Batsugun is a 1993 Toaplan vertical shooter, the last game the company completed before its dissolution. Its combo-based scoring system and the gradual introduction of denser bullet patterns turned it, in retrospect, into a direct bridge to "bullet hell": much of the team that made it founded Cave shortly after and applied those ideas in DonPachi. That's why it holds a special place in the genre's history: it's not yet an impossible-to-dodge bullet-hell shooter, but you can already feel the DNA of what was coming. It's played today as a key piece for understanding where the Cave style came from.
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