|
Mystlord
United States10264 Posts
On September 13 2009 04:37 Jayme wrote:Show nested quote +On September 13 2009 02:57 Mystlord wrote:On September 12 2009 23:15 Jayme wrote:On September 12 2009 13:43 Licmyobelisk wrote:On September 12 2009 12:42 Jayme wrote:On September 12 2009 12:18 Mystlord wrote:
So has anyone here 1cced UFO Hard/Lunatic yet? Syou is still killing me like no tomorrow T_T.
I 1 CC'd Lunatic after about 3 days of playing to get used to the lasers. I always sucked at lasers so the curved ones give me loads of issues. UFO quite literally THROWS lives at you though... You can average 3-4 lives per stage if you really want to so it's pretty stupidly easy to 1 CC. haven't got past stage 4 and beyond (still playing normal mode) but damn too much projectiles to get the star from thoses darn UFO's! Any advice? Playing 12.3 Btw! It's just straight practice man. You'll seem to hit a wall when you try to advance to hard (at least I did) but just keep practicing and dodging because that much more intuitive. It took me a long while to progress to Hard from normal because Hard is the first difficultly level where you truly can't just hug the bottom of the screen. Personally I just bombed the shit out of all the hard levels in the later Touhou's so that I could just use practice mode with 10 lives to practice dodging. Eventually you'll start beating the levels only dying once or so. Go back to normal and own it so you can see the progress you made. I personally avoid Reimu though because while her hitbox is smaller it kinda... well handicaps you if you want to play other characters because that 1 pixel difference is actually quite huge I personally find Hard harder than normal because of all the extra spell cards that get thrown at you. One of the more painful spell cards I found was the addition of Mystical Flower Vine to Meiling's arsenal. Damn that card is hard  UFO throws everything at you  . It's probably to make up for the insane difficulty later on though. Stages 1-3 are a breeze, Stage 4 it starts to get hard... Stages 5 and 6 are eeevilll. Jayme: You 1cced UFO Lunatic? Congrats dude, there's only like 5 players who've done it so far
And yeah, it's straight practice to memorize the stages and then it's pure dodging the bullets from there D: I find this plain unlikely honestly. Either people just haven't been telling the entire online community ( I find this pretty freaking likely) or something because I'm not even that good at all. I don't frequent the Touhou community boards because I don't go for world records and all. I just found UFO threw a billion lives at you. There are plenty of players just on Youtube that shit all over my skills like it's nothing.
Forgot the word "Western". Japanese players have pretty much all 1cced the damn thing, but so far, there's only been 5 or so confirmed Western players 1ccing UFO Lunatic. Half of the stuff on youtube are stolen from the already existing replays.
|
Well, you can see if the footage is a replay or not by looking at the lower right corner of the play screen (where your character is shooting and everything is going on, not the score/life/bomb/graze/etc screen). If there's a number, it's a replay. If not, it's live action.
|
Vatican City State1650 Posts
Um. How do I get this game? :O and do you just play for the fun of dodging bullets? Are there english patches if at all?
|
On September 13 2009 08:14 orgolove wrote:
Um. How do I get this game? :O and do you just play for the fun of dodging bullets? Are there english patches if at all?
Games are sold at Comiket in Japan usually as far as I know, but most Western players just pirate it. Demos are free. Yes, there are English patches; didn't you read some of the posts in the first page? But it's not like you need an English patch for this kind of game anyway, as long as you can navigate the menus enough to start playing.
---
Maybe I'm trolling this thread (and I'm sorry to upset anybody, as it's not my intention), but it's my personal opinion that this series gets more attention than it deserves on the basis of how good the games really are as shmups. This is a crude comparison that doesn't go very far, but I'd call it the Final Fantasy of shmups, just in that respect. Sure, it's amazing that one guy--a former Taito employee IIRC?--made the games himself, and it's probably true that some of the popularity comes from certain communities digging the lolis, but what edge does the game have in terms of the game mechanics or design? I don't mean to start a war here, but do any of the fans here care to take this issue on? Anyhow I don't want to tell anybody what they should be enjoying--just asking for opinions.
|
As far as a SHUMP goes it can be further categorized as "bullet-hell" which mean that the core of the game is dodging lots and lots of bullets. AFAIK the latest game was criticized as being "curvy lasers and nothing else", which tells you that the fanbase does indeed find alot of the attacks interesting. Personally I feel he's done a pretty good job of making bosses that attack you with patterns that not only look interesting, but are interesting to dodge.
Which brings us to another point I feel Touhou stands out - the attacks themselves are visually appealing. He takes the effort to put in alot of extraneous bullets for aesthetics. Playing a SHUMP means staring at lots of bullets, and Touhou makes it so that they're pretty to look at.
Also, he's done a really good job on music - one of the biggest reasons Touhou is so popular is the music. His songs have really good feel to them, and support his game very well. On top of that, he is in general what i feel to be a good composer, so his music stands out even if taken out of context of the game.
|
Mystlord
United States10264 Posts
tyr: Videos are rarely recorded in live action anymore since Stage Practice can also be saved as replays now.
orgolove: I'm prohibited from providing any real links, but there are now english patches for every Touhou game (UFO's came out a few days ago), and you can generally find most of what you're looking for on the web if you add the word "torrent" *wink wink*
Myrmidon: You raise a good point, but while the Touhou series never really introduces a new element of gameplay that's really eye opening (like Ikaruga's color system), the patterns that it introduces are extremely fun to play against, and in fact, the difficulty of actually clearing these patterns without dying (like Virtue of Wind God from MoF or Hourai Elixer of IN), or even timing these patterns out (basically you survive against the patterns until a timer runs out, with no mistakes) always keeps us coming back for more. In some ways, it is very similar to FF (such as the popularity of its music and characters, though Touhou takes it to a whole new level), but what sets it apart in terms of gameplay is replayability, difficulty, and the aesthetic value really. In fact, Zun introduced a new element in his patterns in UFO, which is lasers splitting apart into bullets. If you play the game, you might get sick of it, but it leads to some extremely cool patterns, which are best shown in the Extra Stage Boss Fight.
+ Show Spoiler [Youtube Video of the Battle] +
There isn't really any other series that has shown us the creativity and dedication that ZUN has for the series. Of course, recent shmups will always have pretty graphics and perhaps interesting new gameplay mechanics, but they'll never have the aesthetic value of Touhou.
And the game itself is damn hard on Lunatic Makes us want to beat it so badly D:
|
F Yeah Touhou! UFO has the best music of the bunch, ZUN has really improved. A Tiny Tiny Clever Commander is my fave!
|
I've posted a similar argument in the past about the popularity of Touhou in another thread, I guess I'll just recap it quickly to explain its popularity in Japan. While the game itself has merits as Kaneh and Mystlord both brought up, the Japanese doujin culture is really what allowed the game to grow and become ever more popular. By providing a compelling skeletal story and insisting on letting the game and its associated contents remain as doujin material, ZUN has essentially created an open source setting of a world and music. While that would only apply to a small amount of the Western hype for the series, it does give Touhou a particularly devoted following and consequently great hype.
Honestly, I can't think of anything else that has come close to what Touhou has accomplished in terms of the outside input on a fictional universe, the fact that ZUN is willing to incorporate some of the most interesting stuff into the official character settings (iirc IMaMP started without his endorsement, and only obtained it during development when it caught his attention) really adds a lot of energy toward it.
|
Mystlord
United States10264 Posts
On September 13 2009 11:45 Ecael wrote:
I've posted a similar argument in the past about the popularity of Touhou in another thread, I guess I'll just recap it quickly to explain its popularity in Japan. While the game itself has merits as Kaneh and Mystlord both brought up, the Japanese doujin culture is really what allowed the game to grow and become ever more popular. By providing a compelling skeletal story and insisting on letting the game and its associated contents remain as doujin material, ZUN has essentially created an open source setting of a world and music. While that would only apply to a small amount of the Western hype for the series, it does give Touhou a particularly devoted following and consequently great hype.
Honestly, I can't think of anything else that has come close to what Touhou has accomplished in terms of the outside input on a fictional universe, the fact that ZUN is willing to incorporate some of the most interesting stuff into the official character settings (iirc IMaMP started without his endorsement, and only obtained it during development when it caught his attention) really adds a lot of energy toward it.
Well he was asking about the game itself, but Ecael does bring up a good point in terms of why Touhou has gained such a following. The sheer amount of doujin work that has been done for the game is absolutely astounding. Aside from the official games, at least 40 or 50 additional doujin games for Touhou have been released, and many more to come. Since the first real attention to the series came in 2002 with EoSD, (2003 Comiket was when the first real Touhou doujin work started to come out), and assuming a 1 - 3 year production cycle for each of the games (depending on the game), that's very impressive for a 7 year span.
You also have to consider the amount of animated videos, music videos, remixes, written material, etc in the Japanese community. On Nico Nico, at least 70% of the videos are Touhou related. I'm not sure how big Touhou is on pixiv.net (the Japanese version of deviantart), but you can bet that it's very, very high. In terms of doujin work... Too many to list. The number of English translated works alone totals up to around 550+. And that's a small portion of the amount of doujins out there.
A lot of this is, in addition to the points Ecael brought up, the complete lack of will ZUN makes towards anyone trying to violate the copyright that he has on the series. I shudder to think the amount of money he would make if he sued every single doujin group that tried to make money off of Touhou. The source material that he gives the doujin groups is also extremely high quality. Aside from maybe his MoF and SA art, and some of his EoSD art too, his art is very well done and relatively high quality. In terms of the characters, he has given them little to no characterization, and the few details that he does give is immediately jumped upon by the community (such as Marisa's thieving, Cirno's immaturity, etc). The low amount of characterization means that doujin groups have the ability to give any character a completely new personality without feeling like they're breaking from canon. If you've seen how different Reimu has been portrayed across various doujin circles, you'll see what I mean. On the topic of the characters, the sheer number of them (a total of 113 at the last count, although only 70 or so are actually drawn or used as subject material) allows for complex character interactions, and the fact that many of them only appear in one game also allows artists to imagine what would happen when similar characters interact from across games (Cirno and Utusho is the one that pops into my mind first, Sakuya and Youmu came next).
Finally, the music of the various games are extremely popular, most likely due to their... well... genius. Given a year to compose about 20 tracks that are completely different from each other and are suited to the character that they represent, I think my head would explode. But ZUN has somehow been able to do it each and every time, and I can really only think of one time where he kind of plagiarized (Heian Alien from UFO and U.N. Owen was her? from EoSD). Apart from (what I perceive as), impossibility of the task, the tracks that he's composed are extremely well done, and the style that he takes with each game has significantly changed over the years. You hear a very basic, cut down, 16 bitish version of music from EoSD, then he changed to a rather different, but much more fleshed and complex out style (with TRUMPETS! ~His overuse of trumpets have had mixed reviews from the community). But I think apart from the complexity of his music, their allure comes from these associations that they have with each and every character. I think any Touhou fan would agree that almost every, if not every, track he composes tells something revealing about the character or stage in question, and it's this element of his music that makes it so appealing. It's a completely different feel from Final Fantasy because while in Final Fantasy the music supplements the characters, the music really completes the characters in Touhou. In terms of why people really love to remix/rearrange the music, I personally feel that it's because they have a chance to define the character/stage in question through their music. At least that's the case for all good remixes. Some just miss the point and remix to remix, and hit way off the mark with their remixes. I guess it's appealing to some people, I just don't like those kinds :/
Example:
+ Show Spoiler +
"I'm sorry, but I think you missed the point of the stage music there. Did you even play the game or read the story?" is what I wanted to say, but to each his own. The castanets did it for me. I stopped listening after that. They work sometimes, but just not there... The beginning and end were fine it was just... never mind.
I think this post came out too long. 90% of people: SKIP! or wtf how'd you type this much on a stupid game? Oh well.
|
I shudder to think the amount of money he would make if he sued every single doujin group that tried to make money off of Touhou.
Zero. A lost cause, impossible. It is a different culture, and copyright simply doesn't quite work that way. You can enforce cease and desist, but you can't make money off it. When doujin groups make money on that scale, they turn commercial, Type-Moon anyone?
|
Mystlord
United States10264 Posts
On September 13 2009 12:48 Ecael wrote:Show nested quote +I shudder to think the amount of money he would make if he sued every single doujin group that tried to make money off of Touhou. Zero. A lost cause, impossible. It is a different culture, and copyright simply doesn't quite work that way. You can enforce cease and desist, but you can't make money off it. When doujin groups make money on that scale, they turn commercial, Type-Moon anyone?
Haha I was just using that as an expression for the amount of doujin material that's come off of it. Perhaps saying how much money THEY would lose would have been a better expression? ^_^
|
Honestly? Probably not all that much, it is good to make some money off cons from sales of doujin product, but it is just a pecking order of small->large->professional. The structure looks more like one of promotion toward a field you want to work in rather than one that you can make a steady living on. If we start counting every third party merchandise though I think it'll start to add up to something...
|
Mystlord
United States10264 Posts
On September 13 2009 13:16 Ecael wrote:
Honestly? Probably not all that much, it is good to make some money off cons from sales of doujin product, but it is just a pecking order of small->large->professional. The structure looks more like one of promotion toward a field you want to work in rather than one that you can make a steady living on. If we start counting every third party merchandise though I think it'll start to add up to something...
OKAY OKAY OKAY. It was just an expression.
To steer this in another direction... How come Stage 5 bosses are either harder/even in difficulty or stupidly easier than the Stage 6 bosses? Sakuya was an evil Stage 5 boss and Remilia wasn't that much better, Rin was just evil and Utusho wasn't too bad, and Syou who is just stupidly hard, and Byakuren is okay. Youmu was cake compared to Yuyuko, Reisen was even easier compared to Kaguya, and Sanae was even even easier compared to Kanako.
|
Hm, thanks for the replies. Think no more of the Final Fantasy reference--that was just me saying that I thought the series has unwarranted attention (in the case of FF, most of the cause I would attribute to the timing of FF7 and its presentation). I knew there were derivative doujin works for Touhou but was unaware of the scale of the following, so I guess the characters/style/music/etc.'s popularity speak for themselves.
From what I gather, though, Touhou games in general are fairly easy for the genre? I'm not a good shmupper, and I took only a couple/few hours to 1CC on normal a couple of them (granted, they were the easiest ones e.g. MoF). I know Lunatic is a whole different matter, but it doesn't stack up to other game hard modes or N-loops. And replay value is kind of inherent in any of the traditional arcade genres.
I'll leave with hopefully a more interesting question/poll:
Poll: What do you use to play?
(Vote): Keyboard
(Vote): Gamepad
(Vote): Stick
If stick or pad, which type?
|
|
|
Mystlord, i've noticed you seem to have a lot of Touhou pictures/wallpapers (looking at the desktop thread ..).
Where do you get all these ? I really need to get a touhou picture folder. Some guy I knew had 10gb of these.
|
Does anyone know why every game following Imperishable Night (TH08), ZUN has taken out spellcard practice, multiple endings and Last Words? Seems like an odd thing to do, introducing generic features that everyone loves and then taking them away. I for one desperately want a spellcard practice feature. It's so aggravating having to play through an entire stage just to practice a boss's spellcard once.
On September 18 2009 05:51 tyr wrote:
Mystlord, i've noticed you seem to have a lot of Touhou pictures/wallpapers (looking at the desktop thread ..).
Where do you get all these ? I really need to get a touhou picture folder. Some guy I knew had 10gb of these.
You could try Danbooru/Gelbooru or 4chan's /jp/, though you should be warned that there are plenty of NSFW pictures at both locations.
|
Multiple ending still exists after a fashion, not sure what you might be talking about there. No idea about the others though unfortunately.
|
On September 18 2009 08:30 Ecael wrote:
Multiple ending still exists after a fashion, not sure what you might be talking about there. No idea about the others though unfortunately.
I believe that by "multiple endings" he means the two versions of the level 6 of IN and of course, Eirin/Kaguya.
As for the answer, I'm not really sure, but from what I understand, Spell Practice, while being awesome, made the game pretty easy, even on harder difficulty levels, precisely because you could take one particular spellcard and play it over and over again until you can pass it without any problems. So if it took you 200 tries, in a another game, it would have meant 200 runs.
I suggest you try Shoot the Bullet (th9.5) for a "spell practice only" game. Probably the hardest Touhou so far, also.
|
So.... all (maybe not all, but like.. half?) of those doujin trancecore albums I have are collections of remixes of themes from some of these games? I wouldn't know where to look to verify this, but I think this is the case. o,o
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT
