~Hakurei Shrine~ > Touhou Addict Recovery Center
How did you get into Touhou?
aListers:
In mid 2010 I had decided to expand my interests beyond Vocaloid. While Vocaloid was still my main thing, I started slowly discovering things in the same way I discovered vocaloid - memes. I basically prowled through knowyourmeme for anime related memes. If this lead me directly to Touhou is something I'm not entirely sure of though. I know I listened to the song "Yukkuri Shiteite ne" before I knew what Touhou was. Did I discover Touhou then? I don't know, but I do know I didn't get into it then. I recall hearing a bad apple cover sung by GUMI at some point and liking it. I then discovered the original and noted that I was probably going to like Flandre. I believe this was the first time that I started actually looking for Touhou things. I'm sure it was at this point that I discovered that the song "Kasane Territory" was based off Cirno and Suwako's themes. I may have even discovered that McRoll was Flandre's theme - I'm not actually sure. At some point I would discover the 4koma "Life of Maid" by Colonel Aki which had parallels with "Chibi Miku San" by Colourful Pallet. This lead me into Touhou doujins and properly got me into Touhou enough to declare myself a fan after a while. I'm sure it wasn't long before I started playing every Touhou game from 1-9 in chronological order. Either way, I was already into Touhou by the time I discovered it. Vocaloid and Touhou were so linked back in those days that you couldn't help but find some Touhou in your life. By August 2012 I was properly obsessed with it as the first record of me believing in Gensokyo's existence (a dream in which I met Nitori) - that being said I'd already believed it's existence was possible before I properly knew what Touhou was. I got into Touhou quite slowly, slowly enough to not fully remember, but it was still enough to make a very deep impact on my life.
Jeremie:
The first time I played a Touhou game was probably around Hisoutensoku's era. Someone mentioned the game and I tried it but quite frankly, during that time, playing the story mode and dealing with spell cards actually made me dislike the game so I just dropped it and moved on to Melty Blood. Less than a year later or so between the release of DS and GFW, I was becoming more and more a fan of shoot em' ups after playing a few games like Axelay, Super Aleste, Night Striker, Galaxy Force II, Darius Gaiden, Over Horizon, etc. and I asked a few friends if they knew any shoot em' up with good music. I was directed towards EOSD. While I didn't think the game was all that great, I was really impressed by some of the music (Namely Cirno, Patchy and Remilia's boss themes).
I then stumbled on a music video through TV Tropes and that brought me to M-1 Grand Prix where I got quickly amused by the videos (and quickly annoyed by the PAD meme) and I realized that I already saw some of the characters before, primarily from one of my favorite artists who used to draw Ragnarok Online stuff before they moved on to Touhou. Afterward I gradually played more of the games in the series which is when my interest started declining but then I was introduced to the doujin games which helped me regain interest in the series until I finally played some of the games that would make me enjoy the series more. I also used to hate vocals in video game music but I eventually gave them a chance when I was checking for Sound Sepher CDs to buy and looked for Nazrin's themes with vocals and loved what I stumbled upon.
HistoryoftheMoon:
An online acquaintance had posted Septette for the Dead Princess on their wall, and I really liked it. They recommended more Touhou songs to me, including Immortal Smoke and Pure Furies. Despite me originally not liking those two songs (blasphemy, I know), I did like the other songs they gave me, and ended up looking at more. Luna Dial, Flowering Night (SWR), and Beloved Tomboyish Girl (UNL) struck me as really great songs, so I delved even deeper into Touhou tunes. It was when I found Gensokyo Millenium ~ History of the Moon, which remains to this day my favorite Touhou song, did I finally realize the amazing series that was sitting me right in the face. I ended up really liking the lore and characters, as well as the gameplay despite not being very good at it, and thus my Touhou adventure began.
R. P. Genocraft:
I used to watch a lot of Super Mario sprite animations, someday I found an animation series called Super Mario: Vanishing Existence, which was a crossover between lots of games and anime. That included Touhou, and then I was like "what anime is this?" XD Then I searched about it liked it. At first I only cared about characters from th6 ~ th8 and U.N. Owen Was Her, but I slowly started getting into it. As for the games themselves, for a long time I've only played fangames. Then I finally decided to play SWR, and later(WAY later) LoLK, the first danmaku game I played.
Kuriz:
I play a lot of osu! , but don't really like Japanese music all that much, save for a select few. Coincidentally, said select few were all Touhou songs. Then Touhou videos were showing up on my Youtube feed (Cause google is psychic, creepy and an infringement one my privacy like that. I don't even play osu! online, I have the 2012 version.). Watched one of those "What is Touhou?" or "Introduction to Touhou" videos. Thought it seemed fun, but I didn't like shooters, so I payed no mind. So then I found that one Bad Apple arrange with nomico. Really liked it so I decided to give the easiest of the games a whirl. Touhou 7 was my first target. Thing is, I was using Ubuntu at the time and wine 1.8 (a program that runs windows apps on linux) doesn't run Touhou 7 properly, (Input locks up) so I grabbed 8 which I heard was also easy. It worked perfectly! Had a lot of fun on easy modo until I took it a ste- Okay cut the ****, Eirin gave me hardcore ******* PTSD and I hate her and she's a poopoo head. Screw you, Eirin Hanson. Nowadays I just play IaMP online (Dying community, but it's making a comeback. IaMP went on to be my favorite fighting game of all time, somehow beating Darkstalkers 3. Suika main. Apparently the last Suika player in the west and I'm a noob.) and PoDD alone usually. I play some rounds with my brother, but then he gets reamed in like 2 seconds and gets angry and kicks me in the face and then pays me 20 bucks in compensation. Buying me a Marisa plush with said 20 bucks. GTA San Andreas as Orange or Elly from Touhou 4 (Good skins, Sagena!) via the skin selector mod. Good games. Favorite thing about them is their killer soundtracks. Chinese Tea, Memory of Forgathering Dream, Infinite Being, Dimension Reverie (I think it's called?) and Strawberry Crisis are my favorites.