Touhou?

[SeijinKage13]

I don't know if anyone has a slight clue about it, but does anyone know about the touhou series? After going to Manganexxt, I was perplexed about what it was (since some people were playing SWR). If anyone can possibly explain, that would be nice. If a similar thread exists, then I'm sorry.
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As a Deviant, I work alone on my projects.
Soon to be completed: 'unnamed' series coming this August to my DA.

[Poochy.EXE]

As a Touhou fan myself, I'm more than happy to explain.

Touhou Project is a series of primarily top-down scrolling shooting games. If you don't know what that means, think Ikaruga, Gradius, Mushihime-sama, etc. There are also a couple spin-off games: Immaterial and Missing Power (Touhou 7.5) and Scarlet Weather Rhapsody (Touhou 10.5) are fighting games featuring both playable characters and bosses from the shooters, while Shoot the Bullet (Touhou 9.5) is a shooter variant which has you playing as Aya Shameimaru taking pictures of previous games' bosses and their bullet patterns while trying to dodge their bullets. Touhou 9 is also slightly different, in that it's a head-to-head shooter; destroying stuff on your side of the screen will send bullets and attacks to your opponent's side.

The series was started over a decade ago by Amusement Makers, an unofficial student group at Tokyo Denki University, who made doujin games for the PC-98. (Thus, if you want to play Touhou 1-5, you'll need a PC-98 emulator.) After the original makers split up (due to graduation, I believe), one of the creators, known as ZUN, decided to continue the project on Windows. Since Touhou 6, the games have been made almost entirely by ZUN alone, who does the art, coding, stage and character design, and the music. He still makes a new installment every year, usually released at Comiket every August. ZUN also allows anybody to make derivative works, as long as they're doujin works (i.e. not commercially made), so there's a ton of fanart and fan-made music remixes out there. (ZUN doesn't seem to care about people copying his work in general; there's never any DRM / copy protection on his work. But I still recommend that you buy the actual game CDs if you can; they're only $15.)

The shooters themselves have a general pattern: Each game has 6 stages in the normal mode, with a boss at the end of each level. Beating them all without using a continue unlocks the Extra Stage, which is essentially a separate mode that has a single, extremely hard stage with the toughest boss in the game. The normal mode always has 4 difficulties: Easy, Normal, Hard, and Lunatic. Extra Stage only has the Extra difficulty, with the exception of Perfect Cherry Blossom (Touhou 7) which had two: Extra and Phantasm.

In each game, you start with 3 lives (though in some games, you can start with more if you take a score penalty) and being hit by anything will kill you in one shot, unless you bomb to counter the hit right as you're hit. In earlier games, you have a limited stock of bombs that's reset every time you die. In the newer games, bombing costs you some shot power instead. Controls are always hold Z to shoot, press X to bomb, and hold Shift to Focus. Focus bunches up your own shots, makes you move slower, and makes your hitbox visible as a little dot on your character. Only bullets that touch the position of that dot count as a hit; if a bullet comes close but doesn't touch that dot, you don't die, and you get a small bonus for grazing the bullet.

For beginners, I recommend starting with Touhou 8: Imperishable Night, as it's by far the easiest of the series. Touhou 7: Perfect Cherry Blossom is also a good one to start on; its Easy Mode isn't too much harder than Imperishable Night's, and it has a great soundtrack. Plus once you become good at the games, PCB also has the most fun Extra Stage, in my opinion.
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[Wolf]

Oh god, another DRM mention from Poochy in less than 24 hours. (ha!)

Ahem... As being somewhat indirectly addicted to Touhou from Poochy, I can give my thoughts on it being an ordinary person (or not so ordinary?). Basically, I love these games due to the fact that they're different from the usual games that we have. Recently, most games are about eyecandy, explosions, sound effects, graphics, and graphics (and I love explosions myself). However, the Touhou games focus so much on the gameplay that it's basically the only series that had me on the edge of my chair and on the tip of my toes.

Trying to get Phantasmagoria of Flower View (TH9), I accidentally got Shoot the Bullet as my first Touhou game. I remember trying it out early in the morning before heading out to college and the only thing I could say was "HOLY SHIT THIS IS AWESOME!" even though I had no idea what was I doing.

I then moved on to Touhou 9. All I did was take it to college with atleast one controller and people played and loved it. The PVP is so intense!

After that, I moved to the mainstream games. Each game is so fresh and lively and what the hell am I talking about now? It's just so fluent and well designed. The music is flawless and the story is enjoyable. Many cannot grasp the true form of it's awesomeness and do not understand. I know, I've seen some.

Then come the two fighting games, per mentioned by Poochy. I first went with 7.5. I'm not good at fighting games, but this one uses a different formula that anyone (almost) can enjoy, but it's still more pleasant for those who are knowledgeable in fighting games. A month later I went with the trial of SWR and it was like a fighting game shooting pieces of awesome every 5 seconds (to not say something innapropiate). They're pretty much compared as IaMP is to Melee, as SWR is to Brawl. This comes from the increase in awesomeness and exxagerated attacks. Think of it as every Spell Card being constant Final Smashes. Not to mention hitting opponents so hard across the screen that feels like you're gonna die Smash style. And let's not forget FLYING.

[Shakai]

I currently only have imperishable night, and I find it to be quite fun to play. The patterns of the bullets give me shivers because, first off.. OMG THOSE CAN ALL KILL ME IN ONE HIT. and second off ... IT'S SO PRETTY.


I like Touhou. It's a challenging game, and a call back to the old days of arcades and popping in that extra quarter for another round.
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The time is come. Bid farewell to your bloodstained past.
Forsake the darkness you once embraced, or the light will find no hold.
Vanquish the dark knight! You and he are one no more!

[Mei Qiao]

I got Imperishable Night back in October and I kinda, uh, got addicted. All because of my buddy Sabby. IN is so friggin' fun. So I got the rest of the non-PC-98 games.

Unfortunately, I'm not very good at them. XD I get my keister whooped on Normal in IN's fourth level... and yet I still try to play on Lunatic on occasion.
I--I still feel proud of myself for atleast getting past Perfect Cherry Blossom's first level alive on Lunatic...


I wish the graphics in Scarlet Weather Rhapsody would stop being glitched on my computer though. ;_;
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"Life is too busy to try and stop someone from having a conversation with a fire hydrant." -Dr. Phineas Waldolf Steel
Doctor Steel loves you!

[RollEXE]

Yay! Touhou!

It's been a long time since I touched Touhou, mainly due to the fact that I'm holidaying in my native country right now, and I can't bring my desktop computer over, can I? ^_^

When I get back I plan to finally try to play Subterranean Animism. And Imperishable Night. So far I have only played Embodiment of Scarlet Devil and Perfect cherry Blossom. Apart from that, I've played a bit of Scarlet Weather Rhapsody.

Touhou can be quite addicting. Especially Cirno! ^_^
But, it sure is hard on lunatic. DX

[Fragman.EXE]

I ought to look more thoroughly through the boards. I can't believe I've missed this one.

Yeah, Touhou's really fun, but it's a little sad that more than half the people which my friend has coaxed into playing play the fighters rather than the shmups.

For shmups, I'm of average skill. Can beat PCB on Normal, and for the other games I can go a fair amount, often dying out by Stage 5/6.

...But I STILL haven't completely 1CC'd SA on Normal, usually dying to Satori or the first part of Stage 5, and now UFO's due for release in the next few months. Ah, well, gotta keep trying...

Oh, and the music. You can never forget about the music. Best game music I've heard ever, and several remixes floating around make it even better.