Possibly-crazy stuff you didn't notice for ages: thread 3

[Clarste]

Didn't seem all that specific, since Marisa seems to be able to come back to that house. She fainted on her first venture, so I doubt she knows any specific path.

Marisa failed to return to Kasen's house, as revealed in a later chapter (she got lost and attacked by a tiger). She tried to, but never got there. Because Kasen changed her "password". And ZUN mentions in the SOPM interview that the Lunar Capital is similar, so yes. You have to follow a specific path or you'll never reach the destination. It's a form of magical security. Not perfect though, since Komachi could easily bypass it after Kasen changed it to stop Marisa. The Japanese uses a specific word "seiro" to describe it but it only comes up like 2-3 times in the dialog. And Kasen literally calls it her password on the final page joke of chapter 10.

So the implication is that the crow in CILR was following the "seiro" for the Lunar Capital that Yukari somehow figured out.

[GuppyForce]

The theme of stage 5 in IN, Cinderella Cage ~ Kagome, Kagome ~ actually has the tune for the Kagome, Kagome song incorporated into it.

Only realised this after finding out what Kagome, Kagome sounds like through playing Remember11

[Goldom]

The theme of stage 5 in IN, Cinderella Cage ~ Kagome, Kagome ~ actually has the tune for the Kagome, Kagome song incorporated into it.

Only realised this after finding out what Kagome, Kagome sounds like through playing Remember11

Neat, didn't know about that reference at all. Went to Wikipedia to find out, and they've got a recording of it there... pretty sure it's sung by Miku  :wat:.

Okay, I'll have a go too. But the only crazy thing about this is my own blindness:
For years now, I've thought MoF was Aya's first appearance.

I know. The games are numbered. I have no excuse, but I just never realized that not only was she introduced in PoFV, but that even STB came before her first normal game appearance. I know, numbered.  :fail:

[Chuckolator]

The large fairies in UFO Stage 1 shoot the same general pattern as some of the ones in stage 5, just with rice instead of arrows.

[cuc]

It's not something unnoticed, more like the elephant in the room.

The standard and extremely iconic Touhou loading message is 少女祈祷中 "The maidens are praying", a reference to the piano music A Maiden's Prayer. It has been endlessly parodied and referenced, and most people in East Asia's anime fandoms have seen it, whether they know about Touhou or not. Except in the Western fandom.

Because it generally appear overlapped with the English message "Now Loading...", the Western fandom by custom can ignore it without worrying about what it says, and the English fan translations by custom never translated it. Instead the iconic phrase for Touhou preparation is the Engrishy "girls are preparing, please watch warmly", which no doubt has been amusing people since when most games had no English patches and Western fans had to play the games without reading the text.

Among other things, "Winner of Life" and "Loser Dog", the victory / defeat declaration of PoFV has suffered the same fate. "Dead Parrot" is an awesome defeat message, but a flat "Winner" is no comparison to "Winner of Life".

I don't have any beef with the wonderful Western fandom and its translators; I'm only marvelling at yet another twist of fate.

[Starxsword]

So the "winner of life" thing, is it the same as what was mentioned in Inaba of Moon/Earth where they had "Winner in Life" for Suwako when Suwako thoroughly thrashed Reisen?

[cuc]

Yes, it is! (Inaba Ch. 13)

"Winner of life", "winner in life", "winner at life". The irony of the message should be clear enough. It's clever to give the players a koan every time to play your game. "Come on, it's just a game, an illusion; by the way, your earthly ambitions are also an illusion."

[Alfred F. Jones]

Been trying to learn PoDD's secrets. Was, rather. (Patchy stole Rikako's theme, btw.) More than half of the info on the wiki is dead wrong. In any event, here are some notes I took when watching one of my recordings. I don't know where to put them, so I'll put them here. For the curious.

If you notice any more things about PoDD, you should keep posting them. That interests me.

Kasen can control cryptids, right?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cryptids

THAT'S A LOT OF FAMILIARS. :getdown:

Oh my god, I just realized Kasen can control Reptoids. There's so much potential for hilarity here.

[Aba Matindesu!]

"Winner of life", "winner in life", "winner at life". The irony of the message should be clear enough. It's clever to give the players a koan every time to play your game. "Come on, it's just a game, an illusion; by the way, your earthly ambitions are also an illusion."

I just realized that the large fairies at the start of UFO stage 1 could be streamed; I used to think they were random barrages I could only hope to survive.

[Zil]

If you notice any more things about PoDD, you should keep posting them. That interests me.

Well, something I just noticed. Reimu's theme at 0:19 (and again at 0:30) sounds identical to the start of Chiyuri's theme.

I've also learned that there are a few frames of invincibility just after you use a charge attack, (or spell attack of course.)

Or if you want to read something ridiculous - http://www.shrinemaiden.org/forum/index.php/topic,12400.msg833307.html#msg833307

[Alfred F. Jones]

Or if you want to read something ridiculous - http://www.shrinemaiden.org/forum/index.php/topic,12400.msg833307.html#msg833307

Ellen - Fuck Ellen. There's not much to know about her, though she has the mysterious property of dying much more quickly than any other character. I think it's from her slow movement paired with her utterly useless lvl1.

Ahahahah, lost it. Clearly this means Ellen needs to use her cat as a bomb to become a more effective fighter.

[fondue]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3vBKW7nybU has a slight similar melody to 3rd eye...

[Zil]

Uh oh, more PoDD crap incoming. Maybe a bit more technical this time.

"Either her boss is healthier than everyone else's or it becomes invincible while teleporting..." Something I said once. I've actually found the answer, oddly enough.

So, I knew that the wiki's info about shot damage being different for each character was complete garbage, and I finally decided to go in there and edit it, but didn't want to do so without being completely sure that I was right. So I went into match mode and did a ton of messing around. I'm very happy to say that I actually figured out quite a bit. I'll just copy and paste from the notes I was taking.

~

Reimu      Bomb + 10 shots
Mima      Bomb + 11 shots
Marisa      Bomb + 11 shots
Ellen      Bomb + 5 shots
Kotohime   Bomb + 10 shots
Kana      Bomb + 6 shots
Rikako      Bomb + 11 shots
Chiyuri      
Yumemi      Bomb + 20 shots

Marisa's Laser (with a full hit) = 18 shots (Found by lasering Yumemi after a bomb, then needing two more hits.)

Kana is killed by 2 Lasers + 13 shots = 36 + 13 = 49

So bomb power must be 43. Then boss HP is...

Reimu           = 53
Mima      = 54
Marisa      = 54
Ellen      = 48
Kotohime   = 53
Kana      = 49
Rikako      = 54
Chiyuri      = 68
Yumemi      = 63

Chiyuri's health was found by bombing, lasering, and then still needing 7 shots. Contrary to what I expected, she does not avoid bomb damage by teleporting. Apparantly she actually is healthier than everyone else.

- Exploding enemies (most likely) do not damage the boss.

- Blue fireballs have 3 health. Red ones have 4.

- Chiyuri's charge attack does 24 damage. She shoots 8 shots, so 3 damage each. (Found by using it on her own boss attack after bombing, then still needing 2 shots.) It is reassuring that it worked out to be a multiple of 8, since that's exactly what you'd expect.
:derp: No, that's 23 then. I'm shit at math, apparently. So yeah, there must be a mistake somewhere along the lines.

~

Ahh, poor Ellen~ Anyway, this is fascinating to me. I would have guessed that every boss had the same health, perhaps boosted by the boss level. Instead, the reality is that each character's boss attack has a specific amount of health which never changes no matter what the difficulty setting or boss level. It's strange really, and I have to wonder about ZUN's reasoning in making it that way. In some cases it makes sense. You might expect Ellen to have low health since her boss attack is insane and hard to hit, but why Kana? She's already one of the weaker characters, so why give her a wimpy boss? Then there's Chiyuri and Yumemi. Of course, you'd expect the final bosses to be healthier, to help make them a cut above the average characters, but then shouldn't Yumemi be the healthiest? Chiyuri already does a pretty damn good job of being impossible to hit in the first place. Why does she need the most health on top of that? 


Ah, whatever. Probably a few discrepancies in there (getting a pair of good laser hits on Kana is a bitch), despite Chiyuri's charge attack sort of tying things together like that.

[game2011]

I think I only realized yesterday that Mima's outfit in the original game resembles a schoolgirl uniform.  This never got caught on as a meme or something, I believe...

[Arcorann]

On reading Zil's PoDD research I couldn't help but take out Cheat Engine and check for myself:

Nominal Boss HP:
Ellen/Kana: 90HP
Reimu/Mima/Marisa/Kotohime/Rikako: 110HP
Yumemi: 130HP
Chiyuri: 140HP

One pair of shots does 2HP damage. Bomb damage is 90HP, sometimes 89HP. Not sure why the difference occurs. I saw the 1HP difference when I was checking Chiyuri's charge shot damage (48HP total) as well. Weird.

[Goldom]

If gameplay stuff is okay-

I somehow just figured out how to capture Knockout in Three Steps. I've always, always failed it, even on normal, because I assumed I had to be above the bursting outer ring, or it'd spawn into me. This left me never having enough room to avoid the 1st and 2nd as they exit. Then I miscalculated and waited too low, and realized that prevents it from spawning at all, making the rest trivial.  :fail:

[Zil]

On reading Zil's PoDD research I couldn't help but take out Cheat Engine and check for myself:

Oh wow. Thanks for getting a definitive answer on that. I thought it was strange that so many seemed to be just 1 point off from from the rest. I do have to wonder about Ellen/Kana's HP being just as much as the bomb damage though, because I'm certain I've never seen them die from bomb damage alone. Since, from what I did at least, they seemed to take around 5 less shots to kill than the others, with each shot taking 2HP, is it possible that they actually have 100HP instead of 90?

Then I miscalculated and waited too low, and realized that prevents it from spawning at all, making the rest trivial.  :fail:

While that's true on Normal (and maybe Hard?) the outer bullets actually will spawn right on top of you on Lunatic, so you have to burrow into the inner rings.
And I should think gameplay stuff is okay, seeing as that's how the thread started.

[Arcorann]

Oh wow. Thanks for getting a definitive answer on that. I thought it was strange that so many seemed to be just 1 point off from from the rest. I do have to wonder about Ellen/Kana's HP being just as much as the bomb damage though, because I'm certain I've never seen them die from bomb damage alone. Since, from what I did at least, they seemed to take around 5 less shots to kill than the others, with each shot taking 2HP, is it possible that they actually have 100HP instead of 90?

Yeah, that was a typo, it should be 100HP. I still wonder about the random 1HP damage variation though...

[cuc]

The standard and extremely iconic Touhou loading message is 少女祈祷中 "The maidens are praying", a reference to the piano music A Maiden's Prayer.

I forgot to mention that the message is "The fairies are warring" in Fairy Wars.

Among other things, "Winner of Life" and "Loser Dog", the victory / defeat declaration of PoFV has suffered the same fate. "Dead Parrot" is an awesome defeat message, but a flat "Winner" is no comparison to "Winner of Life".

It's really more than a cool one-liner.

To elaborate, the theme of PoFV is judgement, an evaluation of one's life. "Winners" and "losers" in life are labels a materialistic society use to evaluate people. They fit the theme. The score display after each match is called "Your Additional Value", which is another Japanese buzzword about things that separate the winners from the losers.

With all due respect to translators, another one that really should have been kept is UFO's high score marker on the game interface. It's called 億万長者 "Billionaire", in keeping with UFO's gods of fortune theme. Touhou is full of witty thematic naming like that.

[cuc]

Remember that boring and pedantic post I made about "Spirit Strikes"? I just discovered that the first time "Spirit Strike" appears in Windows canon is not in IaMP, but in PCB.

When you were in Shinra Kekkai / Supernatural Border mode, and either pressed the bomb key or collided with a bullet, causing bullets on screen to be converted into cherry points - that's a Spirit Strike.

[Goldom]

Well thanks to another thread, I just realized what I thought were just big balls in Kogasa's cards are supposed to be the tops of umbrellas.  :X

[cuc]

Looking at Yukari's IaMP character design sheet has confirmed my long-held suspicion: the qipao tabard + gown + tied hair combo (IaMP and IN gameplay) is her combat uniform, while the purple dress is her casual dress.

ちょっとボスらしく戦闘モードに。（式神使役モード）
In battle mode, kind of like a boss. (Shikigami Deployment Mode)

Note that she got changed into the purple dress in IaMP's Bad Ending 2 which takes place after you fighting her. She also did that in IN Border Team ending.

Of course this distinction has been muddied by Hirasaka Makoto, who always drew Yukari in combat dress for his canon artwork. Most fan artists just draw whatever they like.
Setting aside Hirasaka, this has implications:

1) Yukari was seriously prepared for battle when going uninvited to the feast. To fight Suika, not some random heroine-wannabe, we can presume. This makes it even more ironic when Suika didn't get to fight Yukari in her route (which is canon). Here either Yukari decided against intervening, or other characters already defeated Yukari before coming to Suika. Given that Yuyuko is also not among those characters, I'd say the former is likely - more likely than Yukari being accidentally beaten up 7 times in a row, anyway.

2) Unsurprisingly, Yukari never had any intention to fight throughout the Second Genso-Lunar War.

[nintendonut888]

It just hit me that the perspective in Touhou games makes no sense. The player viewpoint is a 45 degree angle, which makes sense for the most part and with most sprites, but the boss sprites are frontal; they are modeled as if they are looking in the player's direction. That makes absolutely no sense and now my head hurts trying to make sense of it. @_@

EDIT: In the end though, the only perspective that makes sense is that it's Touhou, and the wacky perspectives give the whole thing a strange 3d effect.

[Chuckolator]

The dark greens spell Marisa, but it's out of order. <_<

[Shikieiki]

Well thanks to another thread, I just realized what I thought were just big balls in Kogasa's cards are supposed to be the tops of umbrellas.  :X

Same. =/

[The Greatest Dog]

So the part leading up to the climax in "Septette for the Dead Princess" begins at ~1:08.
108.

I... started looking for other instances in ZUN's songs. Nothing in U.N. Owen, which 2 x 1:08 = 216 = 6 x 6 x 6...
Except it doesn't happen, so.

[I have no name]

The dark greens spell Marisa, but it's out of order. <_<

 
 

[Aazumin]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3vBKW7nybU has a slight similar melody to 3rd eye...

Holy ducksworthington crap. That is creepy.

How can I still have played DK64 and never noticed that? I feel a little lacking in perceptive abilities, now.

[Delfigamer]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3vBKW7nybU has a slight similar melody to 3rd eye...

Oh, you possibly don't know, ZUN's music mostly sounds like soviet songs.
My grandma thinks the same. About 3rd eye. But she failed to remebmer words.
Hm...
________

Somehow Bach's Menuet resembled me Aya's theme. :/

[Alfred F. Jones]

Noticed this while watching someone else's 1cc replay:
Several of the bosses in SA carry around some kind of distortion effect with them. Like a heat haze sphere, or something. Utsuho does too, but she doesn't get it upon showing up like the others; it's only once she starts her battle.

Satori's stained-glass windows in the Palace of the Earth Spirits are decorated with birds, but I didn't notice any cats.