English

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Alternative forms

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Pronunciation

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Noun

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shoot 'em up (plural shoot 'em ups)

  1. (idiomatic, film, television, literature, video games) A piece of media which depicts considerable gunplay.
    My wife won't watch this movie; it's a shoot ’em up.
    • 1983 August, Popular Mechanics, volume 160, number 2, page 88:
      The arcaders have it easy. All they need to do is drop a quarter into a machine to find out how good the latest shoot 'em up game really is. But for the home computer owner, it's another story.
    • 1989, Duncan Macdonald, R-Type (video game review) in Your Sinclair issue 37, January 1989
      An unmissable shoot 'em up.

Synonyms

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  • (video game genre): shmup

Derived terms

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See also

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