There are also 2 fighting games in the Touhou series, th7.5 Immaterial and Missing Power (東方萃夢想 Tōhō Suimusō) and th10.5 Scarlet Weather Rhapsody (東方緋想天 Tōhō Hisōten) , but thats another topic. Touhou is one of the more popular series of its genre and is very unique in a couple of ways.Gensokyo is located in the Far East (ostensibly Japan, given that many of the characters have Japanese names, and Hieda no Akyu makes various comments about Japanese settings in Perfect Memento). Long ago, it was a desolate place haunted by youkai who preyed on lost wanderers in the area. Soon exorcists were sent into the area to resolve the youkai problem, and they eventually settled in the area as a check on the youkai. As human civilization advanced elsewhere, the power of youkai began to diminish, and they chose to seal Gensokyo away from the outside world as a haven for themselves.
As a result of the seal, the isolated community developed its own civilization. As opposed to the outside world, magical and spiritual qualities prevailed over science, and while youkai and humans coexist, they still fight with each other. The only known gateway from the outside world into Gensokyo is the Hakurei Shrine, on the border of Gensokyo. The seal has weakened, however, due to the urban sprawl in the outside world, and more humans are able to wander into Gensokyo from the outside.
-Source Wikipedia(Touhou)
Lets go over a little bit of history first.
The first couple of Touhou games (th01-05) was first developed for the PC-9801 system and not much is known about them. Although they are available for play in Windows through the use of a PC-98 emulator, the characters and story of these games are relatively unknown to most Touhou fans, including me. It is only when Touhou was being created for Windows did the Western fanbase for Touhou grew; starting with th06 Embodiment of Scarlet Devil (東方紅魔郷 Tōhō Kōmakyō).
One thing that makes it stick out from other danmaku is the HUGE variety of characters it has. You normally dont expect detailed characters and story from a danmaku game but Touhou says otherwise. In each game there are probably around 3 or more new characters introduced which keeps the Touhou character list constantly growing. Each character also has her own unique personality that each individual character in Touhou has a sub fanbase of their own.
Touhou characters from th01 Highly Responsive to Prayers to th08 Imperishable Night
Notice I said the word her and not they. This is probably another reason for Touhou's uniqueness in that almost all the characters in the game are female except for Rinnosuke and Youmu's grandfather. Of course, there are probably other males out there in Gensokyo considering theres a human village in there, but none of them are important enough to be noted in the games.
Of all the characters in the game, the main ones are Reimu Hakurei, the shine maiden, and Marisa Kirisame, the witch. They are both playable on all the Windows games (except th9.5 Shoot the Bullet) and are the most popular characters in the series.
Now that Im done explaining the characters, Ill start discussing the games.
I know that most of you have played a danmaku/shmup game at one point in your life. You probably remember it as the game where you play as a Blackhawk helicopter and you dodge the bullets from tanks/planes/turrets while collecting power-ups in the field to increase your firepower. Sounds familiar right? Well thats basically Touhou in a nutshell, but Touhou is very different from that in terms of gameplay.
To quote a random comment on a Touhou gameplay video:
Its like dodging rain, but instead of water its rape.
Touhou is HARD and I cannot emphasize the word hard enough. There are four difficulty levels in Touhou: Easy, Normal, Hard, and Lunatic. Never in my life has Hard accurately described the level of difficulty in a game. If Hard is not enough to make you pull out hair from your head, theres also Lunatic. The bullets in these modes are so compressed that in order to survive without the use of a bomb, you must have a complete accuracy.
Basically, you go through a stage shooting enemies in the way and dodging their attacks. Once you get to the end of a stage, you face the stage boss. The stage boss generally shoots down densely packed bullets at you and each stage boss has her own style. Each boss has multiple bars of HP and bosses further on have more HP bars. When depleting a complete bar, the boss goes through "Spell Card" mode and uses a more unique and harder bullet pattern against you. The attacks get more complicated as the bars deplete in a last ditch effort to defeat you and you are awarded bonuses if you can beat the spell card without loosing a life/using a bomb.
The presence of a huge amount of bullets in the screen might look overwhelming but they could be avoided with a good enough accuracy. The thing is, in Touhou your hitbox is only 5x5 pixels (which could be seen when using "Slow" mode (hold shift + direction)) while your character sprite is larger. That means bullets could be technically touching your character but it will not kill unless the bullet hitbox touches your character's 5x5 hitbox.
Difficulty-wise, it looks like the difficulty significantly increases each game. Embodiment of Scarlet Devil Lunatic mode is less difficult when compared to the hell that is Mountain of Faith Lunatic mode. Watching Youtube gameplay videos is different from playing the game. If it looks hard when watching it on youtube, its probably alot harder when playing the game yourself.
Gameplay videos:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=RC1fKsO62Qo
http://youtube.com/watch?v=Ac03lFINrtA
http://youtube.com/watch?v=oAzQBKzH5nY
http://youtube.com/watch?v=aK1LD_YH4rk
http://youtube.com/watch?v=hHmzO2RI1fs
Edit: I just noticed that the sound quality in some of the videos is horrible (had comp on mute when posting). Ill edit this with better videos later
The music in the games are pretty good. I feel that the background music goes very well with the mood of the current stage. In a whole, while leaving out the difficulty, playing Touhou is a very enjoyable experience and you guys would probably have fun playing it too whether or not your a fan of the danmaku genre. In fact, it was Touhou that made me love the danmaku genre and you might start liking the genre also once you give Touhou a try.
Other than the games, Touhou also has many doujin works associated with it whether they're both official or fan work. There are also different music tracks based on Touhou music from artists such as Cool&Create and IOSYS.
If your interested in getting the games then either email me or talk to me at school. Ill go over the individual games in depth at my other posts. Ill probably start with the fighting games (Immaterial and Missing power / Scarlet Weather Rhapsody).
For more Touhou info go to Touhou Wiki.
1 comment:
the flying games look a bit generic. the spell card thing seems unique, but gameplay is still more generic than anything. I will look into it tho. seems interesting but not too interested in anything TOO hard. the last thing anyone needs it the stress of beating a hard garm on the hardest difficuly and the stress of school.
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