didn't realize I had a rant in me tonight. Must be sleepy. Don't even get me started on the idiotic term "pwned"...