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About
Touhou Project (東方Project, or Project Shrine Maiden) is a video game series developed by Team Shanghai Alice (a 1-man team, that man being ZUN) since 1996. The series' first 5 games were released on PC-98 but were not very popular due to reasons (one being that the first game was not even a shmup). Starting from Embodiment of Scarlet Devil (2002), the series began acquiring popularity. Indeed, you may have not played Touhou, but you should at least know it for its excellent music! Anyways, this is not the place to speak of music here, so this thread is mainly going to be about the games (main series and spinoffs).
The games are usually known for their music, but also for their difficulty - in fact, some people have even developed an Ultra patch, designed to make the games more difficult!
Story
The Touhou series take place in Gensokyo (Land of Illusions), with generally speaking 2 populations: the humans and the youkai. The youkai represent multiple races: the vampires, tengu, oni, kappa, fairies.. One special thing about them, is that they all look like (little girls) when they are in fact (very) old, compared to the humans which have a short lifespan.
Gensokyo is surrounded by the Great Hakurei Barrier, which is basically the boundary between the fictional world and the outside world. This means that random people from the outside world cannot enter Gensokyo. However under certain circumstances some protagonists/antagonists have managed to enter Gensokyo. Usually if you didn't have anything to defend yourself with, you'd end up eaten by the local youkai.
In Touhou, most humans live in the Human Village (Ningen no Sato), which is considered as a safe place to live for humans. Both youkai and humans visit the village for business, etc.
The Games
Most of the Touhou games are 2D, vertically scrolling shooting games created by ZUN. There are also fighting game spinoffs which are co-produced with Twilight Frontier.
Currently, there are a total of 24 games, organized in 4 eras:
Retro Era (1996-1998)
The Retro Era is characterized by its games being played on the PC-98. They also do not have unique gameplay mechanics (that trend started at the Classic era).
- Highly Responsive to Prayers (1996)
- The Story of Eastern Wonderland (1997)
- Phantasmagoria of Dimensional Dream (1997)
- Lotus Land Story (1998)
- Mystic Square (1998)
Classic Era (2002-2005)
The Classic Era is characterized by its games no longer being played on the PC-98, but on Windows instead. Starting from now, each game will now have an unique gameplay mechanic, besidess EoSD.
You can also now see the HP bar of your enemy at the top of the screen.
- Embodiment of Scarlet Devil (2002)
- Perfect Cherry Blossom (2003)
* Immaterial and Missing Power (2004)
- Imperishable Night (2004)
- Phantasmagoria of Flower View (2005)
- Shoot the Bullet (2005)
Modern Era 1 (2007-2010)
The first Modern Era is characterized by a more refined look compared to the older games.
- Mountain of Faith (2007)
* Scarlet Weather Rhapsody (2008)
- Subterranean Animism (2008)
- Undefined Fantastic Object (2009)
* Hisoutensoku (2009)
- Double Spoiler (2010)
Modern Era 2 (2010-now)
The second Modern Era features more effects and a circle health gauge around your enemy.
- Great Fairy Wars (2010)
- Ten Desires (2011)
* Hopeless Masquerade (2013)
- Double Dealing Character (2013)
- Impossible Spell Card (2014)
* Urban Legend in Limbo (2015)
- Legacy of Lunatic Kingdom (2015)
- Hidden Star in Four Seasons (2017)
- Hidden Star in Four Seasons (2018)
- Hidden Star in Four Seasons (2019) (Beta)
* Represents a fighting game spinoff.
Now I won't describe the story of EACH game here. But I will just say that each game basically represents an incident, and you play as a protagonist (usually Hakurei Reimu, a miko, or Kirisame Marisa, an ordinary magician) going out to solve that incident.
If you are interested in playing some of the games, I don't think I am allowed to directly hand you the links to the games, but I will give you the link to a website where you can download all of the games (for free!). Remember, the games are commercial dojin (indie) games which are only sold during the Comiket/Reitasai conventions, so chances of you acquiring any of the disk-version games are low.
Media
First, if you are new to Touhou, I want you to watch this. Otherwise, just pass.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7lHJXPKoX0
Now, here's some gameplay videos showing the NORMAL difficulty. Oh yeah, there's an easy difficulty but if you're playing in that difficulty, have fun being laughed at. Not really, it's just seen negatively to play Touhou in the easy difficulty.
https://youtu.be/VtmU6aucro8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3iEZuL_4I0
Looks easy enough, right? Now, here's gameplay videos in LUNATIC difficulty, the highest difficulty of the game (excluding Extra, since it's another stage)
https://youtu.be/SdEAiS9kMNQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Iy6ucY2mlI
Finally, here's a video of the (final) final boss of EoSD, but in the (Ultra) Extra difficulty.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyLsLCPZWUs
Here's a video of one of the fighting games (Hisoutensoku).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mY6EyrpnjhY
Addendum
So, I think I've described most stuff about Touhou (the games), but since it was pretty late when I wrote this there might be some errors.
Anyways, some games are in fact playable over the internet, these include: Phantasmagoria of Flower View (a 1v1 vertical shooter), and every other fighting game. If you are interested in playing online with other people here at Facepunch, just drop by, specify the games you'd like to play online and I will add your name to the player list!
Player list
Click here to go to the current sheet! You are allowed to modify in order to add yourself if you wish (duh) but please don't wreck the sheet!
thank you shendow you treacherous witch
I'm still living under the curse of Fantastic Danmaku Festival Part I and II having Steam achievements. Send help.
It's been several years since I last played these games a lot. I think I'm going to 'reset' and try to replay all the Windows games and beat at least Hard mode and the Extra stages.
Back then, this was the closest I got to a true Lunatic win, almost ten years ago:
https://i.imgur.com/qFjPuTJ.jpg
I must claim at least one!
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