Touhou

I shall start the first topic soully about Touhou. I looked around and see some big fans on this forums, while others could care less about the Indie franchise.

My favorite Touhou game is 10.5, I swear you can't put this down... and it's been over a year for me. My favorite Touhou fangame is Wandering souls (which was made in RPG maker VX, very impressive platformer)

This is mostly a call to see who else in the forums likes Touhou (or dislikes it) so yeah... there you go.

Can't say I'm a fan but I did like that one title, Perfect Cherry Blossom, I think it was 6.5 but I could be wrong.

Perfect Cherry Blossom was 7, but who's counting?

That's a lot of people's favorite, it's pretty much the Ocarina of Time of the series. Which isn't a surprised because it represents a good classic Bullet Hell.

Actually I think IN is the big fave for most people. It's regarded as the easiest by many (which is a good thing in this case cuz many think the series is super hard...not that it is but most people who play it aren't really experienced with shmups so they are complete noobs, and while Touhou isn't as hard as a cave shmup or whatever, it definitely isn't easy mode in general)...and the pros like it cuz it has spellcard practice mode, something challenging which no other touhou game has done to date. It's almost like shoot the bullet and a touhou game in one only where the shoot the bullet part is still a straight up touhou game instead of spinoff.

Personally, EoSD and PCB are prob my faves too. EoSD is mine for gameplay, but the sound quality and music fidelity is just not there, and PCB is not only as good as any of the newer ones in that department, but quite possibly has the best tracklist in the series IMO. 

I personally became a Touhou fan about 4 years ago now I think? I didn't keep count and my chronological memory is awful. Basically I became a Touhou fan when SA was new, and the UFO Demo was just about to come out. I personally don't, and never have watched anime, read manga, or anything like that. Nor have I played a visual novel.

I discovered what Touhou was cuz I was really upset with how EASY games were becomming lately, so I went on a "PLAY EVERY HARD GAME EVER" binge, and started off with I wanna be the guy and I wanna be the fangame, then I searched more, and found Mushihimesama-futari on youtube, where Id iscovered the term "bullet hell", so then I searched bullet-hell, and since I can't afford an arcade, nor live near one, I focused on bullet hells for PC...what came up? Touhou.

I am, and never was by any means a "halo-boy", or "cod-fan" (though I do like fps games too!), but when I heard Touhou was some series with hundreds of girls and not one man ever to appear in a game (Rinnosuke never appeared in one of the official games, don't mention him), I was like "this sounds stupid"....But I fancy myself as open minded, and decided to try it anyway, starting with EoSD. I loved it, then I played PCB, I loved that too. While playing, enjoying, and discussing these games with other fans of the series, I became exposed to anime culture even though I still didn't watch anime. Touhou isn't an anime but it is obviously deeply close to anime culture. So I had to ask the community "What does doujin mean? What does loli mean? What does moe mean? What is Bishounen? What is Tsundere?", etc, etc. The community never made me feel like a dumbass, and they helped me understand with patience...

Now.. I love Visual novels, I'm addicted to moe, I routinely search for ways to import hyperdimension neptunia models into other games like skyrim, but I still don't watch anime or read manga...nor do I play nukige btw. But I basically learned what doujin was before "indie" became a thing in gaming, and for that I feel like Touhou is a part of my identity. Even though I dont' really play the base games very much at all anymore.

Speaking of which, despite all that, the Touhou games, as fine as they are, just don't have a lasting value over many other shmup games.. I mean they aren't worse by any means, but they don't stand out over cave games, or crimzon clover, stella vanity, eXceed, etc, etc. They are just kinda along with them. And if you love games like me and aren't addicted to shmups only, it's hard to really care about the games with so much passion for long (in of themselves)...Eventually I tried the FANGAMES for touhou, starting with labyrinth of touhou (and oh boy did I start with the right game)... To this date, it is my fave game of all time. Genius of sappheiros is a close second. These two games blow the SOCKS off every other rpg game I ever played for rpg fans like me who actually DO care about the battle system and difficulty over the story. I understand, and respect some people think story is more important to them, but it is not more important period, it's just a matter of taste, and fact is, for those who like a complex/deep/difficult battle system, the touhou fangames are effing top-tier for sure, well beyond how the shmups (as legit as they are) fare against THEIR counterparts.

I could go on and on and on. but it's 3:30am here, and I start work in 3.5 hours. doh.

a question: where is actually the offical way to get the touhou games? all i can find is a piratebay torrent xD

There sold as hard copies at conventions... held in Japan.

The only actual touhou game officially released in america was the iPhone one, and I heard that sucked.

so the only way to get it besides booking a flight to japan is really the torrent?

ok then i can feel sligtly less guilty ;)

To ease your guilt a little more, several times in interviews with ZUN a subject about countries outside of Japan pirating Touhou games comes up.

I thought this one is interesting if you have the time: http://en.touhouwiki.net/wiki/Summary_Record_of_a_Chat_Between_ZUN_and_a_Korean_Touhou_Fan_at_Comiket76

BOOM. I've been using this site for years to DL Touhou games~ I'll go into it more but I just LOVE Mountain of Faith~

http://www.vocaloidotaku.net/index.php?/topic/201-touhou-game-downloads/

I get mine by asking someone in Japan to buy them for me during Comiket then ship em over. It's not as expensive as it sounds. normally I can get like 4 games for like 50 bucks, canadian.