Your Touhou Career

[Krimmydoodle]

I've played Touhou for about 16 months, starting around the beginning of December 2008.  At least, that's when I started taking it seriously.  The first time I played it was around August of that year, but I just tried it, went "that's neat", and forgot about it for a while.  At this time, I had no shmup experience aside from being able to 8cc Ikaruga.

As for what got me into Touhou, I met bjw on another forum/IRC channel, where I saw some of his Touhou videos and was completely blown away by things like a 1D1B SA Extra run and a 1D1B SA S6 run, which were holyfuckawesome.  Early on in my career, I often referred to his videos as well as Kefit's and Fallen's for inspiration and to pick up on techniques.

Since I started in December, I started off in Touhou with a bang, playing it far too much over the course of school's winter break.  I started off on Normal and worked my way up to Hard during the three-week break, and soon forced myself into Lunatic as a psychotic training program for Hard, pulling a fluke capture of VoWG within a month of playing.  Within two months, I'd had all of the main windows games on Hard 1cc'd and scored my first Lunatic 1cc on MoF (7 deaths, 48 bombs, 5 spells captured!).  It wasn't long until I had a handful of Lunatic 1ccs under my belt and I started going for perfect stage runs.

Toward the end of February (three months in if you don't feel like counting), I managed a 1DNB run of MoF Stage 6 (failed not VoWG, not SoR, but noncard 3...), and started grinding that.  I quickly burned myself out though, and found myself on a two-month Touhou break.  At some point, I started playing MegaMari, which brought me back to Touhou in time for the summer.

Since then, I've been playing fairly steadily, not too often but still enough to see myself through new accomplishments.  Most of my goals at this point consist of getting perfect runs of assorted stages (PCB4, IN4B, SA4-Suika, UFO4, and SA5 come to mind, all of which have had 1DNB runs).  Occasionally I'll try to pull a 1cc in a game with a new character, although that has somewhat stagnated because I'm usually too lazy to do full-game runs.

I should probably stop reminiscing and go to class now.

[Alfred F. Jones]

How long have you played Touhou for?

I remember my first interest in actually playing the games was the day MoF full was released, whenever the hell that was. Ah, just checked: Touhou Wiki says that was August 17, 2007. Sounds about right.

Describe your challenges in Touhou, whether exterior or interior. (Had to move out of country, lost computer, Yuugi being a bitch, etc.) Also mention any ragequits or moments of victory that you've had, no matter how embarrassing.

Lack of interest in playing games. I don't like games very much. >_> And because it was my first game, it was also my first shmup. THAT was great fun.

I can't think of any ragequits off the top of my head-- except EoSD, where if I die once in the first three stages, I ragequit.

Exterior: I play using Windows Vista.
Interior: I suck at dodging. I used to not bomb enough, but I've gotten over that.

Oh, and as a random bit of trivia, I didn't play SA full for months after its release. I just didn't want to. And when I did play, I used MarisaB and died constantly until Drake made the Yama patch for SA, and I cleared (normal) on my first attempt.

You can also describe your goals in Touhou if you want.

To not die

Describe your playing style.

I ignore points, but I won't turn down point items if they float by. I don't have a shot type preference. I bomb a lot. I enjoy narrating my own escapades. Nothing too interesting.

EDIT: I nearly forgot. I do actually have a Touhou goal, and it is this, my new years' resolution: To beat all the extra stage bosses this year!

[GMOFucker: Makin' GMOs To Fuck 'Em]

How long have you played Touhou for?
Since fall 2008 or so.

When did you start?
People I know on another forum were playing SWR so I decided to as well! Then I started playing the actual danmaku games too later.

Describe your challenges in Touhou, whether exterior or interior.
Overcoming portforwarding for SWR/Soku :V And I still suck at the danmaku games, so yeah.

You can also describe your goals in Touhou if you want.
I dunno lol
I would like to learn how to not suck at playing Sanae in 12.3 some day, though.

Describe your playing style.
It's dumb and I die a lot.

[nintendonut888]

I began playing Touhou November 30, 2007. I started with the MoF demo, and later moved on to EoSD, working my way through the games.

Challenges? Having played every Touhou to the bone and 1ccing them all on lunatic, there are too many horrible accidents to count. I've never ragequitted on any goal though, seeing them all through to the end (except for PoFV because lol). I also formely had problems due to playing Touhou on a very old computer, but those have since been solved.

I suppose another challenge would be dealing with the stigma of being a lunatic. People tend to be very critical of your accomplishments when you aren't 100% modest about it. I've run into many issues about this...

My goals? I've done pretty much everything Touhou has to offer, so my goal would have to be...to continue having fun!

My playing style would be to not care about score, and to go for survival. I rely on my reflexes to dodge and to know when I have to bomb. Don't be afraid to bomb if something is too hard.

[Sapz]

How long have you played Touhou for?
Since... around Christmas 2008, I think? Something like that.

When did you start?
Started with a friend of mine finding a 'crazy maid fighting game', as he called it (it was IaMP), and playing that with me for a while. Then of course I had to research what I was actually playing. Cue finding Donut's GameFAQs thread, and everything just led on from there.

Describe your challenges in Touhou, whether exterior or interior.
First thing I did was EoSD Normal; that only took a week or so. The first real difficulty I had was EoSD Extra, which took me the best part of a month to clear and upped my skill by a decent amount - most of the clears came pretty fast after that. Pretty smooth sailing for a while, until all the Hard modes were done and EoSD Lunatic was next on the list. That took... quite a lot of effort. Many, many game overs on Scarlet Gensokyo ensued. Again, after that, nothing too challenging came up for a while until I'd done all but one of the standard Lunatics... UFO Lunatic took me a little over two months and was the most excruciating thing I've ever tried to do in Touhou (contrast with SA Lunatic which took maybe half a week at the most). That resulted in a three month-ish hiatus from Touhou after it was over, and that pretty much just ended, so here we are. :V

You can also describe your goals in Touhou if you want.

• Stop sucking at full game runs.
• EoSD Extra no deaths, no bombs, no focus. Despite coming very close to managing this, I don't expect to finish it for a while. I'm not what you'd call excellent at Q.E.D. unfocused. :V

Describe your playing style.
As of recently, extremely aggressive (thanks to Dodonpachi, I'd imagine). As fun as it is, I'm trying to tone it down as it's currently just a little short of suicidal; I've picked up the habit of trying to shotgun everything regardless of whether I'm using a shotgun type or not. Also extremely reliant on unfocused movement; I've got a fairly high level of precision with it now thanks to all of the no focus runs I've been doing, but I still get overconfident and mess it up every so often.

[WanderingKnight]

How long have you played Touhou for?

I bumped into Touhou after discovering the shmup genre and the Arcade Culture in 2007. Being an anime fan, I had some vague idea what Touhou was before then, and I remember downloading EoSD, puking at the graphics and what I thought was stupid mechanics at the time and promptly proceeded to delete it.

Midways through 2007 (one or two months before MoF was released) I gave it another try, starting with IN, which after repeatedly banging myself against a wall (didn't want to read up on any sort of strategy for it) I managed to 1CC in Normal (B Ending). I recall I credit-fed during the final spellcards of Stage 6 it to get Ending A because I was tired at the time. After that I checked out the other games, disergarding EoSD once more and basically everything else other than PCB. The latter got me so frustrated because of the input lag (I had no idea of the existence of the vsync patch at that time) I essentially ragequit Touhou for more than 2 years, only bothering to check up on MoF when it was released and feeling once more how much I sucked at the game since mechanics had changed so much in that version. I played IN from time to time after that when I had 30 minutes to sink in, never getting anywhere due to lack of practice.

Fast forward to late February 2010, and for some random reason I fired up IN (after discovering that two other Touhou games had been released during that time frame) and remembered how much I used to enjoy it. Found out about the vsync patch for PCB, and finally I was happy again with it, this time decided to devote much more energy into improving.

Describe  your challenges in Touhou, whether exterior or interior. (Had to move  out of country, lost computer, Yuugi being a bitch, etc.) Also mention  any ragequits or moments of victory that you've had, no matter how  embarrassing.

Getting lazy in the first stages and dying to things I know I can perfect without too much effort involved. I tend to ragequit a lot if I die during stages 1-3 in any given game (the exception being SA, which is still a bitch to me). Either way, I'm really focusing in EoSD/PCB/IN and lately MoF, so I haven't had the chance to play SA or UFO enough.

You can also describe your goals in Touhou if you  want.

Finally moving on to Hard. I can 1CC PCB and IN Normal but not consistently enough. And I don't bombspan enough in MoF, despite knowing the game's geared towards that.

Also, score. I pay too much attention to score (blame it on the Arcade Culture sticking onto me), which makes me do stupid things like repeatedly dying on easy stage sections while trying to reach the POC.

Describe your playing style.

OMG THIS IS EASY I CAN MICRODODGE IT FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUU

[COPIRIGHTO]

How long have you played Touhou for?
Since October 1st

Describe  your challenges in Touhou
Internal:Forgetting I can bomb
External:School, Other games, Sister who loves skype too much

You can also describe your goals in Touhou if you  want.
become a Lunatic

Describe your playing style.
Forward Focus and Youkai Buster

[Doomsday]

How long have you played Touhou for?
Just over 1 1/2 years.

When did you start?
End of June 08

Describe  your challenges in Touhou, whether exterior or interior. (Had to move  out of country, lost computer, Yuugi being a bitch, etc.) Also mention  any ragequits or moments of victory that you've had, no matter how  embarrassing.
Nothing, really. There have been times on bosses where I end up taking a clipdeath with a tiny bit of the bosses healthbar left, but apart from that, nothing much. I don't remember ever ragequitting

Describe your playing style.
Fairly casual. I don't play for score at all; I play entirely for survival. for example, when I play PCB, instead of using the borders that generate to dissipate and gain score, I just run headlong into the bullets with it and use it to clear the screen. When I do play for survival though, I'm fairly dedicated to surviving, and my patience allows me to retry over and over and over again without getting too frustrated.

[Helion]

How long have you played Touhou for?
About 7 months now

When did you start?
Some time after UFO came out

Describe  your challenges in Touhou, whether exterior or interior. Also mention  any ragequits or moments of victory that you've had, no matter how  embarrassing.
Fighting against the "this is too hard, just give up" attitude and a low improvement rate. Also making random completely idiotic mistakes, entering a downward spiral and losing the run often in the same stage. Finally all bosses which require you to learn some stupid gimmick to beat them (Youmu) (and Extras are actually fun gimmicks so leave them out).

You can also describe your goals in Touhou if you  want.
Mainly survival. Maybe one day clearing Lunatic.

Describe your playing style.
I hate memorizing, I like to dodge stuff or figuring out the correct way to deal with spell cards. Because all stages up to 5 and 6 are pure drudgery I always strategise "on the fly" for them. Also pretty suicidal in that I prefer to attempt a deathbomb on cards I know I can't capture.

Answers in bold.

for example, when I play PCB, instead of using the borders that generate to dissipate and gain score, I just run headlong into the bullets with it and use it to clear the screen.

Why do you do that? It's just screw up insurance, I try to keep it for when I make a mistake.

[ark]

When did you start?
I started with IN, looks like early 2009, but I didn't really start playing it seriously until last November.

You  don't have to say why, though. I think there's another thread for that.
It seems like I'm not the only one who was introduced to Touhou via Youtube from "THE HARDEST VIDEO GAME BOSS EVER!" to Dracil's IN Extra video.

I was actually rather new to shmups in general. The first one I ever saw (and played) was Ikaruga, around the middle of 2008 (stumbled across a Youtube video of VTF-INO's Stage 3 double play). I didn't play them a whole lot though; most of my time was occupied by Quake 3. :V

Describe  your challenges in Touhou, whether exterior or interior.
Mainly I don't have enough time to play. Last year of undergrad is keeping me busy.

I play on my desktop when I can, but if I'm away I'm stuck with my laptop where the keys sometimes get randomly stuck (not a mechanical problem) which leads to rage asdfgdfhsghl;

I don't really have any specific internal challenges; I just need to get better at everything.

You can also describe your goals in Touhou if you  want.
Eventually I want to 1cc EoSD on Normal (the only one I haven't managed to do yet, not counting PC98), but EoSD feels awful enough to me that I may not get around to it for a long time. More immediately, I want to clear every Extra stage and 1cc every game on Hard (possibly except EoSD). I already have 3 extra stages (PCB, IN, MoF) and 1 Hard 1cc (IN; even on Lunatic if you count extra starting lives). I should probably stop playing MoF on Normal.

Describe your playing style.
I prefer memorization over ridiculous dodging. I try to keep a fixed pattern for pretty much all of my runs, and generally try to minimize the amount of actual dodging I have to do. I probably play too aggressively, and I usually try to go for high scores (even when I have difficulty even clearing the game, and it usually ends up costing me).

[Ghaleon]

I've played for pretty much a year.
I started pretty much the day I registerred on this site, which apparently was may 20 2009.
I can't think of any challenges that really stood out as especially difficult to overcome.
Upon discovering Touhou, despite being a total newbie to danmaku (never even heard of danmaku until the day before pretty much), I set a personal goal to 1cc every windows Touhou on lunatic difficulty. I have not done this, though I think I could have if I kept trying to beat the canon games instead of blow time on fanon games. The thing is, since I newly discovered Touhou, I didn't know that more than 9/10ths of Touhou was fanon, upon discovering fan games, I stopped trying to 1cc lunatics as a goal, and started enjoying Touhou as a whole in general, I really didn't expect fan made content to be *SO* damn good.
But anyway I've 1cc'd EoSD,PCB,and IN on lunatic, and everything else on hard so far.

Playing style? uhh.. Probably something like "doesn't bomb enough". I am still like a little kid in a candy store with Touhou because I still have SO much to discover, that I really don't have the time/desire to focus on just one game. So along with not bombing, I often have absolutely no ability to memorize most content. I mean even 100% static spellcards get me if I don't find them easy on the first attempt because chances are last time I saw it was weeks ago, which was weeks after the time before, etc.

[Matsuri]

I've been playing Touhou since late 2007. It all started when I saw a video of this really hard looking arcade shmup that I desperately wanted to play after watching. Later I found out that game was none other than Mushihimesama, one of my dearly cherished games (that I now own ). However, I asked a friend who I knew played arcade shmups about it and how I could play it, and he asked if I've ever played a game of that sort before, and I said 'no'. He laughed and said that I'm nowhere near ready for Mushihimesama, so he gave me the gift of MAME and DoDonPachi, ESP Ra.De., and Guwange. I tried these games and thought they were gorgeous, but way too hard, but the seed had already been planted.

Later on I came across a game that reminded me of ESP Ra.De. on YouTube. This game turned out to be Perfect Cherry Blossom. So I found the game and downloaded it (I thought it was freeware :x ) and was entranced by how colorful and pretty the game was-- not to mention it was a lot easier! With a little bit of searching, I found out that this series had a bunch of other games in it. Needless to say, it was like going to a dessert buffet at that point, sampling and trying each to satisfy my sweet tooth desire for eye and ear candy.

Nowadays I play arcade shmups a whole lot more than Touhou, and I never did beat any of the games (aside from PoFV) on Lunatic-- not because I can't, but because I've more or less moved on. I will say that if I had never beaten any of the Touhou games on Easy first, I would have probably given up on shmups in general. Now that I can confidently play shmups in general, my list of things to play has expanded very significantly. Of course, I love Touhou, or else I wouldn't be here, but after playing arcade shmups more, my interest in Touhou has dwindled a bit. In the end, I'm a fan of shmups in general first, and then a Touhou fan.

My goals? I'd love to beat Perfect Cherry Blossom on Lunatic difficulty eventually-- and since I can make it to the last stage, I'd say it's pretty doable. I'd also really like to complete Double Spoiler, too. I'm at 92/108 right now.

My playing style: If I've got more than one life remaining, I'm going all-out and playing for score, which is how shmups in general deserve to be played.

[ebarrett]

How long have you played Touhou for? / When did you start?

Started around October '08, though there's a big Touhou-less hole between March '09 and UFO's release.

Describe your challenges in Touhou

Having a job - in another town, no less - which takes up most of my time and energy.

You can also describe your goals in Touhou if you  want.

When I started playing Touhou, my goal was to 1cc everything on normal. Didn't really think I could play on lunatic, ever - turns out I was wrong. When I got to lunatic I started focusing on stuff that people - even top players - considered largely (if not completely) "impossible". Pulled of a few of these, failed anothers, all in all a good track record, I'd say. Currently just trying to improve - for a while I believed I could become one of the top Western players, but even if I had the potential (I wouldn't count it out, even though I wouldn't count on it), I simply can't spare the time and effort to figure out, much less achieve it.

Describe your playing style.

I'm a fan of Touhou: the Resource Management Game Series

[Alice Fact]

How long have you played Touhou for?

For nearly 3 years now.

When did you start?

It started with LKA bugging me about his PCB progress. Now I'm the fanatic, and he claims to be disillusioned with it. (He is a liar. He stayed up all night playing DS the minute he got his hands on it, and it felt just like old times.)

Describe your playing style.

I usually don't watch replays seriously; thus, I see what I see and go from that.