Your first experience at (any) Touhou game(s).

[FamilyTeam]

It's been a while since you guys've seen me, eh?
In November 2010, my best friend randomly started talking about this Touhou game that was all difficult and colourful and had plenty of girls and stuff. He then proceeded to make me watch a million and a half Touhou videos to see if I was interested, And I was?,,, Kinda?,,, Maybe?... Not much. I decided to try Touhou 6 out in March of 2011 and, while I liked it, it didn't stick to me at all and I forgot completely about Touhou's existance until 1 and a half years later, in October 28, 2012. I was browsing Danbooru for random images, and I started to notice I was saving plenty of images from this girl named "Kasen Ibaraki" from this series named "Touhou"... hey, I know that! Suddenly, I felt the urge to start playing Touhou again, and oh boy, for whatever reason, it really stuck to me that time around. Almost all I did that Summer I live in the Southern Hemisphere, when it's Winter for you peoples it's Summer here was play Black Ops 2 and attempt 1CCs at Touhou, and I even got my best friend hooked into it again.
About mid 2013, though, my interest in the series was starting to run extremely low, so, I just left Touhou, used this forum for a few more months, then quit everything Touhou related until a few days ago. I've been trying to get back, but something tells me I won't be getting back into this series. Dunno if I should go into detail since this story is rather long... but there's something physically preventing me from playing Touhou properly, and no, it's not my eyes.
Anyway, yeah, Touhou is nice, horray.

[shockdude]

It started with the good old THE HARDEST VIDEO GAME BOSS EVER, and I'm pretty sure the related videos took me to Dracil's IN Extra clear. At the time I thought these were all arcade-only games, so I left them alone for a long time.
In 2012, I saw a friend playing IN, and I recognized it from the videos I had seen years ago. The rest is history

Spoiler:

documented in my signature below haha

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[Mero]

Thought I had posted here already... eh, whatever

Deaths, lot of them, that was my first experience playing Touhou.

Back in February 2011, a friend of mine was all excited about finally getting "a game called Touhou" to work on his Mac, he was like "you should try it", and I was like "yeah okay", I started the game (it turned out to be MoF), chose Lunatic completely ignoring the tag, chose the "Red girl" and gameovered not even 30 seconds into the game.
A month later, we were in computer class, and my friend was like "do you remember that game Touhou? this is another one", it was Fairy Wars. Seeing I was so into the game, my friend lent me his USB, so I could rage have fun at home.

I kept playing FW, unlocked the Extra stage (through Easy mode, obvs), got stuck and gave up. Turns out my keyboard was really crap, and once I found a more proper way to play I cleared FW's Extra in a month, then I went through Normal mode on the other games, then Hard on some, and I got my first Loonie 1cc in IN on July 2012.
Then Touhou somehow managed to be like 90% of what I played since then...

[Gamer251]

I started with HRtP, since I wanted to start with the very first game.
I lost to ShinGyoku on my first try, and it was on Easy qwq

Although my friend originally introduced me to EoSD first, but I decided to follow the series chronologically.
It was really hard at first, but after years of practice (I started in 2011), game play seems to be easier~

[Think Komachi with a Rifle]

Introduced via a friend at university anime club, about a decade ago.
EoSD I think? Maybe PCB.

Did already like shmups. but wasn't in that community.
Fairly sure I got my ass handed to me through clipdeath, and being to hesitant on bombing.

[Silent Harmony]

Hmm.... game wise I decided to actually play the games after seeing a walkthrough for PCB Extra and realized the games were not, in fact, impossible.

My first game was the EoSD trial on Normal; I remember it took me i think a week to beat the trial. My first 1cc was PCB Easy (same for my first Normal 1cc).

[Ghaleon]

I remember that EoSD was my first Touhou game, I played normal first and I forget how far I got... I think I either died to patchy, or mid-boss sakuya.. I remember patchy either game over'd me, or took most of my lives, I specifically remember my first post here talking about patchy, and people giving me advice on non-directional lazor, which helped me a ton. Shortly after that I tried easy just cuz, and was totally bummed out that it ends after stage 5 because I think I got to (or was really close to) stage 5 on my first attempt anyway, so back to normal I went really quick. I think I got my first 1cc in a day or two, BUT I set the life counter to 5 instead of 3, and people told me that doesn't count. I think it took me another day or two to 1cc 'legit'

Then people told me to keep my replay forever no matter how awful it was because it would be good for laughs, this I have done, but I didn't find it really all that funny last time I watched... I DO make some remarkably stupid mistakes sometimes on non-hard difficulty modes still even now, despite having 1cc'd lunatic years ago, they rarely make me laugh though, I cry =P

[aUsernameIsFineToo]

The first Touhou game I've ever played was the Embodiment of Scarlet Devil demo in late 2009. I probably gameovered within a minute of starting, and subsequent runs weren't that much better. I then did what I always do after playing "hard" games: watch gameplay videos on YouTube while wondering how I'd ever pull something like that off. I started looking into the series, eventually winning Perfect Cherry Blossom and Imperishable Night CDs in an eBay bid. The first few times I played I'd bomb like crazy until I died from lack of bombs, though practice led to my eventual clear of PCB a few years later.