Video Game Verbacide

An open letter to all the Half Life, Counter Strike and Halo players:
It has come to my attention that the word "Shooter" has been hijacked by you people.

The word "shooter" once referred to thumb blistering, wrist breaking games where you maneuvered around an environment shooting everything that moves. At first, these games scrolled vertically or horizontally through said environments, although plenty noteworthy shooters took place on a single screen. Geometry Wars and Space Invaders come to mind for good, single screen shooters.

Shooters hit the 3D world, and I'm not just talking about using 3D graphics for presentation purposes. Arguably, shooters have been 3D since Tempest(1980.) There are some great 3D shooters that don't have any rails or tubes like Tempest, Star Fox, Panzer Dragoon, Ace Combat or a lot of other great 3D shooters.

The term that these great games have been reduced to is "Shmup." Some poor truncation of "Shoot 'em  up." Come on, FPS people. Get your own darn term for your game. What the heck is wrong with "FPS" in the first place? Let us poor beleaguered shooter fans at least keep our term. Peace, through options, lasers and ripple shot.

New to the games that were once called shooters? Read Roger Post's articles up on Shoot the Core.