Touhou 12 - At The End of Spring / Ghostly Passenger Ship | Reacting To Video Game Music!

[@Shugadonk]

14:36 that pop noise is actually a windows xp notification sound that was recorded with the song by accident, and Zun left it in. That song is already so wacky, that it just fits right in, and makes me like it even more even though the stage itself is hard as hell and has ruined tons of my runs lol.

[@monochrome4937]

He did it. He finally looked up a gameplay footage!

[@RealityMasterRogue]

megamanomega is a good choice, too.

[@venhexx]

Speaking strictly in the shoot-em-up topic, Touhou is considered one of, if not the most influential, bullet-hell game in the genre. It's probably one of the earliest few bullet-hell games available at the time of release of the first games (1997), though no one played it because it was stuck in an obscure computer platform until the jump to Windows in 2002. It was notable for the eloquent "fireworks show" attack patterns, which other bullet-hells didn't really do at the time. As a result, Touhou played pretty unique. In some sense, the series is technically the secret grandfather of the modern indie game too. The games are noteworthy to leave you in a strange zen-like hyper focused state due to it's unique patterns, incredibly fitting and fantastic music, difficulty, and ease of mechanics. Bullet-hell is Touhou at this point and no matter what other bullet-hell you see nowadays, it's definitely been influenced by it.

[@cchieffkiefbeff]

Well when you are one of the longest lasting game series and definitely longest lasting doujin franchise as well as just one of the most influential game series ever made in Japan and even on the internet that really helped shape it as one of the “bedrock franchises” along the lines of what tf2 did for the west, you are bound to be the most influential shmup, especially as Touhou destroyed the test of time and still thrives on to this day, really only being set back by the pandemic, while most other big name shmups and just the shmup genre in general started to decline as early as the late 2000’s, hence why all the popular shmups nowadays are either indie shmups made by a small team, ZUN and us monstrous fans, or big name shmups from Cave or Treasure etc. from the early 90’s to late 2000’s Yeah ZUN and Touhou, as arguably THE MOST influential indie/doujin game/series ever made, basically started the whole trend of small indie team/guy makes big and influential indie game as ZUN has stated that back then (late 90’s) indie development basically did not exist, and that you were honestly looked upon as kinda a weirdo for trying to make your own game instead of joining a game company, doujin be damned but really doujin was the only method of individual game development back then, hence why ZUN started at Comiket. Also Touhou being a shmup was really only esteblished by Lotus Land Story, Touhou Gensoukyou or 4 as every other game before were pretty different from eachother though SoEW and PoDD were both shmups and bullet hells so the trend was already starting but still

[@neobullseye1]

One thing about MegamanOmega's channel in particular, which you mentioned in the video: His footage is absolutely great to see what a more 'normal' playthrough of Touhou looks like. He plays on Normal mode, not Lunatic (the hardest difficulty that doesn't require outside mods), doesn't spam Bombs/"Spell Cards" just go get through an enemy attack but also doesn't pretend they don't exist at all, doesn't do Perfect Runs (not dying a single time and not using Bombs), does do so-called 1CC or 1-Credit Clear runs (meaning you are allowed to die, but not allowed to use Continue after losing all of your lives), and actually tries to interact with the gimmick of the game. He also shows off any unique elements for all the different characters, ranging from unique gimmicks and shot styles they might have and unique bosses or Spell Cards (the special attacks bosses uses) they might face. What you said about how the game kept returning to the character selection screen? That was him showing off all the different characters, something which takes about four minutes. It's *very* informative without giving you a feeling of "Oh my god, I could never play this game." As for why I keep coming back? Well, the biggest reason is because there is pretty much nothing quite like it. Most other Shmups focus more on reflexes and speed dodging, while Touhou focuses on pattern recognition and learning. Similarly, in most other Shmups you are just some interexchangable ship sprite, while in Touhou you are an actual character with an actual known backstory, up and including some bosses from previous games. Thirdly, the music is *amazing*.

[@bomb4r719]

18:40 "What made Touhou stand out?" It's quite simple really Touhou has personality Or at least as much personality as a bullet hell game can squeeze in Instead of controlling a generic space ship, you control an anime girl with a personality you can get attached to Instead of bullet patterns prioritizing being hard to dodge, they prioritize looking pretty, which makes them super memorable It left an impression in a way that other bullet hell games didn't at the time And over the last 20 years every other bullet hell game has been learning from touhou's example Also, there's the very unique touhou copyright setup that helps it spread like wildfire As long as you aren't doing a corporate production, everyone has full access to use the touhou setting, characters and music It's a world that belongs to the public, not to one person, so it really encouraged creative people to use it as a canvas to practice their craft

[@clericneokun]

My favorite part of At The End of Spring is just how smoothly it loops. Like...REALLY SMOOOOOTH.

[@donaldkennson245]

Most of touhou's variety comes from stage themes! I find them more memorable than boss themes and you can definitely compare and discern most of the time whats a boss theme and whats a stage theme

[@atew8277]

Touhou is unique in that its "internet culture" far exceeds the games in popularity to the point people may have heard or seen Touhou without ever knowing it, or without knowing it's even a game. I think that's because ZUN lets people do almost anything they want with the property. So there's all kinds of fangames, music, art, memes, etc. that get endlessly shared and made which in turn makes people interested in the games like some sort of cycle. The games themselves tend to have a unique gimmick, sometimes being similar to other Touhou games but enough to set each other apart. Especially the spinoffs which are mostly fighting games. In 12 you collect literal UFOs which can net you bonus lives for example. The playable characters can also vary, each with their own shot type which helps make gameplay less bland. Though I have no idea how this compares to other bullet hell games.

[@sharkexpert12]

The good bullet hells all have a unique gimmick. Most bullet hells tend to be one character with random powerups or multiple shot types. Touhou is usually pretty standard for bullet hells in gameplay what sets it apart is mainly the story, the music and sound design, and unfortunately the fact that its profitable.

[@MajoraZero]

@@sharkexpert12 I don't doubt it's profitable, but I'd say for the longest time it'd be just because it's a one-person job. Even today, there's just a few games on Steam. If I wish to buy most of the games I just can't, not without a lot of effort and/or money and I doubt most of my money would go to ZUN.

[@devildante9]

@@sharkexpert12 My favorite will always be 8 for the passage of time mechanic, they way you time switching characters and how much you graze to only get 30 minutes per stage instead of an hour.

[@LunarianTsukiyomi]

To the "What keeps you coming back" question 1.- I personally find the Shmup gameplay pretty fun, and Learning, Improving [less deaths] the patterns is in itself fun and can take hours, so i believe that fits more into Challenge and Gameplay. 2.- Touhou in general has a bit too much Media, especially INDIE games, any genre you can think of it probably has a touhou game. 3.- The fairly laid-back near-anything can happen/be done with the Touhou characters means near everything is pretty laid back and just chill. 4.- I do like the characters a lot, and it's pretty ... easy to like at least one, it has way too many-- so it's a "This other game has Y characters in it!"

[@ThatGuyFromBeyond]

There's actually a billion spinoff games for touhou. Includes like 5 fighting games. One of Touhou's greatest aspects is the fan community it has. Zun has an extremely lax copyright stance that allows the community to create their own unofficial games, music, animations and more. One of my favourite stand out fan game is a metriodvania called Luna Nights.

[@Gorokk1]

The funny thing about Touhou is that a lot of people who love Touhou don't really play the original games. My most memorable moments with Touhou games are the fanmade RPG spinoffs far more than the bullet hell games. The huge cast of varied characters and amazing music that can easily be arranged just makes Touhou transcend it's original work, that's the beauty of the franchise

[@InfiniteDrillWorks]

Oh my god, youre spoiling me with these videos! Touhou 12 is one of my favorite osts in the series, and i knew when i saw that you were about to react to stage 4 theme that you were so not ready to how unique it sounds. Also, if you want to hear more bass in touhou songs, you should listen to earlier osts like 6,7 and 8, those have a lot of bass in them

[@gaboflandre]

Maybe this is a good time to recommend listening to music at the same time of watching their proper stage. Mostly because the stages are synced to the actual song, so everything comes together beautifully.

[@JessesAuditorium]

That can come with many issues like copyright. Plus, I only check out what the requester sent me, it would be weird to wait for a long time only for me to change it up. Plus, it's fun for me to guess what's going on without context. Knowing too much kinda takes away.

[@cchieffkiefbeff]

@@JessesAuditoriumwell, i cant deny the unknown experience, but as for the copyright part; ZUN does not care at all if you show gameplay. in his guidelines, he states that as long as the content you make(fangames) or put up on a screen(videos) doesnt slander Touhou in any actually meaningfully harmful way(not just sarcastic meming or jokes, actual serious slander) then he is completely fine with it, well he does copyright strike the CD albums but definitely not the gameplay of his games(fun fact: the first ever touhou video put up on youtube was uploaded on the same day youtube launched; another fun fact: ZUN always had the basic concept of streaming before it even became a thing and always wanted to implement a system where people could actively watch your game live and commentate live too, but never actually went through with the idea because niconico would soon start and had built-in streaming). the only hiccup would be the endings to the individual routes in each game which you shouldnt show, as ZUN politely tells us in his guidelines that you can just go read right now that itd simply be a nice consideration if you didnt show the endings, no actual consequences

[@爛帽子]

@@JessesAuditorium 1) "Copyright" ZUN doesn't mind people showing the gameplay on youtube, except for the endings. As for the channel, I think if the patreon requester has permission from the channel and maybe you just put the video link in the description then it should be fine too. 2) "it's fun for me to guess what's going on without context" Understandable, but I think you can blind react first, and then watch the gameplay video (with the music in the video) to get the context and see how the music works with the game

[@cchieffkiefbeff]

@@爛帽子 way more concise thank you

[@NMC213]

​@@JessesAuditorium To say ZUN is lax with copyright is a massive understatement A big recent example was a couple of years ago, wile selling his (at the time) newest game at Comiket... I don't really remember the details, but he decided for some reason to post a download link for the game on Twitter, free, before the rippers fully cracked it, piracy be damned He really embraces the philosophy of "from fans to fans" and, so long as you follow his guidelines (which can be resumed as "don't show the endings, the game's music room, my image around, and don't be an asshole") he let's you... Almost do whatever, no strings attached

[@HyperVanilo]

04:44 MegamanOmega always shows and explains the character's shot type and bomb before his Stage 1 walkthrough, his favorite character is Marisa (the blonde witch girl you showed) because of her high power shot and bomb

[@fantasyequinox715]

An intresting phenomenon I have noticed when discussing touhou with others that have grown up with the internet, is that many have encountered touhou in some way but haven't connected it to a larger series. Many times I have shown a picture of one of the more popular characters or song and the reaction I often get is "I remember that song/character! This is where they came from?!"

[@KeelHeel]

Zun primarily uses sounds from a roland SD-90, the saxophone youre hearing is most likely "reed romance," a mixture of several sax sounds

[@爛帽子]

Yay, more stage themes! I think a lot of stage themes got overshadowed by the boss themes, so I'm happy to see you react to more stage themes. You asked about the shortest Touhou song title in your patreon, I think the shortest English Touhou song title has 4 letters such as "Days", "Iris" and "Init", and the shortest Japanese Touhou song title has two letters (kanji) such as "遍参", "戦迅" and "砕月".

[@korelore8841]

Fun fact: In the 2nd song, Zun recorded for mistake a Windows notification "pop" sound (14:38 ), he leaved it in the song xD.

[@SacredFaerie]

Touhou’s stage themes are so beautiful. There are definitely themes to the games but you're sure not gonna be able to expect what's coming beforehand. You're less gonna get predictable themes like 'traveling towards and through a mansion' like in Touhou 06 and more 'all the enemies are Buddhists' like in Touhou 12 here.

[@azurill_sun]

For me, Touhou is a combination of the solid gameplay, the challenge of the fights, the fun of the OST, and the quality of the world and characters that brings me in to it day after day

[@SuperChrim]

8:06 What keeps me coming back? Well as someone who has thousands of hours in the Touhou games (I’m serious, my overall playtime in just Touhou 8 alone is 1000+) Every game iterates on the last, but every game also has its own unique twist that only that game can call its own. I’m sure you saw in the gameplay footage the player collecting tiny UFOs to create bigger UFOs that collect items, and then the player shoots down those UFOs to get those items back but worth even more. Only Touhou 12 Undefined Fantastic Object has that system. So there’s always a reason to go back and play the older games too. Touhou is a skill people hone for years and years. There’s always something new I could be learning. New ways to push myself to improve in my gameplay. So that sensation of finally overcoming a difficult challenge keeps me coming back.

[@Nedoxu]

In terms of whether the stages are all themed a certain way or if they're just random; They're all based on the games' stories. Each game tends to start with the protagonist in a rather normal location, albeit perhaps affected by whatever is happening that caused the story to kick off in some way, and then progresses through a variety of different areas looking for the root cause of the problem. These areas _can_ be quite random, but they can also be structured, depending on how the game's plot wants to handle that, but every game tends to _end_ in a fantastical location. For instance, in Touhou 6, the game has a rather clear stage structure, where the protagonist starts in a dark area because someone was blotting out the sun, and the stages follow a very obvious structure of heading towards the source of the problem and infiltrating the source of the problem until you reach the boss. But in Touhou 7, the source of the problem is much less obvious and to illustrate this, the first 3 stages have your protagonist sort of meandering through different areas almost at complete random trying to find the cause, and you only really get that sense of progression in the last 3 stages. A lot of the stage designs tend to either be set pieces for the overall story of the game, set pieces that are important to the boss of the stage, or both. So while yes, there is an element of randomness, I wouldn't say it's completely random. For your video-relevant example, that Ghostly Passenger Ship song is in fact accurate to its title, and the boss of that stage is a ghost who sinks (used to sink?) ships.

[@user-samhag55]

Touhou is unique in its style, fan community, etc.,and conventional wisdom about existing creations cannot be applied to it.

[@dr.latency34]

"You can't rely on common sense here in Gensokyo"

[@lylianx4209]

Oh boy... There's nothing "samey" about the touhou bosses and their Spell Cards. Just play one for five minutes and you'll know exactly what I mean. As for what makes touhou "unique" for its genre, other rail shooters have you play as a plane, shooting other nameless planes and aliens. In touhou you play as actual characters fighting gods/monsters/entites from myth and folklore, all with their own personalities and plotlines for each game. And that's not mentioning the intricate lore and worldbuilding as well as the quirky charm behind it all.

[@tewiinaba2879]

my favourite thing about the stage themes and especially these two are that the mid bosses of the stage spawn when the song shifts into a different section. There are fighting spinoffs! 2:13 and 13:25 are the midboss sections

[@Delirium9889]

Awesome, 2 stage themes, this requestor isn't spamming just boss themes like some people usually do. Anyways, yeah Touhou does have spin offs:5 bullet hells, 6 fighting games and whatever genre 17.5 is. Why comeback to Touhou? That's actually an interesting question and i have no idea why i keep going back to it, i guess it's the challenge and adrenaline the game gives me(It's weird though because i did try a few other bullet hell series like Len'En but i didn't found that "spark" that made me love Touhou) but i'm not sure, it's just appealing to me for some reason. Anyways, geat video as usual PS:as little funfact, you can hear a little Windows(?) "POP" sfx around 14:39

[@Bruhmeister48]

For the record, Touhou kinda WAS the first, being back in 1997. Idk if it was actually the first one, but the market wasn’t saturated with that type of game at all at that point of time. It 100% was the inspiration for the genre and its popularity.

[@marcossegon5433]

the first one was Batsugun and CAVE's games, but Touhou has definitely become the most important series in the genre at this point. Nearly all newer bullet hell shmups take inspiration from either Touhou or CAVE.

[@menosay1912]

Bullet hell is indeed a sub-genre of rail shooters where you have a screen filled with bullets everywhere and a tiny hitbox. As for why, bullet hell shooters are actually uncommon. Top down shooters are not that rare, but the bullet hell variety ARE. It's difficulty makes it a comparatively niche sub-genre. Touhou is one of the only ones that has been consistent in releases.

[@marcossegon5433]

Yeah the bullet hell shmup subgenre is essentially hard carried by Touhou and CAVE. And even then, CAVE has given in to Touhou since their latest game is a Touhou fangame. Everyone else just exists.

[@DameDivineDisarray]

I adore the cast of characters and the mystical world of Touhou. Seeing how they all interact, and as more curious individuals emerge are among my favourite things.

[@Akira_Nyan]

What makes me come back to TouHou every time is "entering" that world with its settings, characters and its music... What makes his music special and keeps me coming back is what the music expresses... How that music can describe the personality of a character or the air and atmosphere of the stage/place... That what make me love TouHou

[@munch8127]

always lovely to see stage themes, a lot of fans like the boss themes above all but the stages are, each single one, different from eachother enough that are a beauty on itself. Very underrated stage themes in this episode too, so that's great.

[@KeelHeel]

As far as the writing is concerned, the games themselves dont have much, but there is a fair bit of official supplementary material (manga mostly), the world of touhou has its fair share of lore that each game certainly adds to. That being said, the evolution of ZUNs music is what keeps a lot of us returning, for sure

[@KeelHeel]

The stage themes aren't very closely connected. You can compare the general "feel" of one entire game to the other, but the individual stages tend to do their own thing

[@RazorTH]

For me, what draws me in to the games is the OST, the stage designs, the bullet patterns and the difficult but fair gameplay

[@possesedfrisk]

8:07 For me it the music and the lore, though obviously "New game in a franchise I love" plays a role, I honestly don't play the (mainline) games too often

[@SuperCrazyLuigi]

My first interaction with Touhou (so far as I can remember) was watching a friend at the time play a fangame called Genius of Sappheiros, but it took me a good six or seven years after that to really get into the series as a whole because somebody sent me some music to listen to and I just immediately got hooked. Listened to a lot of it over the years since, and the latter one here stands out as one of my faves, in part due to Murasa (the sailor) being pretty consistently in my top ten favorite characters from the series and in part because I just like the vibe it gives.

[@Yuca31]

Jesse doing back to back my favorite Boss theme with emotional skyscraper and my favorite 1st stage theme... Fun fact, outside of the main games there are spin offs that have unique gameplays, like different types of fighting games or even a bullet hell where you have to take photos... And outside of that there's some series of mangas, data books and even narrated music albums (with a story for each track) and that's just the official content ! There are some games that are really popular even outside the fandom like "Luna night" a really good metroidvania or mystia's Izakaya.

[@kodesmack1205]

For me, everything combines to make it more than the sum of its parts. The music is stellar, and the bullet patterns are pretty, but they combine to give soooo much character and 'personality' to each fight. When I go back and play, each fight is like sparring an old friend.

[@JammieBear]

Touhou music has this great effect of getting you to lock in, while also communicating the vibe of the area you're in or the character you're encountering! I dunno how possible it is, but i think it'd be really cool if the Platinum members got you to listen to the full OST of one of the games lol

[@LastRemote94]

17:30 Yes. One title, one story. We as Main Character solving incidents. Stage 1s usually we go find/ask for some clues (always by force/violence) until we find out the culprits, they're usually at stage 5, 6, or EX. One title may related to others. Main character's usually the same: Reimu & Marisa, plus additional 1 or 2 characters. 23:05 there's a lot of spin-offs, mainly a fighting game. The music and art used in those game, usually not from ZUN himself, the music is originated by ZUN but remixed by other band/circles (that is a fan of Touhou too), especially from Touhou 14.5 onwards. Also, there's hundreds of fan games out there.

[@annaairahala9462]

Oh nice! These are two of my favorites! I actually think the stage themes in Touhou are often better than the boss music too, but they don't get as much recognition

[@mrelectrodude9391]

I hope you’ll get to some themes from fangames sometime! As for why I keep coming back, it is definitely the infinite rabbit hole of good music .. I think I have at least 1000 Touhou songs in my playlist, originals and remixes. Though I am a fan of bullet hell gameplay as well!

[@annaairahala9462]

For me music and the patterns are what keeps me coming back. I find these type of games can be really calming, like an easy way to relax or express/get rid of anxiety in an environment where it doesn't matter. As for why Touhou specifically, I am drawn to the more colourful imagery of it. I would consider myself a pretty casual player though, I only really do hard 1CCs at most and play every once in a while when I feel up for it The fundamentals of danmaku remain the same across the genre, but how it's implemented varies by quite a bit, and at the end of the day it all comes down to pattern recognition/memorization. Like all games, pattern identification is a huge thing when it comes to mastery but it's easier to recognize with games like Touhou as they're literal patterns. Every game, every activity, every sport, has this same fundamental of identifying patterns so I don't exactly see it as repetitive for Touhou either. There's plenty of challenge as well if that's desired. At the end of the day, what is it that makes games enjoyable or not? What makes someone partial to one form of pattern mastery over another? I find that anything can be understood as long as it's approached in the right manner

[@mizukamizu1675]

As a Touhou player, at least for me, the interesting thing about it, it's te enemy display, attack patterns/forms and how bosses works. Usually the attacks, enemys appearance and etc, coordinates very well with the music. In some way, helps to coordinate and concentrate. And talking the difference between stages, well... usually is the difficulty. Besides the patterns and forms of the attacks, between touhous titles... they have different mechanics and tools that represents the title itself. So, in short... always feel different, in one way or another.

[@terraelaweonao]

Touhou games can get repetitive, though for those who are already enraptured by its charm, each touhou is completely unique cuz of the different bullet patterns. And from a less fanatic standpoint, each game is different because of the different characters and themes. Also important to both types of people, each game has a different unique mechanic (I yapped a lot here so I put that overwhelming yet summarized info at the end of the comment 👍) Anyways, there's also a bit of variety from time to time, mainly the fighting games (7.5, 10.5, 12.3, 13.5, 14.5 and 15.5) or other bullet hells that differ from the "6 stages with 6 bosses + Extra Stage" structure (like 9.5, 12.5, 12.8, 14.3, 16.5, 18.5) or like others that are Bullet Hells that allow Player vs Player action alongside a different yet familiar 6 stages gameplay (touhou 3, 9 and 19) So, there's variety within its niche, so to speak. Edit: There's a vague or not so vague theme around each games, depends entirely of the story being told. But typically the first and second stages are gathering intel, exploring or simply starting to go to the desired destination. The third and fourth stage are kinda getting closer to the trouble maker, probably already in the same area but not quite yet there. Fifth and Sixth are typically There, if the baddie is in a castle, you are in the castle, if it's in Hell, you are in Hell. So while in this you start in a green valley, you aren't where you need to be, thus the characters go to wherever leads them to where they must be, even if it means forcefully boarding a haunted interdimensional ship and fighting the sailor that drown in it (random context, that ship allows the travel towards Makai, a closed off dimension and last destination of Touhou UFO (there comes the "Fires of Hokkai" theme, it's a specific place within Makai, "a corner of the infinite area of Makai", Touhou is wild)) To give another example, Touhou 17 centers around Hell so naturally the first stages are getting to the gates of Hell (we see a rocky riverside in stage 1 and "a river" in stage 2 (it's the river where people pass on) , stage 3 is being at the gates and beating the guard, and 4 onward is in actual Hell and going deeper to search the trouble maker. My yap: Touhou 6 lacks it cuz it's the first new era game, Touhou 7 has the border of phantasm which gives temporary invulnerability after gathering resources, Touhou 8 has a Time mechanic where if you play well only half of the Time passes between each stage (the game is about resolving an incident in a Night, so if you play badly and it becomes 6 Am, you lose. Also Time allows every boss to use a very special attack pattern at the end of the boss fight, allows a different Ending from happening, etc), Touhou 9 is a PvP game, Touhou 10 and 11 has a weird "graze to get more points" that isn't that useful afaik ("graze" is to almost touch a bullet but not getting hit, gives extra points), Touhou 12 has the UFOs, Touhou 13 has spirits and the Spirit World (which is why that game has an alternate version of every track, if you enter that world the theme dynamically changes into that alternate version), Touhou 14 lacks a unique mechanic but has interesting Attack options to choose from, Touhou 15 has two game modes (one is the standard 6 stage 6 bosses that if you lose all lives you return to the start type of game, the other is a Checkpoint system that if well ensures you won't return to stage 1, it kinda includes a bit of resource management of Special attacks [Bombs]) and the mechanic is that the Stages and Boss fights have safe checkpoints where if you played well enough (grazed a lot of bullets) you get rewarded with either bombs or lives, Touhou 16 has the Backdoor power mechanic which allows different synergies for the different characters, Touhou 17 has the beast spirits that behave similar to the UFOs but work completely differently granting a free hit you can take and a powerful boost to your attacks or a defensive barrier depending of what spirits you collected, Touhou 18 has the Cards and Buying mechanics which allows even more combinations and the existence of "builds" (as in, a combo of items to get desired benefits), Touhou 19 is another PvP game.

[@cchieffkiefbeff]

IN has tag teams and the youkai/human meter that gives you more points based on who youre playing and separate bosses at stg 4 and 6 MoF has the faith meter that rewards you with lives if you can get it high enough by always shooting down enemies SA has six shot types that all have unique abilities and shots and gives you life pieces if you at least dont die from a spell card UFO ufos chain together three ufos youve collected and give you either score, lives, or bombs DDC rewards you with bomb and life pieces depending on how many items you collect using the point of collection, and three entirely new shot types LoLK is all about grazing as each chapter tallies the number of grazes you did and rewards you if you reached the requirement with either life pieces in legacy mode or bomb pieces in pointdevice HSiFS has the season releases that are unique to each sub-season that build in power and/or uses by collecting season items that fill your season gauge WBaWC has three shottypes and three goasts that can be selected to buff either you unfocused shot, focused shot, or bombs and roaring mode can give you power, score, life, and bomb items if you collect their respective fish and three of a kind of beast spirit will buff that attack even higher; wolves for focus, eagles for unfocus, otters for bombs UM has over 50 ability cards to choose from and use money to be purchased, something that enemies now drop instead of score items; some cards give you new shots or options that block bullets, others simply buff your stats or give you items by playing in a certain way or can even save you from death, and some are active abilities that can be used based a set cooldown, you get to buy a card per level and if you die you lose 100 money

[@Dukstless]

I want to know what you were smoking to say that Touhou 10's gimmick is graze, when it has no graze counter and its actual gimmick is the faith system.

[@terraelaweonao]

@@Dukstless I forgor tbh, someone already corrected me on that. Th10 and 11 are the ones I know least about. My bad, and I think I can't really edit it because of the comment being Hearted

[@cchieffkiefbeff]

@@terraelaweonao to be fair, sa’s spellcard gimmick is so basic itd be pretty hard to remember as it literally is what all touhou games do, capture a spellcard for a bomb/life piece, sa just made it so you can still bomb and are always guaranteed life pieces because bombs dont exist; mof’s gimmick is also really out of the way and not something you focus on, its a passive cumulative score bar that is in the bottom left of your screen and barely does literally anything besides the random odd life, unless of course you play scoring that is

[@KragV]

17:40 The stages do make sense story wise. In UFO you're investigating strange sightings in the sky which starts when a huge shadow passes over you in Stage 1, while in stage 4 you've made your way inside the Ghostly Passenger Ship, the "UFO". To me this song always sounded like a creepy amusement park spookhouse mixed with some kind of submarine/underwater soundcape. It is one of the more unique Touhou songs.

[@Kaorukung]

Im not gonna talk about why im still comeback to Touhou coz many people have the same (long) answer as mine already in the comment. But I would like to mention one thing that pretty much make a foundation of what make Touhou so unique. . Generally speaking, most of shumps game are just player fly into boss and boss just barrage bullet hell on us. And we have to remember the bullet pattern on our own way. Like, "That giant laser that covered 3/4 of the entire screen." or "The move that boss forced us to be inside of moving laser cage." In Touhou case, ZUN put a lore that essentially make every character have to name their own moves(Touhou universe called them "Spellcard") they used in the fight. So not only we can call those two spellcards above "Master Spark" and "Boundary of Humans and Youkai", and other player can understand it in unison. It also adds the flavor and lore of each character just by checking on their spellcard name. Utsuho that you already reacted to (the Nuclear fusion one), has "Peta Flare" (Parody to FinalFantasy's GigaFlare) or "Subterranean Sun", for example.

[@jvts8916]

Not sure if it counts but ever since I heard the awesome remix from Touhou New World DLC (sadly not on KZbin) I've kinda been obsessed with Satellite Torifune. It's a Touhou song that doesn't actually originate from the games but rather from the Trojan Green Asteroid album.

[@himkoto249]

The challengin gameplay is what keeps me coming back, trying to beat the game on a harder difficulty every time, and after that with self imposed challenges like beating the game on the hardest difficulty without using your resources and just focusing on raw dodging, and at the highest level even going for a run where you don't get hit once nor use any of your resources. Also quite some people at the highest level try to get the highest possible scores in the game and go for WRs, which is also very cool category.

[@MFMegaZeroX7]

If you want to see why Touhou gets the "bullet hell" moniker you will need to see some lunatic difficulty. For your questions: 1) As far as stage progression, generally its just different areas you go to. The stories in the main games are generally silly and not the most serious thing. For example, here is Touhou 11's story summarized by a redditor with "Local Moriya God Kanako Yasaka decides that Gensokyo needs nuclear power, therefore she asks local hell bird Utsuho Reiuji to consume a sun god to bring unlimited energy. Utsuho is too dumb to do it and tries to take over the world instead, and her powers cause water eruptions everywhere. Reimu is angry at it and beats the shit out of everyone." 2) As for "why Touhou," its kind of the OG of bullet-hells. The second Touhou (the first wasn't a shmup) came out only 4 years after the first bullethell, and pioneered the genre(and shmups in general) in many ways. Plus, the music on its own has its own fanbase that don't even play the games. I've played them casually, but I'm much more a fan of the music than the games myself, as shmups aren't really my thing. Basically, Touhou literally gets people to play by its music. There is also a whole fandom for its characters and stuff. Plus, ZUN is super lax about licensing it so there is entire environment of stories, games, merchandise, and so on, created by many different people. 3) As I mentioned previously, yes there are many many spinoffs, into virtually every genre imaginable, because the fandom is big enough, and ZUN, as mentioned, basically lets people do what they want. So JPRGs, tactic strategy games, fighting games, platformers, you name it.

[@d-w-b-c]

I wonder if the melodies being hard to play help give that "untold focus" feeling.

[@toribirb]

You gotta see the music syncs in touhou games. ZUN makes sure to sync his stages with the music e.g. midboss appears and the song starts going to the main chorus. There is a video that shows examples of some syncs but there are much more.

[@luiztomikawa]

In my case specifically i'm more in love with the derivated works from Touhou than the mainline games itself. Touhou has a very strong fanbase and some works have an impressive amount of quality, which i personaly find very inspiring to see a work of fiction mobilize so many people to create content on top of it.

[@GrahamChapman]

I just hope someone will put "Let's Live in a Lovely Cemetery" and "Rigid Paradise" into the recommendations pot.

[@shanmianhiyueshongdaojukei9732]

Im a Touhou player and fan here from way back to 2011, and its the songs, lore and character designs that keeps me coming back into Touhou regardless of my interest. And its something i cherish for years now ngl. I always vibe to the BGM whenever i passed certain stage there on either easy or normal ( my difficulty preference ), sometimes outright singing it in my mind, because you know you know. But at the end of the day, Touhou will remain my most favorite game to play alongside many games i adore so dear. "At least i want to hear my favorite song for you to react like [ Romantic Children ( Touhou 5 ) ], [ Reverse Ideology ( Touhou 14 ) ], and [ Grimoire of Alice ( Touhou 5 ) ], thx"

[@DylanYoshi]

There's a lot of Touhou spinoffs, and the one you might be most interested in is called Touhou Hisoutensoku. It's a fighting game that has a decently sized competitive scene and a lot of unique mechanics. Because it's a spinoff of a bullet hell shmup, it focuses primarily on projectiles- Your four buttons are a basic attack, light projectile, heavy projectile, and an 8-way airdash that goes through projectiles. It's pretty unique.

[@cchieffkiefbeff]

Yes there are themes to each game, UFO has a sort of nautical theming to it as you literally get on an interdimensional ship that sails to Makai(demon realm) Also the saxophone (edirol sd-90 special preset reed romance) is the main instrument in UFO that is used almost as much as the ZUNpet

[@HaxeRain]

Fun enough, in UFO stage 4, you are indeed inside a ship, but its a flying ship, that you start chasing from stage 1, hte sequence of the stages in UFO is unique that each follows the other sequentially storywise, as in others is the characters flying around and then finding the source of thte incident, in 12 you start by spotting the ship, stage 2 you are above the clouds still giving chase, stage 3 is outside the ship and stage 4 inside of it, stage 5 and 6 are then in the destination the ship was going to, as well how almost all of the bosses are directly related as a group to each other in this game, whereas norrmally the bosses tend to be random youkai around the area and only the last ones being more of a group

[@sunwarrior25]

Bullet Hell. It's basically an extension of those old arcade shooters, like Galaga. Simple enemies and bosses, but with WAY MORE bullets, and waves of artistic bullet patterns to dodge. It's a good balance between dodging enemy bullets and clearing the field before your enemies have a chance to overwhelm you. Touhou 12 is one of the more fun ones thematically. Each game has its own scoring gimmick, and this one has players collecting and match UFOs of different colors for points, b*mb pieces, and/or life-up pieces. There's not as much urgency in the story for this game, so most of the stage themes are pretty chill! EDIT: As for what Touhou brings to the table. Touhou has a fantastical setting that is woven into every aspect of itself. It's not a space shooter, you're a magical girl in a magical world, shooting other magical girls. With magic! Every character you encounter is based on some mythology, fiction, or religion from the real world, and each one somehow manages to have their own personality and life goals despite there being so many of them! It's hard not to get attached.

[@turkia6148]

There's a lot of official fighting games, you've already heard some of their tracks. And there's one action game spinoff.

[@va_amias]

Two phenomenal stage soundtracks. Interdimensional Voyage of a Ghostly Passenger Ship really makes even the brutal level design feel satisfying

[@brickstonesonn9276]

Why Touhou? In terms of lore, there is legitimately nothing else like it. I'm not gonna bore you explaining explaining the premise & how Touhou handles it's story. But basically its able to effectively do things no other story can do because of it's unique premise & unique story presentation. It's able to have hundreds of characters that feel larger than life protagonists of their own unique story from a unique genre, with the depth of personality & backstory to where each character can carry an entire story on their own. Yet present them almost like a slice of life city, where there's this massive web of connections and interactions between them. It's able to give a lot of epic history and context to even the most mundane interactions such that mundanity is somehow really fun & epic to watch. All while having very unique lore and takes on hundreds of Asian mythologies.

[@cchieffkiefbeff]

_* Insert _*_personal_*_ Tinkerbell of Inequality shoutout now *_

[@redwarhorse]

To be honest, I don't play the Touhou games at all as much as I used to, though I do at least make sure to check out new ones when they come out. But there actually is a lot of official manga, writing etc which is fun to follow. And of course there's an endless well of fanworks with some insanely good stuff out there, that's a bottomless rabbit hole to fall down. It's hard to totally put my finger on what pulls me in... A lot of it is just VIBES. Touhou has a distinctive feel and its own sense of logic. It's actually often hard for new people to get into because there's so much content, and it doesn't care about explaining itself, you always have to just roll with it until you catch its wavelength. And then if it clicks it clicks, and you vibe. Also I like that all the characters are drunk assholes

[@oak8194]

I kinda wish you’d react to a stage theme then followed by its respective boss theme, but eh, it’s always nice to see you reacting to Touhou music! I hope you’ll get around to Captain Murasa soon!

[@DylanYoshi]

"Bullet Hell" refers to any game that has you dodging a massive number of bullets. This can be either a rail shooter or a shmup, but neither necessarily has to be a bullet hell. Starfox is a rail shooter but not a bullet hell, while Sin & Punishment is a rail shooter and a bullet hell. Galaga is a shmup but not a bullet hell, while Touhou is a shmup and a bullet hell.

[@halinaqi2194]

The music brings me back for each release mainly, characters second, community third. I don't really play it, only completing Touhou 7 PCB, and touched Touhou 10 MoF

[@TheShmish.]

To answer what keeps me coming back to the games specifically, I consider myself decent at Touhou but not an expert (have beaten every game on normal without continues, a few on hard and most extra stages including a no miss no bomb on Touhou 11's extra) it's quite relaxing to lock in on just the game, playing really makes it feel like nothing else outside of the game exists in the current moment. Touhou's bullet patterns are generally fairly slow and more designed to be visually thematic to the characters rather than target the player in challenging ways. The term "bullet hell" comes with a stigma for a lot of people that the games are meant to be these unforgiving brutally hard experiences for only true experts but Touhou is actually fairly easygoing compared to the rest of the genre when playing on normal, it's a shame a lot of the fans of other aspects of the series refuse to give the games a chance. Touhou definitely wasn't the first bullet hell or even considered the best within dedicated bullet hell players, but I think what made it take off compared to others is all of the aspects outside of the core gameplay and most others would give a different answer. There are plenty of fans who love the series for its characters and worldbuilding, some who only listen to the music, some who love the way that the series incorporates realworld Japanese mythology into its stories and those who follow its impact on meme culture in the early 2000s. For the question about spinoffs, officially there are a few spinoff shmups that handle gameplay in different ways such as games playing one pattern at a time instead of following the usual 6 level formula, then there are also a few fighting games that use the boss characters from the main games. Semi-unofficially the creator of the series, ZUN, allows fan content of the series, including fangames to be sold on official stores such as Steam, Nintendo eShop or PlayStation Network for profit with a few minor rules like not outright stealing content from the games or damaging the series reputation. This does mean that if the series's non-gameplay aspects such as music or characters resonate with someone, but they do not enjoy the games, they are able to play fangames of effectively any genre possible with the same characters and remixed music. Also there are entire albums dedicated to covers of the series music for those fans. For the question about speedruns & leaderboards, most high-level Touhou players instead focus on specific challenges such as playing on the highest difficulty with as few deaths as possible, speedruns aren't really that popular due to the nature of the whole game effectively being an autoscroller.

[@ussopalain7262]

The popularity of Touhou come from I Think the variety, On this channel you mostly focus on the music, and yes Music is a huge part of touhou popularity, but there is also the games, the manga, the memes, the characters and their inspiration. If you're getting into touhou there is so much to see even if you don't go to see whats fan made. A big part of that is the total lack of copyright on any aspect of this game, this is why it's so widespread there everything Touhou. That's a big reason i love this game so much. You start by listening a random song and 2 days after you're reading about what is a Hakutaku at 3am.

[@corbeauwrite]

Having the yokai lore or even outside of Japan lore sometimes is probably one of the best foundation for writing. Like I learn Momiji is a wolf Tengu, and her origin of this is actually chinese (Tiāngǒu = Celeste Dog), with time it was transposed into Japan as the crow "Tengu". And that's just 1 character with very little presence!

[@theskoomacat7849]

The stage themes are so underrated The melodies are so lyrical imo

[@Billmao]

The English title for the first song should be more aptly translated to "At the edge of Spring", which could mean either the beginning or the end of the season. The story itself is set in the beginning of spring, which is why you're still seeing snow on the green field.

[@randommaster06]

One of the biggest reasons Touhou has stuck around for so long is the ease of making derivative works. Fans are not only able to distribute,, but also sell their work. Unlike companies like Disney or Nintendo, passionate fans can make games, albums, comics, etc. without worrying about legal trouble. There's a lot of professional artist who started by making Touhou content. It's a trend that continues to this day. Pop Team Epic, Undertale and Spooky Month were all made by people who used Touhou as a way to gain experience. Artists get an engaged community and fans get high-quality work.

[@cloudycat8178]

For touhou, it's the new stages, each game also has it's own little gimick, and of course the new music

[@BulldogPCs]

There are some official Touhou games of different genres; specifically 6 fighting games (7.5, 10.5, 12.3, 13.5, 14.5, and 15.5; all the official spinoff games have decimal numbering like this) and a game that I'm not entirely sure how to describe (17.5); it's kinda like a platform fighter like the Smash Brothers series but it's presented as a single-player boss rush game, and there's very little actual platforming outside of each character's tutorial since they all play pretty differently from each other. Those spinoffs are all co-developed by ZUN with a group known as Tasogare Frontier (also known as Twilight Frontier), who have a long history of making Touhou fangames, especially ones that play like the older Mario games. There are some other spinoffs but they're all still bullet hells, just with a unique twist, e.g., 9.5 and 12.5 both have you taking pictures of the bosses instead of shooting them and taking a picture can delete any bullets caught in it, or 18.5 tries to be a roguelike by randomizing waves of enemies, the items you can buy after each wave, and the boss at the end of each stage (with a couple story-based exceptions).

[@Hezeri]

What made Touhou so big is multiple things, at least in my opinion. First the games balance the difficulty, gameplay mechanics, artstyle, story, and of course music, quite well. Nothing (except probably the music) is groundbraking, but the game combines all the elements, and has been doing that successfully for couple decades. Second, the developer of the games, ZUN (Jun'ya Oota), has given lot of freedom with the Touhou IP/franchise, so within certain restrictions you can make and sell fan content like music and art without any permission. And third, each game introduces something 4-10 new characters to the game series, many of those don't appear again in another official Touhou game. And because the lore (and art) in the games leave lot of blanks and details to interpretation, a huge number of character traits are based on fan content like memes. Again giving freedom for community to shape that world of Touhou.

[@SpaceBurak]

If you're not into bullet hell, the games definitely seem samey, but ZUN makes a point of having a different gameplay gimmick in every game. Touhou 12 for example has UFOs that appear upon defeating bosses and some stage enemies, and collecting three of them gives different effects depending on the colors you collected. For another example, Touhou 18 features a "deck builder" system where you get a random selection of ability cards to choose from at the end of each stage. Because of those differences, as well as other gameplay choices, some games are more popular than others among the fans who do actually play them.

[@Quils9]

The plot of Touhou 12 revolves around the protagonists chasing a magical flying ship. In stage 1 you can see its shadow at times while in stage 4 you are already inside the ship, so it's not actually underwater but the boss (and Captain of the ship) is the ghost of a girl who died at sea.

[@cchieffkiefbeff]

Alright people, we better start giving him videos along with the songs now! Yeah he should watch the gameplay along with the song to really get a feeling for the songs and their context

[@cchieffkiefbeff]

ZUN’s comments: Stage 1 Theme, At The End of Spring- “The stage 1 theme. I wanted to start with something nice and casual, so this is how it came out. I guess bright songs just aren't that great for shooting games? Or so say people whose likes and tastes change at the time with their moods. It's so invigorating that it makes me want to fly out the window.” Stage 4 Theme: Interdimensional Voyage of a Ghostly Passenger Ship- “This is the stage 4 theme. Aren't journeys great? I feel the most excited when I'm riding on a vessel. Even if it's the ship of the infamous ghost captain who sinks lots of other ships. I mixed anticipation and anxiety together as much as I could when making this song, trying to give it a sense of excitement.”

[@dawk7]

> MegamanOmega keeps going back to the character select Yeah, on his first video of a series he begins showing up all the shot types each character has. You actually had to go forward on the video a bit, haha. Anyway, as you said, the themes absolutely go with the game, and locks you in! The first stage sometimes you can chill out, but that makes the music all the more important to get you in the mood. A good example of how NOT to start things out would be Touhou 6, Stage 1. I actually like that game unlike some others, mind you, but it is certainly a boring stage and the music does not help. Not that you can't do a "slow music" intro, TH7 had an alright intro I think. And regarding what makes me come back to this? Well, first off, doing a "No Continues" run is plenty hard! It's going to take you s while, and I have yet to "1cc" every single game on Normal! But even then, the games are plenty enjoyable because of the mood, I still come back to 7 and 12 every so often as one of the wildest entries. But yes, the game does have a score system and people _do_ compete over it.

[@GodOfWheatRiceBall]

At the end of spring is made by Zun when he was in college, I don't think it's the exact same music, but the structure and melody is probably the same. Every Touhou game has different mechanics, so it's not always the same, like Touhou 12 UFO has the mechanic of collecting ufo from defeating certain enemies, what's always consistent is there's a stage before bosses (not just one sometimes), and the bosses having non-spell (simple, ordinary) and spellcard (unique, mechanic) for their every phases, and the attack can be very creative.

[@ShinNessTen]

I actually got burned out playing Touhou games. Yes, they are very similar and while I will always welcome new characters, music and lore, the games can be really demanding. My last touhou I finished was 17. The only games I didn't beat were 18, 19 and 3 (with 3 being it's own complete special nightmare) Though it still manages to give me enough energy to make fanart and now recently arranges for it, since I learned how to compose. Save to say it's still got me trapped for a couple more years to come lol

[@akako-tan]

I LOVE TOUHOU

[@cchieffkiefbeff]

all this ufo makes me hopeful rural makai city esoteria will get requested next, we need to keep this train of weirdness up

[@Fawriel]

Touhou is a subcultural phenomenon that you can be an active fan of without even playing the games thanks to the creative fandom that ZUN openly encourages. The music is a big part of it, and the worldbuilding, just like the character writing, is very unique, flavorful, just deep enough to be fascinating and just vague and open enough to invite imagination and playing with the elements. The character designs are a good example of that: The designs are competent enough in themselves to be unique and instantly recognizable, but the canon execution drawn by ZUN himself is amateurish enough that two people can look at the same character and interpret her looking wildly different. Same for her characterization and everything. Same with the music, which is amazingly written but played through a kinda scratchy synthesizer sound. It invites you to do your own thing with the genius seed of material that is there. EDIT: Oh yeah, for context: These games were made entirely by ZUN, who sold them at conventions. It caught on in those doujin circles, i.e. circles of creative (fandom) people, and sparked that phenomenon. Again, because it invites that creativity. There’s a spark of brilliance there that makes you want to play with it.

[@dileblade7659]

To answer your question as to what keeps us coming back. It varies. Some like the music and just listen to it, though I'd say half the fanbase comes back from fan works. Fans can make touhou into anything cause of copyright or in zuns case, the very little he would copyright, allow fans to do near anything with touhou and it shows. You've only seen zun songs really. Step into the fanon of touhou, and you'll wonder how a fan, not a studio did this as you listen and watch. That is why it took off to. Fans weren't restricted into making there own thing, and zun let fans be fans without much copyright restrictions. And touhou is indy. Though in america it isnt mainstream, but in asia, especially japan and china oh boy its everywhere and i mean everywhere.

[@randommaster06]

Touhou 12 features a varied cast of characters who are tying to get their leader out of literal Hell. The cast is meant to be varied people working together, to the songs are less of a progression of a theme and more like an introduction to each character. Touhou 11 has the opposite structure where there's only one person causing trouble, but you are descending further underground with each stage. How connected everything is will change from game to game, however, stages 4-6 tend to be more connected.

[@Dukstless]

"literal hell" Makai is not Hell though. It's explicitly its own thing (the name literally reads 'Demon World', but demon has a different connotation in the East).

[@randommaster06]

@@Dukstless "The place where demons live" sounds like a pretty good description of Hell. I'm pretty sure Jesse isn't as concerned with Gensokyo's cosmological postal codes enough to care about the difference.

[@vicla5123]

Wait until he finds out that most stages are synced with the background music

[@LastRemote94]

When I played Touhou, I had to resist singing/humming the stage theme, else I will be dead :D Because the UFOs already very distracting, and the stage 5 boss is so damn hard

[@sm7467689]

my favorite stage bgm \o/

[@brickstonesonn9276]

There's plenty of Touhou spin offs. Its multi media. Fighting games, manga, novels, etc. But the *main* canon is the bullet hell games.

[@StormEyeB]

17:30 Both yes and no. Every game has it's own unique "feel" when it comes to the array of instruments used for its music and some of the types of effects it'll use, to the point where there are arrangements out there of people trying to adapt the theme from one game to match another, but every stage and boss stand out in their own ways and some can be outliers. Touhou 12 you could say has a somewhat jazzy and playful feel for most of the game, but the final boss theme, Cosmic Mind ~ Emotional Skyscraper, and the stage 6 theme before it are a pretty strong tone shift.

[@videogamescoverftw]

Theres quite a few reasons Touhou took off but I would say there are 3 main reasons 1. The music. Obvious but lots of fans of the touhou series are here for the music and it really has made its mark in gaming 2. The Worldbuilding. Touhou is set in a sectioned off part of the world where gods, yokai and mythological creatures can escape from modern humanity in a time where gods are no longer needed and creatures that harm humans would just be hunted. Its almost set up like a small utopia for these being of myths, religions and cultures scattered across the world. This sets it up a completely new style fantasy setting from the more traditional elves, dwarves, and magic setting but to a lot of people is just as appealing. 3. Probably the biggest reason, its free from copyright. ZUN, under almost any reasonable circumstances will not enforce copyright. If you want to make a fantasy game that takes place in a similar world or inspired by the world you dont even have to do the worldbuilding yourself, you can just use Gensokyo (the name of the region), call it a touhou fangame, include characters from the series, and you are allowed to sell it for profit. The more touhou fangames, the more fans the series gets. The more fans there are, the more fangames get made. In japan, if you want to start a band but don't have an audience, start as a touhou cover band. It guarantees you have an audience actively looking for the songs you play. A lot of big anime soundtrack bands started as touhou cover bands and released cd albums at comic events. The ability for the series to act as a sandbox and a tool for exposure just creates a completely different sense of community that really makes it something unique.

[@halinaqi2194]

The games all have their own sounds space style, and each set of games can be separated by an era where Zun used certain instrument styles and composing styles more often than others. Touhou 1-5 is PC 98, 6-12 are the more classic era sounding touhous, 13 had sounds pretty different compared to everything before it, 14 was when Zun started using these new drums and electric guitars, 15 very space sounding, 16 and 17 have those drums some ppl don't like lol, etc. Regardless, Zuns style is sort of unmistakable to recognize, as you can tell its him whenever you hear it, but listening to an older game will sound even different to newer ones.

[@Meocontuki]

In my opinion, what give Touhou its huge fanbase are the world building and the lax copyright policy. The limited amount of lore from the official works give fans a playground to satisfy their creativity and show their talents, while the copyright guidelines allow them to do -almost- whatever they want with the settings, the characters, the music, etc..., even selling fan-works. Other games can have some fan-arts, fan-fics, maybe some fan-music before Nintendo be like "You get a strike, you get a strike, everybody get a strike". Touhou have fan-everything, including fan-games and fan-anime series.

[@DerdOn0ner]

This music makes me wanna open up an Alkaizer stream 😂

[@beckanhaf]

I'm going to go against the grain and say that I don't recommend watching gameplay at the same time. Don't get me wrong, the music and visuals absolutely go together fantastically. However, danmaku games can be very visually busy/stimulating, so they would distract attention away from the music. It's hard enough to not miss all the details of the music since it's often just as busy. A testament to that, is the fact that in many Touhou reactions, it took you the 2nd loop to notice certain things. sidenote: random KZbin uploaders only recording 1 loop of longer tracks ironically results in less things being noticed (e.g. Clownpiece's theme).

[@Dukstless]

Touhou speedruns don't really exist in the standard way, since most of the game is autoscrolling. There are some parts where you can save on time, like boss fights, but not by that much. Now aiming for the highest score, that's the real deal. Trying to push the game to its limits, see how high you can push that number... And it varies from game to game, where not only each game works differently (in some games you'll intentionally die to restore your bombs for when they're needed, in others it might tank your score instead) but the numbers you're seeing will be different. In 6 the WR is like 800 million, in 5 it's about 214 million, but then you have 17 and 18 where turns out ten digits isn't enough to hold the score and certain characters can hit 9,999,999,990 before the game's end. Oh yeah and each combination of the four difficulties and available characters is its own leaderboard, as some characters simply can't score well (like how in 16, one of the combinations almost hits 9,999,999,990 in WR, while another barely breaks 4.2 billion) or how the reduced amount of bullets on lower difficulties also translates to less scoring potential.

[@nagabaiduri11]

I've listen to touhou for more than 10 yrs now I think, touhou 6 is the only touhou I've played as an attempt to get into the series. Though I've decided that bullet hell is not for me and not gonna lie I still don't know much about it despite playing it (I did played touhou 6 to its completion and beaten the insane difficulty). But touhou as a music genre is so ingrained to me now that I kept coming back to listen to it

[@FCTouhou]

Playing the games makes the songs 100 times better

[@brickstonesonn9276]

The reason why i like touhou is *because* its not samey. Touhou is the only bullet hell game I've played that felt like an actual *game*. Not to shit on other bullet hell games; but those always felt arcadey to me. It felt like all they had were gameplay and that's pretty much it. You're just a sci fi plane shooting other planes, maybe the background changes, but that's pretty much it. Touhou feels like an actual game. It has an atmosphere, a story, characters, etc. and the gameplay reflects that. It's kinda weird to say this about a bullet hell game; to me Touhou feels legitimately immersive. Each game has its own story and atmosphere, each stage has its own theme & feel based on the location and character in the story, and getting to the final boss feels like getting to the epic finale of an actual game(like dark souls for example).

[@bakedroyal_727]

there are multiple spinoff fighting games

[@christineannvalderrama9613]

Nice more touhou 🔥