Your intro to the Touhou universe

[purplemo]

Okay, I put this here because this is such a prominent otakudom fixture, even if it is mostly games and manga. I think otakudom stuff mainly belongs here. But move as needed, mod squad.

A basic Touhou resources thread, to rope you guys into THE otaku phenomenon in Japan for the last 10+ years. So what is Touhou? It's a series of danmaku (bullet hell) games known mostly for its HUGE cast of characters, GORGEOUS bullet patterns, and AMAZING music, all done by ONE guy!! This universe has spawned literally THOUSANDS of doujin, HUNDREDS of other doujin games made by other people starring characters and/or themes, a entire set of Touhou only cons in Japan, and an internet culture that is just way too obsessed (anyone who's been to the "safer" chans has run across Touhou). That's because each Touhou character has unique personality quirks that play off others very well while each having deep (and sometimes depressing) backgrounds and personalities. Oh, and it's ALL girls. There are only two ever referenced male characters, and only one who has ever had "official" artwork.

Anyways, there are currently 12 Touhou games, 5 for the PC-98 (need emulator) and 7 for windows. You don't really need to know Japanese to play, and there are patches for about half of them and complete text translations for almost all the Windows games. All the Touhou integers are danmaku games, 7.5 is a 2D fighting game (FUN AS HELL!!), 9.5 is a danmaku "Pokemon Snap" game, and 10.5 (still unreleased) is the one I am salivating over. It's another 2D game (MOKOU AND REISEN BETTER BE IN THAT ONE DAMMIT!!!)

Anyways, here's some sites.

http://www.pooshlmer.com/touhouwiki/...hp/Touhou_Wiki
Everything you need to know about games, world, characters, translations, etc.

http://www.gensokyo.org/
Forum+gallery. But the main draw is their gigantic library of scanlated doujins (I doubt this breaks forum rules)

http://www.freewebs.com/aortic/index.htm
Another source for mostly the same scanlations. Plus other works . . .

http://www.doujinstyle.com/index.php
The place to get doujin games. The fact that they have a whole complete Touhou section should tell you something about Touhou's fame.

Even if you don't like the danmaku games, I HIGHLY recommend giving Immaterial and Missing Power (the fighting game) a go. It's really really fun. And at least try the danmaku games if for no other reason than to see the gorgeous patterns and listen to the wonderful music. There's a reason why there are torrents out there with 30+ gigs of Touhou music (I've seen a few with 100+ gigs) . . . Hell, youtube some of the games (especially IaMP).

Oh, and if you can't tell, my avi is Suika, the butt attacker is Marisa, and the victim is Remilia. All from Touhou.

The Touhou games

1.0 Highly Responsive to Prayers
2.0 The Story of Eastern Wonderland
3.0 Phantasmagoria of Dim.Dream
4.0 Lotus Land Story
5.0 Mystic Square
6.0 The Embodiment of Scarlet Devil (the 1st Windows game)
7.0 Perfect Cherry Blossom
7.5 Immaterial and Missing Power (the first fighting game)
8.0 Imperishable Night
9.0 Phantasmagoria of Flower View
9.5 Shoot the Bullet (Pokemon Snap meets bullet hell)
10.0 Mountain of Faith
10.5 Scarlet Weather Rhapsody (only demo available as of now)

The doujin games of the Touhou universe

HUNDREDS

Best known

Patchcon! Defend the Library
Endless Alice/Marisa
Super Marisa Land/World (guess what is the a copy of)
MegaMari
Touhou Soccer
M.U.G.E.N (this is a doujin for EVERYTHING is the world. You'll understand when you see it . . .)

Here's some pics of the more famous Gensokyo (Touhou universe) residents.

Reimu Hakurei, one of the two main characters in the Touhou universe.

Marisa Kirisame, the other main character, showing off her signature overkill move, the Master Spark.

Cirno, the idiot. She's the second biggest butt of all jokes.

Hong Meirin (aka China). The biggest butt of all jokes. (If I were a cynic, I'd say there's a bit of racism with this)

Youmu Konpaku. Famous only because of her airhead glutton mistress Yuyuko.

Yukari Yakumo (left) and Yuyuko Saigyouji (one of the saddest pasts in Touhou). Yukari is the maintainer of Gensokyo's border, and she sucks at it.

Alice Margatroid with dolls Shanghai and Hourai (I think it's Hourai). The "doll otaku." She's commonly abused in doujin.

The "enemies" of Imperishable Night. From top left clockwise: Fujiwara no Mokou (immortal human), Eirin Yagokoro (immortal Lunarian pharmacist, Reisen Udongein Inaba (Lunar Rabbit known for her "suppositories" (yeah that's right)), Tewi Inaba (leader of the Earth rabbits, known for lying and good luck), Kaguya Houraisan (THE Kaguya-hime of legend)

Sakuya Izayoi and Remilia Scarlet. The sprite characters are (left top first) , Chen, Ran Yakumo, Hong Meirin, Patchouli Knowledge, Sakuya Izayoi, Remilia Scarlet, Suika Ibuki, Yukari Yakumo, Yuyuko Saigyouji, Youmu Konpaku, Alice Margatroid, Reimu Hakurei, Marisa Kirisame.

For the hell of it. If someone could find a way to print off real Tarot cards of this and give this to me, you'll be my newest best friend.

[Fireaxe]

I've been playing Mountain of Faith for a couple of weeks now, and I'm still an awful player :p. Playing in lunatic mode is definitely something, too bad I don't last long enough to see what the bosses patterns look like haha.
Those games are really really fun to play. I couldn't figure out how to make the first 5 games work on windows though, I've got some kind of emulator but I have no clue how to use it. Anyways, the latest releases are more than enough for me.
And shoot The Bullet is incredibly hard, I've managed to beat 2 stages but that's it.... >.<

[purplemo]

Originally Posted by Fireaxe

I've been playing Mountain of Faith for a couple of weeks now, and I'm still an awful player :p. Playing in lunatic mode is definitely something, too bad I don't last long enough to see what the bosses patterns look like haha.
Those games are really really fun to play. I couldn't figure out how to make the first 5 games work on windows though, I've got some kind of emulator but I have no clue how to use it. Anyways, the latest releases are more than enough for me.
And shoot The Bullet is incredibly hard, I've managed to beat 2 stages but that's it.... >.<

Try the doujinsoft site for 1-5.

As for lunatic mode, I don't even try that. Extra mode is hard enough (especially in Imperishable Night). You should see that insane thing (link below). I can barely pass Keine, and have never made it to Mokou. Ah, harken back to the days when games were actually hard, unlike now . . .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Nb5Ohbt1Sg

Mokou's patterns are quite pretty.

[Fireaxe]

K I'm gonna try that.

and wow, this is just insane lol. I wish as were only half as good ahah. Okay dumb question here, but what are those spellcards? Do they have anything to do with the "I-win-button" (the secondary button) that saved my ass so many times? Oh and another one, what are those blue powerups for? Building up power to use your "i-win-button"? My japanese still isn't that good so yeah, sometimes I'm getting a bit lost.

[purplemo]

Originally Posted by Fireaxe

K I'm gonna try that.

and wow, this is just insane lol. I wish as were only half as good ahah. Okay dumb question here, but what are those spellcards? Do they have anything to do with the "I-win-button" (the secondary button) that saved my ass so many times? Oh and another one, what are those blue powerups for? Building up power to use your "i-win-button"? My japanese still isn't that good so yeah, sometimes I'm getting a bit lost.

Check out the Touhou wiki. The last three games I played were IaMP, IN, and PoFV. The blue things I think you're talking about are the ones that come out when the enemy dies. In IN at least it adds to point counter. Meet the denominator and you get one extra life. The blue orbs add to the time counter. Meet the denominator and instead of one hour only 30 minutes pass (again, in IN).

And spellcards would be the "bombs." Think of them as extra lives. If you trigger them right before you get hit you'll be invincible for a while. Also, you can trigger it when you get hit within like 1/10th of a second. It'll use two cards, but it'll be stronger, and basically saved you from losing a life.

[Nomadicwriter]

ooh this looks great, I'm going to have to look into it a bit more!

[Deus ex Digital Boy]

Shit, well I've known about Touhou for a while and learned about it's scope through scouring the boorus, and now I just know I'm going to be vicerally sucked in by this bastardly beast of a franchise. However I'm safe for the time being because I have currently 255 MB of hard drive space and no way to clear any up XD However I am on the verge of creating a Remillia Scarlet image folder.

[purplemo]

Originally Posted by Deus ex Digital Boy

Shit, well I've known about Touhou for a while and learned about it's scope through scouring the boorus, and now I just know I'm going to be vicerally sucked in by this bastardly beast of a franchise. However I'm safe for the time being because I have currently 255 MB of hard drive space and no way to clear any up XD However I am on the verge of creating a Remillia Scarlet image folder.

I actually wanted to use an animated Remi avi, but AP doesn't allow animated avis so I settled for a drunk (i.e normal) Suika instead.

I think I've started a couple of Touhou threads before to get interest, and mentioned it in a few other threads (like good anime material or doujin games). Here's a IaMP thread I did (started this before realizing no one here knew about Touhou). There's a couple vids of chibi-Remi fighting. She's a bitch on lunatic mode.

Immaterial and Missing Power (Touhou)

[Dontais]

Thanks alot for these purplemo, I seen the last few times you mentioned these but never clicked in to really check them. They look amazing and I'm definly going to try thank thanks for sharing!

[purplemo]

Originally Posted by Deus ex Digital Boy

Shit, well I've known about Touhou for a while and learned about it's scope through scouring the boorus, and now I just know I'm going to be vicerally sucked in by this bastardly beast of a franchise. However I'm safe for the time being because I have currently 255 MB of hard drive space and no way to clear any up XD However I am on the verge of creating a Remillia Scarlet image folder.

You know, I wouldn't be too surprised to find that you could play the danmaku games off of a disc. There might be a bit of a slowdown on some of the crazier spellcards though if your comp/disc drive isn't up to snuff.

Originally Posted by Dontais

Thanks alot for these purplemo, I seen the last few times you mentioned these but never clicked in to really check them. They look amazing and I'm definly going to try thank thanks for sharing!

Yay!! Another mod lost to the black hole that is Touhou!! That makes three I know of.