History Main / BeamSpam

* The ''Literature/HonorHarrington'' universe has an interesting mix. Material advances have made bomb-pumped lasers more effective at breaching the shielding. So a MacrossMissileMassacre becomes a beam spam of nuclear bomb-pumped lasers. One battle has ~65,000 of these missiles ''in a single salvo'', with several more salvoes of the same size. Each of them had, on average, from 6 to 8 lasing rods.

* In ''VideoGame/TheBindingOfIsaac'', an overpowered combination of Brimstone and Chocolate Milk allows you to spam the Brimstone beam [[IncrediblyLamePun free of charge]] by tapping a fire button.

[[caption-width-right:300:[[WebOriginal/NostalgiaCritic Taste the rainbow, motherfucker!]]]]

[[caption-width-right:300:[[WebOriginal/NostalgiaCritic Taste the rainbow, Mothafucka!]]]]

[[caption-width-right:300:Taste the rainbow, [[ThisIsForEmphasisBitch bitch]].]]

** One of Vegeta's signature attacks in ''Anime/DragonBallZ'', especially early on.
*** What do you mean "early on". He did this in every arc. Goku even recognized immediately it as Vegeta's signature attack when Buu copied it.

** In the 3rd season, Nanoha even {{Beam Spam}}s her ''WaveMotionGun'' attack.

*** The same universe gives us the ''very'' aptly named Gundam Destroy. It has ''four'' {{Wave Motion Cannon}}s (three [[ChestBlaster in its chest]] and one in its ''face''), two twin-barrelled high-energy beam cannons, twenty thermal-plasma composite cannons, ten beam cannons on its fingers (which detach to become {{Attack Drone}}s), 24 missile launchers, and four [[GatlingGood 75mm automatic chainguns]].

* Most weapons in ''VideoGame/Outpost2'' are relatively slow firing (about one shot per second if you're lucky) and don't get any substantial upgrades to their rate of fire, so the Tiger heavy tank compensates this by mounting two of whatever weapon it's given. Then however you have the Laser and Microwave, which ''can'' get a very noticeable speed increase on top of the fastest rate of fire in the game. So if you put either one of them on a Tiger... Yeah.

* Most weapons in {{Outpost2}} are relatively slow firing (about one shot per second if you're lucky) and don't get any substantial upgrades to their rate of fire, so the Tiger heavy tank compensates this by mounting two of whatever weapon it's given. Then however you have the Laser and Microwave, which ''can'' get a very noticeable speed increase on top of the fastest rate of fire in the game. So if you put either one of them on a Tiger... Yeah.

* The Wall of Flesh in ''{{Terraria}}'' spams lasers when he gets to low health.

* In the ''[[DotHack .hack]]'' movie ''[[DotHackGUGames G.U.]] Trilogy'', [[BigBad Ovan]] and Haseo face off against one another. After they gain their [[GodMode Avatar powers]], Ovan unleashes a massive wave of red beams, countered by a [[WaveMotionGun massive]] blue beam from Haseo. They collide making a massive purple [[StuffBlowingUp explosion]].

* ''Manga/{{Bleach}}'' example: The bow Uryuu got after regaining his power has the consecutive rate of fire (whatever that means) of 1200.
** That's how many bolts he can let off before taking a break, if they're going with standard usage. If that's per minute, the boy has a higher rate of fire (and this being Bleach, more destructive power per projectile and better accuracy) than your average anti-infantry heavy machine gun.
*** It's per second - neither standard military use. The boy is frightening, and fires 12 times faster than a helicopter minigun. An anti - tank helicopter minigun. Makes sense, as he usually sweeps thousands of hollow out of the sky at once.
*** Actually, it's even worse than that. It's 1200 shots ''at once''. As in, it's like firing 1200 bows at the exact same time.

** Also the kidou spell ''Hyapporankan'' or "Hundred-Step Rail Parch." Hisagi uses it against Findor Calius and Hitsugaya in a movie.

This is common in ship-to-ship space combat, but you'll also frequently find this trope in shows with HermeticMagic or HumongousMecha. When BeamSpam is magical in origin, you'll almost always see the barrage emanating from the sides and back of the character before {{Roboteching}} towards the target(s).

A subtrope of SpamAttack. Compare MoreDakka (bullets), BulletHell (a genre of game based on avoiding bullets), and MacrossMissileMassacre (missiles). Contrast WaveMotionGun, KamehameHadoken and BlastingTime.

* The Battlecruiser in {{Starcraft 2}} outputs a constant stream of laser bolts. Attacking with a dozen takes the beam spam [[UpToEleven to a whole new level]].

** One of Vegeta's signature attacks, especially early on.

* ''{{Bokurano}}'' has some ridiculous beam-spam in the closing chapters, though it does help that the HumongousMecha Zearth can fire beams from ''any'' point of its body (remember that thing that [[spoiler:Buu from ''Dragonball'']] did mentioned earlier in this article? [[http://img223.imageshack.us/img223/9856/beamspam.jpg It's kinda like that]]).

** Though Magic Missile isn't that hot, it's older brother Chain Missile moves the upper limit to ten missiles. Combine that with several castings of Delay Spell (which delays the activation of a spell until a later turn), and you can spend several rounds before firing off sixty or seventy never-miss missiles who then proceed to chase after secondary targets. It's a complete waste of time and higher level spell slots, but damn if it doesn't look cool.

** Novacat? That thing only has 3 lasers. The Blackhawk (aka Nova) has 12, and, its big brother the Supernova only has half as many, but they are [[BiggerIsBetter bigger]].

* ''{{PN 03}}'''s Falcon Energy Drive combines this with a SpinAttack, firing four rotating lasers. Some bosses, especially the FinalBoss after it TurnsRed, have InstantKill beam spam attacks.

* Anyone who's read DavidDrake's ''HammersSlammers'' series is quite familiar with Beam Spam. One of the staple weapons in the novels is the vehicle-mounted tribarrel, a weapon with three rotating barrels that shoots energy blasts (called "bolts") so fast that the bolts leaving the weapon appear to be a solid line - not individual bolts. The weapons scale up, too - his tanks in the series have both a tribarrel ''and'' a 20cm "main gun" that can literally cook mountainsides with one shot. Too bad the weapons, being energy, have no penetrative qualities...
** Not true. Very little can stand up to the 200MM main guns on the tanks, and even 50MM tank killer guns can punch holes in iridium tank armor.
*** It's not that the powergun bolts can't penetrate what they hit; the problem is that a powergun bolt will dump all of its energy into the ''first'' thing that it hits -- even if it's a leaf a foot away from your intended target.
** The tribarrel is based on a cross between the real-life MG42 machine gun and the Gatling gun, both of which have beam-spam-class rates of fire.

* The ''StarWars'' ExpandedUniverse makes it quite clear that if they want to, the bigger Star Destroyers are quite capable of this even without using all their weaponry. The ''Executor''-class (the ones like Vader's ship) is specifically noted as seem to throw up "sheets" or "walls" of energy. This is often used for [[ApocalypseHow melting the face off a planet]].