Playing Touhou like an Arcade game

[Generalguy]

For many people here trying to get a 1cc, including myself, 2 hours of Touhou gameplay is actually 1h45 of ragequitting on the first two stages and 15 minutes of getting a good run and somehow completely screwing it up near the end. That's not exactly fun.

So I decided to see how good I would be if Touhou was an arcade game, where you can't restart if you die twice to midboss Rumia and have to try getting as far as possible to not waste your quarters. This forces you to actually be careful in the first stages, as you can't say "whatever, it'll just take about a minute to get back here if I have to restart".

If you want to try it, the rules are ONE attempt per game (per day maybe), on any difficulty, but try to pick something close to your skill level (don't pick Lunatic if you can't clear Easy). Then post it here if you wish.

My runs up to know :

EoSD Hard (First attempt ever, I tried Lunatic before for the lulz, but never Hard) :
Result : Game Over at Killing Doll. I don't know what's going on with me today. I could never read the path of diagonal bullets, which ended with me dying to bullets I was sure I was going to dodge. With three bombs in stock. Three times.

PCB Hard (Second attempt, first attempt had ended at Yuyuko after the third continue) :
Result : http://replays.gensokyou.org/download.php?id=7289 
Includes a capture of 50% Reflowering (is it easier than almost everything else Yuyuko has, or do I just suck on her other spellcards?)
Had never faced Stradivarius, which for now just looks like completely undodgeable crap, or Youmu's weird spinning bullets spellcards, and kinda sucked on stages 4 and 5 in general.

That's pretty nice for 1 hour of gameplay. Though those games' Stage 1 are easy to perfect, so they rarely cause ragequits. I'll try the other games later, I'm coughing too much right now.

[HakureiSM]

I keep telling myself to start doing this.

[Ghaleon]

I do this sometimes, where after many awful attempts and frusterated restarts on stage 2, tell myself no restarts, my next run is it, the imaginary crowd is watching, yada yada... I typically make it on the final boss.

[DracoOmega]

I actually fairly rarely restart, unless the death was really early and foolish (like ramming a bullet halfway through stage 1 or something). Sometimes I'm tempted to, if it was a rather annoying pointless death, but I just say "Let's see how far I get, anyway". Because, really, you can easily make up for a foolish early death by doing just a little bit better than normal on something down the line.  Besides, it's all practice, and that can't be a bad thing.

[Azinth]

If you want to really make it authentic, you should also commit suicide every time you deathbomb successfully. :V

Oh, and I actually did a run like this once before(that is, I died on stage 1 but kept going and 1cced anyway).  It's actually a really amusing run, even if it's not amazingly played by any means, and there's a Scarlet Gensokyo capture in it.

[Sen]

Just tried this with EoSD Lunatic. Hilariously terrible Stage 3, game overed on Colorful Typhoon.

For the record, it was a perfect first two stages followed by six deaths on Stage 3.

[Milkyway64]

I play like this all the time anyway. I've used stage practice very rarely and never restart unless it's Extra. I never rage quit either, since if a run starts going bad I just say screw it and continue anyways, continuing if necessary.

[Ghaleon]

I play like this all the time anyway. I've used stage practice very rarely and never restart unless it's Extra. I never rage quit either, since if a run starts going bad I just say screw it and continue anyways, continuing if necessary.

I always tell myself this is the best way to play because you're only screwing yourself over by not practicing the hard content as much as you could.

But that part of me says "you can't possibly hope to 1cc this with that shitty start noob, restart".

Of course if I'm playing on something other than lunatic (or hard for a Touhou I haven't played much of like SA or UFO), it doesn't matter.

[Aisha]

Arcade style is basically an economic approach to playing a game. The idea is that you're not supposed to continue because at the point where you lose all of your extends, the game has become too difficult for you, so you'll get more play time per quarter (or yen, rather) by starting over from the beginning, and eventually working up to the point where a single coin will net you 25-30 minutes of play time (1CC if you will). I can't really do this with Touhou games as I usually find the beginning three stages too uninteresting, but this is basically how I approach arcade games.

[Tonepoet]

For a moment, I thought this was going to be another Touhou arcade machine discussion. Really now though,  I don't think playing Touhou like an arcade game in this sense wouldn't exactly entail not restarting or even 1ccs. It'd entail wasting money every time you gave up or used a continue! To this end, I suggest making something like what some people would call a "swear jar." You know, where you cut a coin slot hole in the top of a jar and insert one every time you swear. Except instead of putting quarters in for swearing, you put quarters in for playing the game at all. One for every set of default lives you're allotted. Once the money is in there, you can no longer spend it on yourself, even for your basic needs: Just like an actual arcade!

So what do you do with the cash instead? Donate it to something; anything really. For added effect can put a little label on the jar designating the charity you want it to go to involving a character you like: It could say "Hakurei Shrine Donation Box," "Ran's Orphanage," "Cirno's Girlscout Cookies," "Mystia's Bird Sanctuary," "Patchouli's Library Contributions," "Keine's Museum," "Eirin's Hospital," "Sakuya's Tip Jar," "The Buy Zun a Beer Foundation" or whatever you want really. This way you can build money towards a specific equivalent real life cause and in the mean while make it seem like taking the money back would be like stealing from your favorite, hopefully providing sufficient encouragement for you you not to renege on the deal.

I guarantee you that if you take this challenge and follow through with it, you'll either get the desired end result of limiting your restarts or end up homeless and starving, hopefully having done something good to benefit the world all the while either way. If you take the challenge and don't follow through, well have fun being an absolute soulless monster and being sentenced by everybody's favorite Yama Sikieiki to hell. With failure to accept at all, I call baloney to the whole arcade accurate experience portion of this challenge, since without wasting some money on playing the game you're not emulating an arcade's system of play limitation at all and are instead following some imaginary self-imposed rules! Take your pick.

P.S. Darn... Looks like I was beaten to the punch for the general idea a bit. XD

[Ghaleon]

So I tried lunatic EoSD, haven't played that for some time. I bombed Cirno's opener for stages 1-2. I died with 2 or 3 bombs in stock on stage 3 from trash.. sigh. I suck so bad at stage 3 trash. I did ok on hong, had to bomb extreme color typhoon, did the rest though. I even managed to beat her last non card (that one always gets me on lunatic).

I did pretty good on stage 4... But patchy...oh god patchy. I mean I expected to suck at her, but t his was my worst patchy ever. She killed me like 3 times, and I actually used like 8 bombs on her too. it was absolutely disgraceful. My problem was that I bombed the spellcard before her second non directional laser attack. I mean JUUST before, and it really fucked up my "groove" with that one, so I actually bombed her second non card 3 times.. yes. pretty sad eh.

Then I got ownt on some spellcard or another, was failing so bad I capped emerald megalith, and died again on agni shine or whatever the hell its called. ugh. Stupid fireballs are scary.

Midboss sakuya was cheap, she was dancing on the bottom of the screen practically (well as low as she can go) the whole time, which makes that really hard for me IMO. I did pretty bad on her as a boss too, I mean not terrible for most people I guess, but when I was actually working on my first 1cc of EoSD, Sakuya was a boss I was particularly good at, I could normally beat her with no deaths and 3 bombs type deal.

Then remi was bad but not terrible. Thing is patchy and sakuya already was too much bad added up, so I couldn't afford to bad remi too, died on vampire illusion..with 3 bombs (stupid bullet spawned in me) *sob*.

[Helion]

Given my tendendcy to start downward spirals on the slightest mistake, I restart whenever I die on stage 1, and anything before a stage 2 mid-boss. If I restart enough, my confidence enters the downward spiral as well and I'll take a break.

[Bananamatic]

Arcade: 3 extends only

Psikyo challenge - 1 extra extend only, if you are caught in a spawning laser, you aren't allowed to move.

[Lybydose]

Tried IN Lunatic.  Completed FinalB at 1/3.

Oh man this run was interesting though:

I failed Comet on Earth.  COMET ON EARTH.  No, really.  I also managed to fail Event Horizon, INVISIBLE FULL MOON, and Kaguya's final non-card.

EDIT:  MoF Lunatic.  Was going really well until stage 4, where I proceeded to bomb and die to EVERYTHING.  Stages 5 was a bit better, and for stage 6 I had so many lives that I attempted captures on stuff I normally autobomb.  Still finished with 2 lives in stock.

EDIT2:  SA Lunatic.  Decided to use Reimu Bomb Everything (aka ReimuC).  Finished with 1 life in stock.  Stages 1-4 were pretty uneventful.  I somehow survived post stage 5 mid-boss pellet spam (because I didn't have enough power to bomb it), but then went through lots of bombs and lives on boss Orin.  Stage 6 sucked, and I ended up having to bomb Blazing Wheel just to not time it out.  Sucked hard at the first half of Utsuho, and ended up on my last life with no fragments.  Thankfully, everything else is really easy.

[Lloyd Dunamis]

Most of my playthroughs were no-restarts or something. Only did that several times in EoSD and IN Extra ._.

[ふねん1]

It's not like I want to die on the first few stages. Despite knowing that I can restart early on and not lose much time, I still try to play as best as I can, since I want that 1cc as soon as possible. I usually don't ragequit past Stage 2 unless I messed up so badly I know my chances of 1cc'ing the game are next to impossible.

I'm less strict when trying to clear modes with continues (more so with MoF onwards' continue system), since I expect to gameover anyway as I try to learn new properties of attacks. And let's face it, I won't always be successful at that.

[orinrin]

This concept works for some people, not so much for me though.  The only method I can use to 1CC anything right now is to constantly grind my skills and memorize every pattern during the later stages.  (I'm looking at you UFO.)

I tried doing a single run with no restarts on EoSD Normal with default lives and such and I managed to get to Sakuya before crumpling like a leaf in a maelstrom.  Mostly due to the fact that I screw up constantly during the early stages.

No restarting is harsh for a guy who can barely 1CC IN Normal.   :V

(Restarting also brings back my morale from whatever hole it dropped into after those 3 faildeaths in a row.)