ZUN and Touhou status update

[Tengukami]

This year?? DDC came out last August, give the man a break!

[cuc]

Hmm... the more I look at the PC-98 games, the more it seems ZUN had never taken the 4:3 aspect ratio into account for anything. I did a few experiments, and don't feel any screen would look better in 4:3.


VideoGameGeek, which is a sister site to world's largest board game site BoardGameGeek, has published a story about Digital Games Expo 2013 and Japanese indie games. ZUN is mentioned prominently in this article.

http://videogamegeek.com/blogpost/24969/digital-games-expo-2013-an-indie-games-expo-in-to

Since the article is written by Simon Lundstr?m, an old guard manga translator from Sweden, the article displays an understanding of Japanese doujin culture you can't find in coverage done by the average Western game journalists. (For more impression and discussion, please go to the News thread.

[Sagus]

Wait, tell me this DOES mean we will have a spin-off game or at least a demo of some sort this year?

No. We already got two games this year, after all.

[Monkeypro257]

I think ZUN should just drink and lay low for a while. Considering the games we got this year. (including updates)
Anyways, we still have Doujin.

[cuc]

Kimura Yoshiro has written the first part of his Digital Games Expo impressions. Containing a photo of ZUN and Heppoko.
http://poriporiclub.blogspot.com/2013/11/oh.html


Recent event: the 7th Akibahara Beer Festival (Dec 6 to Dec 15), new ZUN art coasters.

[cuc]

While ZUN has been unusually quiet recently, I actually have a huge pile of materials from this year that deserve reporting and translating. Also don't forget we are counting down to the Nikenme Radio 3D 2 event; ZUN has tweeted yesterday that Azuma Aya will make an appearance in the event again.

For the moment, HM patch 1.32 has been released. This is a balancing patch, improving many skills over the board.

[K+ ~ Bake-Danuki]

I thought this was Benben, Rumia, & Yuuka all combined

[Tiamat]

It's Beerko (fan nickname).  Well, ZUN never did state her name but she's basically been his beer festival mascot since the start, I think.

[cuc]

The 2nd Nikenme Radio 3D event will start soon. Does ZUN have anything important to say this time? We will know soon. The time schedule of the event is quite inconvenient for me, but I'll do my best to get you covered (or, if it matters enough, someone will do it, right?)

(I'm bad at mode arithmetics, so the following numbers may be wrong.)

As always, you can watch the live broadcast here. The proper broadcast is said to begin at 8:00 PM (UTC+9:00), or 12:00 AM UTC, but you might be able to catch something from time to time.
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/nikenme-radio

Schedule of the main events:
Session 1: Starting at 7:00 PM (UTC+9:00), or 11:00 AM UTC.
Session 2: Starting at 1:00 AM (UTC+9:00), or 4:00 PM UTC.



Loft Plus One is a hip place.

[Drake]

An entire hour of errors and stream drops and nothing but introductions lol. I'm going to bed.

[cuc]

A broadcast full of technical problems has ended. It seems the late night session won't be broadcast live, so we can only know it from people who attended that session. See you tomorrow (or whenever I have the time to write a report.)

EDIT: The stream goes live again, so there is a broadcast for the second session!

[cuc]

Happy new year! Here's the new year meal ZUN made by himself for the last day of 2013.



Something I should have reported earlier: for Comiket 85, the doujin circle RebRank has published a book about what its title says, "DOUJIN GAME ? PACKAGE DESIGN Vol.1". The central part of the book is a long interview with ZUN. ZUN has always put a great amount of care into the package design of his works, so this book has attracted a lot of attention.



Nagamine Shin'ichirou, boss of the pub Game Bar A-Button and a friend of ZUN's (he went to AWA immediately after ZUN), seemed to be up to something recently. Yeah, you may have heard that ZUN and moot were drinking together at his place again...

(ZUN playing Mystic Square)



But there was more. Yesterday (Jan 5, 2014), Nagamine announced that he has received ZUN's permission, and now people can play the PC-98 Touhou games at A-Button, on a real PC-9821 Na13 machine.

(The menu says "No Sound" for HRtP.)

[Kilgamayan]

Hmm. That implies some interesting things about the legality of the distribution of those games.

[N-Forza]

If you just so happen to find a physical copy.

[Kilgamayan]

Well, yes, of course. I'm thinking more in terms of how much sway Amusement Makers has.

[xJeePx]

New interesting three part interview with ZUN.

[cuc]

Thank you! I don't even have time to read it, but this is huge. I've started a new topic for it in the Front Page News forum.

For me, it means a new big project in my backlog, only this time it's an English-to-Chinese translation. That's also a bit painful.

[cuc]

Follow up to the "play PC-98 games at A-Button" story: Ruw has tweeted: the sound of HRtP now works!

I experienced the end of the DOS era myself, when every game may have some bizarre compatibility issues on your PC, and no game is guaranteed to work without jumping through hoops. But I didn't know the PC-98, a relatively more closed system, can have a sound problem too.

I haven't introduced Ruw. He is a member of D.N.A. Softwares, and helps ZUN and Tasofro deal with some business and legal matters - their legal consultant and business agent, to a certain extent. He actually went to Atlanta together with ZUN.


Remember last year's NicoNico Super Conference? This year's conference will take place on April 26 and 27 - their big attraction is a sumo tournament this time. There will be a third Super ZUN Beer booth (link; photos are from 2013), and another Reitaisai Super Condensed Version (link).

[xJeePx]

Well, yes, of course. I'm thinking more in terms of how much sway Amusement Makers has.

I'm pretty sure Amusement Makers is not the problem here. Every PC-98 Touhou game is under the copyright of either ZUN or ZUN Soft and Amusement Makers are only mentioned during the Staff Roll as Special Thanks. Even though ZUN sold his games at Amusement Makers' circle booth, he drew the artwork, prepared the diskettes and made the games completely by himself. There were a few people who contributed, but their part wasn't that significant. We have test players (Kaoru, C-W and other people), web advertisement (Aotaka) and a single instance of additional artwork (高附日向). Not to mention, Amusement Makers is an unofficial group, and their membership changes all the time. After all, association with them doesn't stop RebRank or Shunsatsu sare do? from selling Samidare and Banshiryuu online. :V

If there was some kind of a legal issue, I think it would've come from either Izumi Takemoto (drawing style, some of the characters), Alice Soft (a certain character portrait from PoDD) or music composers whose music sounds almost identical to some of the themes from Touhou, even though everything ZUN puts into his games is either a nod or a reference to the original material. Also, considering Touhou Project is a doujin product, everything mentioned above shouldn't be a problem, since stuff like that is allowed in the doujin scene. For example, nowadays people sell doujin games based on popular franchises like Puella Magi Madoka Magica and nobody seems to mind.

What could've been more of a serious issue is the fact that ZUN no longer has original data from his earlier games and that almost nobody uses PC-98 these days.

Thank you! I don't even have time to read it, but this is huge. I've started a new topic for it in the Front Page News forum.

For me, it means a new big project in my backlog, only this time it's an English-to-Chinese translation. That's also a bit painful.

You're welcome! Thanks for your hard work, cuc.

[98digger]

What could've been more of a serious issue is the fact that ZUN no longer has original data from his earlier games and that almost nobody uses PC-98 these days.

I'm not too clear on what ZUN means when he says that he "lost all of the original data from his earlier games". I know it probably is in reference to the PC-98 games, but I have a feeling that he also means the early Windows games, too.

Also, I have a feeling that Touhou has draw signifigant attention back to the PC-9801 platform. However, in the world of Japanese computers, the PC-8801 and Sharp X68000 seem to have much more attention because of all the Capcom and Hudson Soft games on those platforms. Hopefully the 9801 will regain enough attention so that FreeDOS 98 and FreeBSD 98 can resume development.

[Agent of the BSoD]

I'm not too clear on what ZUN means when he says that he "lost all of the original data from his earlier games". I know it probably is in reference to the PC-98 games, but I have a feeling that he also means the early Windows games, too.

He probably means that he lost the source code, so he wouldn't be able to integrate Steam support without remaking all those games again, as he would want the games to launch uniquely through Steam. This would be pretty much impossible with the PC-98 games anyway, unless an emulator was handled for Steam.

[Clarste]

This would be pretty much impossible with the PC-98 games anyway, unless an emulator was handled for Steam.

Not that I expect him to do either, but I would think a full port is more likely if it was supposed to run on Steam.

[Agent of the BSoD]

Not that I expect him to do either, but I would think a full port is more likely if it was supposed to run on Steam.

Doesn't always happen like that. Take the first Tomb Raider game for example. The game was meant for DOS and does not run on later versions of Windows. That game uses DOSBox in Steam since it's the only way to do it.

[cuc]

The Reitaisai Committee has released the list of all registered circles for Reitaisai 11. There are 4317 circles in total.

Previously, from 2011's Reitaisai 8 onward, the circles in Reitaisai had plateaued at around 5000. See here for the detailed numbers (that's the Chinese Touhou community's new wiki). My source once told me the Reitaisai Committee was planning to do something to make the huge number more manageable, such as extending Reitaisai to two days. Seems there's no need for that this year.

As always, Team Shanghai Alice is attending. So is Twilight Frontier.

Historical note:
In case you were not around the community in May 2012, for Reitaisai 9 - the day of ZUN's wedding, someone else managed the Team Shanghai Alice booth, selling ZUN art-decorated kouhaku manjuu: a pair of buns with sweet bean filling, one red-colored and the other white, which is a gift for ausipicious occasions. This is said ZUN art:


Translation:
紅白饅頭　　Kouhaku manjuu
寿　　Felicitations
饅頭でいいのね？　　Even selling manjuu is OK?
博麗神社例大祭　　Hakurei Jinja Reitaisai

[hungrybookworm]

Is the chinese wiki down? I can't seem to access it.

Either way, only a drop of 700? Considering Kancolle's 9th 砲雷撃戦！よーい！ event (with 2000 circle spaces and a catalog!) is only a week before it I'd say that's not bad. Those doujin circles have some amazing stamina.

[cuc]

Strange. The wiki is working fine. Its server is in the US, so most of the world should be able to access it. Anyone else having trouble?

One week is enough for them to recover their stamina. If you mean the energy to create works, indeed, making KanColle doujin will take away from making new Touhou doujin, but circles are not required to sell new works for any given convention; they can always keep selling their old stuff if they have to.

[Agent of the BSoD]

The wiki is loading fine here as well.

[KaiserKnuckle]

Hey, cuc, I just wanted to say I'll add translations to the post of the manjuu image on danbooru. Just wanted to let you know.

[cuc]

Hey, cuc, I just wanted to say I'll add translations to the post of the manjuu image on danbooru. Just wanted to let you know.

In that case, please fix this translation FAIL!

紅白饅頭　　Kouhaku manjuu
寿　　Felicitations
饅頭でいいのね？　　Even selling manjuu is OK?
博麗神社例大祭　　Hakurei Jinja Reitaisai

While the kanji 寿 means "life span; long life" by itself, a single 寿 (pronounced kotobuki) in Japanese more often than not means "congratulations".

[KaiserKnuckle]

In that case, please fix this translation FAIL!

Alright, done! Thanks.