Mushihimesama

Mushihimesama (2004), Japanese for Bug Princess, is a tough vertical shooting game where you steer a flying beetle to shoot foes and avoid a barrage of enemy fire. Play is all about observation and movement: learning the pattern of incoming bullets to find small pockets of safety while keeping your shots trained on the multitude of enemies. It stands out as an extreme challenge of evasion and resilience, developed by the pioneers of the notorious Bullet Hell subgenre.

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You play Reco, a princess on a mission to cure her village from a disease with the help of her beetle friend Kiniro. You move up the screen while enemies shoot hundreds of purple bullets. You can only fire straight up, which at first seems impossible, but you soon learn to dodge bullets in patterns that strafe your firepower across the path of enemies. It’s a hard-learned process, but gradually you anticipate where you need to be at every moment and begin to see results.

As you progress, you encounter boss fights that ramp up the challenge even more, switching up patterns as they go and taking lots of hits to kill. You can also collect bombs to drop on enemies, power up your guns with enhancements to damage and spread, and even team up with smaller beetles who form around you and provide extra firepower.

The result is an, at times, comically frantic shooter where pinpoint, precise movement is the key to success. Its difficulty makes it all the more rewarding when you finally master each stage and conquer the challenge.

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Our examiner, Jake Kendall, first checked Mushihimesama 3 weeks ago. It was re-examined by Jo Robertson and updated 3 weeks ago.