Seihou 1: Shuusou Gyoku - Stage 1 (Commentary & Translation)

Primrose Shiver
]|▬▬|[☯]|▬▬|[
This tale is set on Earth, way in the future.
The deteriorating environment has caused the original vegetation of the Earth to be
completely destroyed.
Except for one; the cactus...
At this rate, the earth will fall into ruin...
In order for humanity to continue, research to extract energy from cacti progresses.
Then, at last, the Cactus Company perfected cactus energy.
Cactus energy - energy that far surpasses even nuclear power.
Because of that, the crisis causing the Earth to fall into ruin was able to be averted.
However, cactus energy is still unstable.
The energy is erratic, and it is said that it presents serious dangers.
Due to the strength of that energy, the Cactus Company has also caused large accidents
and for a certain period they were driven to the verge of annihilation.
Decades later, humanity succeeded in managing cactus energy, and once again prospered.
During that time span, the Cactus Company developed a human-model combat robot.
It is not known whether it was the developer's preference or not, but it is a maid-type.
Nevertheless, in testing it far surpassed the battle prowess of existing weaponry.
So, she was also developed using cactus energy.
"I'm going out for errands!"
The maid-type combat robot was named VIVIT.
At her master's request, VIVIT begins a journey for the company...
]|▬▬|[☯]|▬▬|[
Well, a few have asked me if I was ever gonna play this, so here it is. Welcome to Touhou's sister game Seihou.
Gameplay wise, welcome back to the old days of Touhou before any new gimmicks were introduced. This game plays a lot like how Mystic Square did.
As for your fist stage, same as always. Shoot the things, collect the stars, get stronger.
Milia's pretty easy but she can catch you off guard in her second phase if you're not paying attention. Learn the trick to her lasers and plan accordingly when she fires her bullets at you.
Boss Phases
3:12 - Mid-boss phase 1
3:27 - Mid-boss phase 2
4:29 - Milia phase 1
4:54 - Milia phase 2
5:30 - Milia phase 3
Difficulty - Normal
Attack Mode - Laser
Stage 1 BGM - False Strawberry
Boss - Milia
Ship Name - Sylph#
BGM - Primrose Shiver
Translations courtesy of the Touhou Wiki

[@PKWeegee1337]

I know its been a while since you played, but do you remember how you got the game to actually run normally? Because on my Win 8.1 it either doesnt work at all, or when it does boot, it runs like total crap (If the game just worked normally for you from the start, its probably a OS thing, cus im assuming you were on 7 back then)

[@MegamanOmega184]

I hate to say it, but Windows 7 _might_ be your only option, and even then I still had some glitches running it (occasionally I'd have massive graphical issues or sometimes songs would just not load, I remember I had to put the Stage 5 stage or boss theme in manually in post cause on my winning run, the song just never came up). Running your compute in Japanese locale, or using applocale I'd say is your best bet. Failing that, maybe look up ways to play Windows 7 exclusive games on Windows 8? Edit* Pinned, because holy crap do I get asked this question a lot and I've never been able to give people any advice if they're running something newer than Windows 7

[@kinghidrorah1686]

Same here, I am on Windows 10 and getting Seihou to even load the first screen of the first stage takes entire minutes!

​@@kinghidrorah1686 On Windows 10...Do not use D3D windower or anything like that. Open up the game. When it loads the title screen, press alt+tab to go to the desktop, and click the game icon on the taskbar to go back. This somehow fixes the slow fps

[@kinghidrorah1686]

@ Amazing, it actually works!! Thanks a lot, I'll try out the game once I'm done with work ;)

[@PKWeegee1337]

@ For me that's...a partial fix. While it does drastically help with the fps, it also breaks the transparency on alot of sprites, leaving them with grey boxes around them. Also makes boss hp impossible to see. Definitely an improvement over not being able to play at all though

[@WishMakers]

By the way, there is a name for the game "getting tougher the longer you go without dying" - it's called a rank system, and you'll see it a lot in arcade shmups when you get to them (it was also in PC-98, and Windows up to MoF - MoF technically has it but it only affects one pattern so it's basically nonexistant). Typically they also increase your score benefits or something but in Touhou it doesn't, and Seihou is similar fare as far as I'm aware.

[@jadeng.s.2549]

WishMakers so that explains why Princess Undyne seems so difficult for me whenever I manage to NNN EoSD up until I face Patchouli with Reimu B

[@brantontucker6734]

Out of all the touhou styled games this one is definitely the most interesting

[@shtj6761]

"False Strawberry" Man, college age ZUN really liked these girly song titles, huh? Recent song titles have been more descriptive of the situation and characters, so I kinda miss it.

[@UltimatePhantasm]

ZUN's kinda starting to get a bit edgier in his old age, it seems. Not that I mind, but I too miss the good 'ol days...

[@yamahadx7synthesiser]

1:42 ok i thought vivit was flipping the player off until i realized she was doing some magical girl like symbol with her hand

[@torqueandrikotoone]

When i saw stars flying out of vivid when a ton of star items were collected, I thought of an idea of a gimmick they could have had (Not what they do have). Here it is: If a star contacts with a bullet, the bullet will be destroyed but the star will remain intact. But if it makes contact with an enemy or boss, The star will vanish and the enemy/boss will be damaged. But if the star makes it to the top of the screen, a star item will drop, giving an opportunity to get more stars to appear. Basically, getting tons of star items will make a bullet erasing and enemy damaging projectile, which drops a star item if it reaches the top of the screen.

[@Akay4444444444444444]

Hurray, a translation. Did you/will you show off the other difficulty levels too?

[@MegamanOmega184]

I've got an Extra stage upload, but other than that, no. Generally speaking, the runs on this channel are on Normal mode. Since the design of the channel is helping people get into Touhou, as opposed to trying to showcase my Lunatic runs.

[@UltimatePhantasm]

Considering her master is a perverted old man and Vivit is based on his at-the-time missing daughter, punishing her sounds a--- *Sweet Home Alabama starts blaring plays in the background* ... ...then again, VIVIT is still just a robot maid recreation of his aforementioned daughter, so he could also mean something like harshly scolding her like a parent would to their child...

[@lunatic0verlord10]

This reminds me of Mischief Maker a bit...

[@gypsysprite4824]

oh god i forgot you did this game before TD...actually, when do you do TD also the "the game slower gets tougher as long as you don't die" thing is what is reffered to as "rank"...nobody knows how exactly it works, but it's in this game and also every standard (aka not touhou 1 or 3) touhou game up to 6 or 7, though it only actually does anything until touhou 5, with it barely mattering in touhous 6 and 7

[@MegamanOmega184]

Quite a ways away actually. After this game I went to Len'en 1 before returning to the main games, but that means there's all of Double Spoiler _and_ Great Fairy Wars before playing Ten Desires, and you might recall the latter two are pretty friggin' long series

[@gypsysprite4824]

@@MegamanOmega184 i comepltly forgot about the sheer amount of spinoff touhous between 12 and 13 edit: btw, which non-one off-danmakufu games are left

[@franbh94]

Well, in MoF there is another moment rank-related: Shizuha Aki Battle. If you die before reaching her, her attack will be easier. I don't know if this applies too to MoF as a whole, tho. And yes, before TD he did a lot of spin-offs... Mainly to mentalize doing DS (which is relatable).

[@MegamanOmega184]

@@gypsysprite4824 There's Seihou which I'm doing right now, then Len'en 1, then Double Spoiler, Great Fairy Wars, Ten Desires, Touhouvania 2, Mystical Power Plant, HM, DDC, Len'en 2 and Spell Card Collection. All in all, 152 videos to go.

[@luisykw5867]

​@@MegamanOmega184 So, if nothing goes wrong, you will be finished by some days after April of 2020.

[@rockman7637]

That's funny, I watched the No Commentary version yesterday :o

[@brantontucker6734]

Oh look lasers, and better yet lasers that peirce the enemies, I wonder which one you'll pick

[@lunatic0verlord10]

3:41 Either that or they've mass produced the artificial flora from the Music CDs...

[@BrownCake69]

1:49 Am i the only one that sees that seija is a resprite of VIVIT?

[@lunatic0verlord10]

I wonder how far in the timeline it takes place compared to the Music CDs...

[@God-ch8lq]

You just try avoiding double spoiler, don't you?

[@jessehuerta8571]

i used the dgvoodoo with it but it keep using the widescreen fullscreen. any more questions

[@DoctorNovakaine]

I have no clue how power levels work in this game...is there any indicator at all? Do you just get stronger as you go or do the stars have something to do with it? It seemed like at some point you suddenly had more shots and better lasers, but hell if I could track the reasoning behind it. Also, is it just me or does the music sound a lot more MIDI than PC98 Touhou? I mean you can clearly hear ZUN's influence on the themes but the sound of the music is completely different.

[@kalecavanaugh4067]

Did you use a windows 7 emulator

[@MAGInHeaven]

The menu kinda reminds me of those rpg maker games.

[@akoya7965]

Were you playing this on a modern day PC or something older to get the game running properly?

[@MegamanOmega184]

Well, I still consider it modern, but "modern for the time" would be more apt. I still have Windows 7 and it still runs fine on Windows 7. Though as someone just pointed out if you're running newer hardware On Windows 10...Do not use D3D windower or anything like that. Open up the game. When it loads the title screen, press alt+tab to go to the desktop, and click the game icon on the taskbar to go back. This somehow fixes the slow fps

[@akoya7965]

@@MegamanOmega184 Indeed it does, but then the game outright screws up into 8bit without text and without transparency, so around VIVIT there's a rectangle, so is on enemies and bullets. Using Windows 8.1 here, but I experienced the same on Windows 10 couple weeks ago. The game didn't seem to run on Intel Integrated HD GPU at all, but on NVIDIA it did work just as described above. I wonder how it goes on AMD... As for your PC, if it runs Windows 7 just fine I don't think you should have much problems with upgrading your OS once it's gets unsupported by third party services (because the support from Microsoft doesn't matter this much as long as third party will continue to support the system, and I believe they will 'cause the architecture hasn't changed this much, yadda yadda. I'm glad that I still own my old computers so I can go work around Seihou whenever I want. For me, it seems that Windows XP is the last system that ran the game without any major issues, but Windows 2000 was the best in my experience. It may probably work even better under the Win 9x but who knows? Sorry for the wall of text. I got carried off ^^"

*screams*