05-02-2012, 04:45 PM | #1 |
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Touhou
What is Touhou? "The Touhou Project (東方Project) is a series of 2D (with 3D background) vertically-scrolling danmaku shooting games made by Team Shanghai Alice, with three fighting game spinoffs co-produced with Twilight Frontier." - Touhou Wiki Touhou means different things to different people. To some fans, it's all about the original shoot 'em up (or shmup) video games for Windows. For others, Touhou is all about the fan community. The fan community produces hundreds of high-quality images daily, hundreds of comics and videos monthly, and is believed by some to be the most prolific fandom in the history of the world. But whatever it is that brings you to Touhou, fans are usually united about one thing: and that's their fandom for particular characters. With over thirty major characters to choose from and dozens more supporting characters, everyone has a favorite (or two ... or ten ) and fans enjoy conversing with one another about all manner of things -- from power levels and roles fulfilled within the land of Gensokyo to speculation about friendships and even romances. |
05-02-2012, 04:46 PM | #2 |
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Main Series Video Games The Windows games are what started it all. Touhou games are notorious for their incredible difficulty: But in part because of this insane difficulty level and in part because of the wonderfully beautiful patterns the bullets make and the music ZUN has composed for each stage, the Touhou games found their way into the hearts of tens of thousands of pioneering fans who trailblazed the way for the hundreds of thousands who would follow after them. There are eight official games for PC which you can most easily play. These are: Touhou 6 - Embodiment of Scarlet Devil Touhou 7 - Perfect Cherry Blossom Touhou 8 - Imperishable Night Touhou 9 - Phantasmagoria of Flower View Touhou 10 - Mountain of Faith Touhou 11 - Subterranean Animism Touhou 12 - UFO ~ Undefined Fantastic Object Touhou 13 - Ten Desires Here are some sample video links to people playing the video games so that you can see what sorts of games the main series Touhou games are: Touhou 8 - Imperishable Night - Stage 1 - a good introductory video that showcases various mechanics Touhou 6 - Embodiment of Scarlet Devil - Extra Stage boss - Flandre Scarlet - one of the hardest boss fights in the series Touhou 10 - Mountain of Faith - Reimu B 1cc Hard - for a demonstration of making the impossible seem trivially easy, click here Touhou 10 - Mountain of Faith - Stage 4 - a personal favorite stage, attempted by someone a little less skilled but still good |
05-02-2012, 04:47 PM | #3 |
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Side Games There are also numerous side games, both official and unofficial. Among the official side games is a popular line of fighters co-produced with Twilight Frontier. There are three titles in the series. They are: Touhou 7.5 - Immaterial and Missing Power Touhou 10.5 - Scarlet Weather Rhapsody Touhou 12.3 - Hisoutensoku The numbering system reflects where the fighters occur chronologically between the games. (So, for example, Immaterial and Missing Power takes place before Touhou 8, Imperishable Night, but after Touhou 7, Perfect Cherry Blossom.) Here are some sample video links to people playing the fighters so that you can see what sorts of games they are: Touhou 12.3 - Hisoutensoku - Utsuho vs. Remilia (P1 vs. P2) Tenshi as final boss in Touhou 10.5 - Scarlet Weather Rhapsody (Story Mode) Touhou 7.5 - Immaterial and Missing Power - Patchouli vs. Remilia (P1 vs. P2) There are other side games too, including unofficial ones made by the fans. Some of the more famous ones include ... Super Marisa Land (sample gameplay) Touhou Puppet Play - the original Touhoumon Touhoumon World Link (developer's blog) (sample gameplay) |
05-02-2012, 04:47 PM | #4 |
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Fanart and the Fandom Fanart is central to the Touhou fandom. Perhaps the most prolific fandom in the history of the world, there are literally millions of unique Touhou fanart images, thousands of Touhou fan comics and doujinshi, hundreds of professional-grade remixes of the in-game music, and hundreds of fan videos. There's even a fan-made anime, for God's sake. Images: Pixiv's Touhou results - warning! NSFW! 18+ only! Has worksafe contents too, but yeah. Danbooru's Touhou page - warning! NSFW! 18+ only! Has worksafe content too, but yeah. Videos: Bad Apple! shadow art - perhaps the most famous Touhou fan video of all time; best viewed once you have an appreciation for who all the girls are Touhou fan anime #1 - Memories of Phantasm Touhou fan anime #2 - A Summer Day's Dream - Episode 1 Touhou fan anime music video - starring Maribel and Yukari Community: -will edit suggestions into this list accordingly- Touhou Wiki - a fan-made, fan-operated English-language wiki for all things Touhou Pooshlmer - one of the oldest English-language imageboard channels for Touhou Gensokyo.org - a large-ish fansite with an active webforum and everything Last edited by Talon87; 05-02-2012 at 04:49 PM. |
05-08-2012, 12:49 PM | #5 |
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Oh. My. Dear. God.
Touhou. And here I was, being the curious newbie as I clicked on the Video Game topic and I then I find TOUHOU. I mean, I've only ever played Touhou 6, but I'm addicted to all of the fan made stuff you can find on YouTube. Specifically I find myself watching tons of stuff but Innocent Key. Their animations are hilarious. Of course I like some stuff that isn't Innocent Key. Here's a couple of my faves! The Homework Never Ends -- Innocent Key Touhou PV -- Priere |
05-08-2012, 04:36 PM | #6 |
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Starting with Immaterial and Missing Power because suck. It's pretty fun, and once you get the hang of it, it's intuitive. The danmaku games are a lot harder to get the hang of, even though they're probably easier for most people to play.
Maybe this is indicative of the fact that I played Street Fighter more than Space Invaders? Super Smash Bros (the original AND melee AND brawl) more than call of duty or metal gear? Or maybe I'm reading too much into this? Anyway woo touhou
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05-08-2012, 05:11 PM | #7 | |||
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Alright! Posts!
Quote:
If you like Touhou fan videos, I'm sure you and birtha will have loads to discuss. Quote:
Quote:
(Note: not spoilers! Just rather long. Spoiler tagging to condense.) Spoiler: show
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05-09-2012, 11:20 AM | #8 | |
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Quote:
Well now that I know who bbb is (Sneezey pointed them out to me earlier), then... alright. o___o;
Though my opinion is that the fans really can insert pretty much whatever they want to into their videos because so much of Touhou isn't explained in the games. Quite literally almost every aspect of the game is open to interpretation via the fans. d: |
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05-09-2012, 05:25 PM | #9 |
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Just watched the Innocent Key video- my friends are now looking at me funny. ._.
I've never actually played any of the fighters- only PCB. Thinking I should get one of the fighters now, though. But, yeah, I guess I'm kinda weird in that the danmaku kinda clicks for me- I'm not saying I find it easy or anything, though- Still haven't been able to get past Alice on Hard Difficulty. Stinking Cheeeeeen steals all my continues. ;_; |
05-09-2012, 06:00 PM | #10 |
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Tip (that I find works for me): when you want to clear Stage n on Difficulty x, instead first start a new game and play on Difficulty x+1, get to the stage in question, and then after you've managed to do that and tried your hand at beating it that way, win or lose, go back to your old difficulty setting and try a new game again. So for example ...
Want to clear: Stage 4 on Hard What to do first: start a new game on Lunatic What to do second: make way to Stage 4 on Lunatic and get as far as you can What to do third: start a new game on Hard What to do fourth: make way to Stage 4 on Hard I liken this to the effect of wearing 20-lb weights around your ankles and wrists all day and then taking them off before going for a jog. Suddenly you feel light as a feather and everything's so much easier. Whether you think this tip is smart or stupid is up to you. Some would say that if you're going to get to Stage 4 on Lunatic in the first place then you might as well shoot for beating the game on Lunatic instead of Hard. But I find that this strategy genuinely works well for me.
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05-15-2012, 05:21 PM | #11 |
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Talon, I know you speak/read Japanese, so how are you supposed to pronounce Touhou? Is it TOOHOO or TOWHOW or a combination of the two Touhous?
Because both of them sound silly.
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05-15-2012, 05:40 PM | #12 |
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Toe as in "your big toe."
Hoe as in "rake and hoe." Touhou.
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05-15-2012, 06:53 PM | #13 |
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Hurray for it doesn't sound silly!
Thank you, Talon.
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06-03-2012, 01:51 PM | #14 |
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Reisaisai 9 started over a week ago, which means new Touhou fangames and stuff. My usual source isn't listing everything that released like it used to, so I don't know what all released, nor have I put too awful much effort into looking into them. However, I do know that two amazing fangames released.
Takkoman Here's the PV for it. It's basically a Megaman clone, but is way more fast paced and crazy than Megamari. This game kicks so much ass. The music, atmosphere, and gameplay are all great. It's most definitely one of the best Touhou fangames out there, and I would strongly recommend any Touhou goers to try it out. Gensou Shoujo Taisen part 2 Here's the PV for it. This is the second part of four SRW Touhou games. The first part got an English patch while I wasn't looking, so I need to check that out sometime. This title is probably more for someone who has been exposed to Touhou alot, because otherwise, it's just a bland RPG. I personally think it's amazing, with great attack animations, and is quite more difficult than SRW itself. Also, with a new Reitaisai comes a new Memories of Phantasm clip. Also, after however many years, Maikaze finally has enough money to fork out a second episode, or atleast a PV for it. Last edited by big bad birtha; 06-03-2012 at 02:31 PM. |
06-05-2012, 03:04 PM | #15 |
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What's Gensou Soujo Taisen? From your discription, it sounds like some kind of Touhou-based RPG. Could you elaborate a little more?
(Avoiding google because I'll likely just get a bunch of japanese by doing that.) |
06-05-2012, 04:11 PM | #16 |
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A Touhou-ified fan version of this series of video games. Here's the website for the latest game due out for PS3 this winter.
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06-05-2012, 05:39 PM | #17 |
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Ah, so basically a TRPG crossover of the many mecha franchises?
That does sound pretty cool. Thanks, btw. ^_^ |
06-06-2012, 03:53 PM | #18 |
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It has no mecha in it, if that's what you got out of the description. Gensou Shoujo Taisen just copies the game play from Super Robot Wars. SRW's game play is similar to Fire Emblem, but with less focus on strategy, and more focus on flashy attack animations and music. Gensou Shoujo Taisen does remedy the lack of strategy by greatly increasing the difficulty. Lacky enemies are high in number and do quite a bit of damage, MP and HP recovery is scarce, and bosses often have three stages or more you have to beat them in (to replicate a Touhou boss).
Also, the stories in Gensou Shoujo Taisen take off the story from Touhou 6-10. So in the first part, it takes the events from Embodiment of the Scarlet Devil (6). In the second, it's a mix of Perfect Cherry Blossom (7) and Mountain of Faith (10) (I don't know if it makes sense or not). Even if throwing Mountain of Faith with Perfect Cherry Blossom doesn't make sense, the battles with Sanae, Suwako, and Kanako were amazing, and I'm kinda glad to get Sanae this early, since I was afraid she'd never join due to being one of the final bosses. |
06-07-2012, 11:18 AM | #19 |
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Having familiarized myself with how the SRW series works (And accidentally picking up Battle Masteries along the way 0_o), and then seeing bbb's post, I decided it was high time I actually watched the trailer.
<3<3<3<3<3<3<3 The only reason I haven't downloaded it yet is because something I saw mentioned in the comments confused me- Is it a sequal? Or, well, you know, a precursor. 'Cause I'd kinda like to play that first. ...One other question: What exactly is Reisaitai? |
06-07-2012, 12:05 PM | #20 |
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Reitaisai in the context of Touhou refers to the Touhou fandom's annual convention held in May. This was the ninth annual festival, hence why you may see a lot 例大祭9 tags if you download fan comics (doujinshi) or go to websites where such things are discussed or shared.
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06-08-2012, 10:39 AM | #21 |
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Ah, thanks! ^_^
Another quick question: Is Touhou supposed to be written 'とう ほう' or 'とー ほー'? |
06-08-2012, 10:51 AM | #22 |
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There shouldn't be any spaces and it's とうほう if you're spelling it out. You're going to find it much more commonly written in kanji as 東方. See: Wikipedia. See also: WWWJDIC. (Type in とうほう and read what should be the first entry.)
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06-11-2012, 01:52 PM | #23 |
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I seem to of discovered another skill of mine- being unable to find this thread. 0_o
What Touhou fangames would you guys recommend? I have New Super Marisa Land, and I'm working on getting Ladybrith of Touhou to work, but that's it. EDIT: Looking around some Touhou communities, I found something interesting- Touhou fandom members seem to have the exact same opinion of ZUN as we have of Kuno. :O
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Last edited by Kindrindra; 06-11-2012 at 03:05 PM. |
06-20-2012, 11:33 AM | #24 |
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Here's a question for those of you playing Touhou on Apple devices: how would you say the games look to you? I recently saw a friend playing Ten Desires (Touhou 13) on his MacBook Pro and it looked gorgeous. So gorgeous, in fact, that I thought I was witnessing the third generation of post-PC98 Touhou games (the first generation being 6 thru 9, the second being 10 thru 12, and this being the dawn of the third generation). But when I installed the game last night myself on this 2007-handbuilt Windows XP computer of mine, what I was met with was a graphical experience no different, no different, from that I saw in Touhou 10 or 11.
So my question to you, Apple computer Touhou lovers, is whether your visual experience looks 100% identical to this or not. And when I say 100, I do mean 100. Do the bullets and spells look the same in your game as they do in this video down to the pixel level? Or would you say, "There's no comparing the visual experience of playing a Touhou game for yourself with watching a YouTube video of it"? 'Cause I'm wondering if Touhou games just look damn prettier on MacBook screens than on PC monitors. If maybe it has something to do with the screen of the computer itself. Or if it has to do with the difference in the graphics cards. Or what. 'Cause what I saw at my friend's house looked nothing like this. This is like a shade, a whisper of the beauty I saw on his screen. Unless you think Kuno is an alcoholic bum -- but he's our alcoholic bum -- who can't draw for shit yet is one of the greatest amateur composers of modern times, I don't think you hold the same opinion of Kuno that most of the Touhou fandom holds of ZUN.
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06-21-2012, 10:19 AM | #25 |
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Fixed.
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