Touhou origin question

[Ghaleon]

I totally don't know which forum this belongs to, this one is my best guess.

ANYWAY. I know Zun is the creator of Touhou 6+, that being EoSD and future games (with some artistic help as I understand for the fighting games...why btw, does Zun respect fighting games more than shooter games? Does he think art is more important in them? I don't know). However I read somewhere or another than Touhou was created by a group of college students or something back in its pc-98 days. What was Zun's role back then? Was he just the programmer? The artist? The designer? Did he share this responsibility with anybody else? While I understand that Zun deserves the most credit for the brilliance that is Touhou, I want to know about its origins more. Back in PC98 days, the graphics are so bad, character gender really didn't mean squat (even artistically), So sometimes I wonder if the wokiness such as Touhou's all female cast is something invented by Zun himself, or some kind of team effort.

[shadowbringer]

I'd say there's not enough information about how much participation did ZUN/his colleagues have, and the people who were with him haven't said anything about it as well.

Regarding the fighting games, iirc ZUN said that he wanted to make fighting games, as they were popular back then (when he thought about making them.. dunno exactly what this "when" means), and it seems that the characters had to be redrawn during IaMP's production (citation needed), dunno if ZUN cared for competitive gameplay, but he apparently said he wanted the characters to move energetically through the play field. (Suika and Tenshi's design became a bit different in the games, compared to the original concept, which was more complex in both cases -- perhaps they were a bit simplified in the games)