How long did it take you to accomplish X?

[DracoOmega]

This is a rather open-ended question, really, since I understand how many variables are involved here. But I'm curious how some people's general skill progression with the games has been. As, in how long were you playing before you (for example) beat your first extra boss, or started playing on lunatic by default, or anything else that you felt was personally notable. Did you have much experience with similar games?

I bumped into the Touhou games back at the very beginning of December, though a passing mention of UFO on a gaming blog that I read. I didn't even realize it was a Touhou game at the time. Well, I'd been peripherally aware of the existance of some series of shooting games involving a pile of female anime-style characters, but couldn't even have told you the name of it, or recognized anyone specifically from there. And within like two weeks, I'd gone from barely knowing of its existence to being a big fan. It's funny how, shortly after getting into it, I realized that there were tons of characters I recognized, but hadn't known were connected. I was constantly going 'I know her!' Anyway, I digress....

I started playing about two months ago now. I'd played a handful of shooters over the years, such as Gradius, Gaiares, and Axelay, but never particularly seriously. I'm pretty sure I never beat any of them, now that I think about it. Has been quite a few years. My only real brush with danmaku games was a few of the Kenta Cho games, if anybody knows them (rRootage Noiz2sa). But I mostly toyed with them for an hour or two "My God, look at all the bullets!". For whatever reason, until the Touhou games, I'd never been really driven to improve my skill level at this sort of game. And now I am. Whatever magical combination of characters, great music, interesting danmaku, and just a plain enjoyable world ZUN has crafted here, it's gotten me hooked.

Anyway:
 2 months ago: played Touhou for the first time
 5 weeks ago: beat my first game (IN), amusingly snagging my first 1cc at the same time
 2.5 weeks ago: finish 1cc'ing normal on all windows games
 1 week ago: beat my first extra stage (PCB), finished beating all games on hard (UFO was ridiculously difficult to clear compared to every other game. I attempted Byakuren a mind-numbing 41 times in a single sitting. Probably not the best idea...)
 This week: got my first 1cc's on hard (PCB and IN)
 
I actually have specific dates for all of this, since I've been in the habit of keeping a record of whenever a beat a game for the first time, or accomplish something else notable in a game I'm interested in. Sounds rather lame, in a way, when I think about it... >.>

Although I still admit to feeling that, for the considerable number of hours I've put in on some bosses, that I ought to be doing better than I am. For example, I think my capture rate for 'Fujiyama Volcano' in spell practice is an embarrassing 1/48. Actually, my record for 'Honest Man's Death' was ever worse, until I finally looked up a video of it, since it seemed ridiculously more difficult than her other spellcards. I think I honestly had a slack-jawed 'What!?' reaction as I saw someone move THROUGH the laser. Of course, I'd been trying to run away from it, through the hail of bullets. Many, many, many times in a row.... Still haven't captured 'Possessed by Phoenix'. I can never seem to graze the bullets in phase 2 quite slow enough without also getting myself killed. But I digress. Actually, I think I've spent more of this post digressing than otherwise, but after all the time I've spent typing this, I think I'll leave it be. ^^;

I'd be curious what some of your experiences have been.

[Chaotic Phoenixma]

I've known about the series for a few years actually. I saw it from one of my Youtube subscriptions, IIRC, Fairuzons, who was suspended for stealing a lot of the videos he uploaded.

I did like shooting games before that, but I hadn't played them in a while. Touhou revived my interest and I've mostly been playing them. Still need to play some more shmups.

Then last year 2 people on my subscriptions list were playing it and I wanted to get in on it. Can't remember exactly when I started.

I think my first 1cc was IN Easy Modo because Normal was too hard. Took me a few months to 1cc all of the STGs on Normal.

I'm now pretty consistent at a few of the Hards, have gotten close on the Hards I haven't 1cc'd, and came very close to Lunatic 1ccs on 4 of the games. IN got to the final spell, MoF got to the last nonspell since I blew it after arriving at Sanae with 6 lives, PoFV has gotten Shiki down to 2 hits left, and on SA I defeated the last card just to be defeated before it cleared.

[Azure Lazuline]

Hm, let me think...

- I first had a few small glances at the series two years or so ago, but didn't give it much attention. I liked the music, though.
- I played my first danmaku game (Castle Shikigami 3) about a year and a half ago to see what the genre was like, and I was very impressed. I then became more interested in Touhou, but still didn't play it - I knew I'd become addicted and didn't have much time to waste dodging pretty bullets.
- According to the dating on my folders, I first played EoSD on 7/14/09. I cleared it on Normal (2 continues I think - still no 1CC to this date) about a week later, then played each subsequent game as I cleared the previous one on Normal or better, though I didn't play that often. Yes, I was right - I did become addicted.
- First Extra clear (Mokou) on 12/12/09, so maybe about 4 months since I started playing it?
- No Hard 1CC's yet, but I've gotten really close on a number of occasions.
- I'm not quite sure if this counts, but I went from Danmakufu newbie to making things like this within about four months. Probably why I haven't accomplished much outside of that...

[nintendonut888]

I used to keep track of all my accomplishments on this big list, but I stopped updating that a long time ago...

Anyway, I started Touhou 11/30/2007, 7:45 PM. I started with the MoF demo and 10 days later got my hands on EoSD's full version. From there, here is my progression:

2 days later: Beat EoSD normal with all continues

6 days later (as in 4 days after the last milestone): 1cc'd my first easy (PCB)

7 days later: 1cc'd my first normal (EoSD)

About 2 weeks later: Beat my first extra (PCB)

About 2 months later: Got the PC-98 games

Abotu 2 1/2 months later: Beat all Windows extras

About 3 1/2 months later: Beat my first hard (IN)

About 7 months later: Beat every extra including PC-98

About 7 2/3 months later: Beat my first lunatic on max lives (LLS)

About 11 months later: Started playing on default lives, a massive spike in skill occured

Throughout 11 months later: I began 1ccing lunatics left and right, with 5 under my belt by my one year anniversary

1 year and 4 months later: All Windows shooters 1cc'd on lunatic

Just under two years: All Touhou games period 1cc'd on lunatic

...I just made a bunch of people writhe in agony, didn't I?

[COPIRIGHTO]

2 years ago
-found a lucky star touhou video
5 months ago
-started taking interest in the touhou games
-got addicted
3 months ago
-still haven't 1cc'd a single game
2 months ago
-started playing more shmups
-1cc'd Genetos Hacker Difficulty
Last month
-screwed everything and just skipped to Lunatic
-Tried hard. Failed
This month
-2cc'd Imperishable Night Normal
-attempting to get out of the habit of underbombing

[orinrin]

2 Years Ago:
Discovered a generic video of some person playing LLS.

6 Months Ago:
Decided to try playing the first Touhou Windows game due to sheer boredom.
I'm lovin' it.

2 Months Ago:
Only managed to 1CC games on lolEasy mode.

1 Month and 29 Days Ago:
1CC'd IN Normal by starting with 7 lives.  _{Also by cheesing through Kaguya by means of bombspam.}

Currently:
Deciding on whether or not to install a vsync patch so I don't completely fail on EoSD Normal.

[ebarrett]

Measuring these things in time isn't a good measure. I measure almost* everything gaming-related in attempts needed, which is a lot less prone to distortion.

I got most of my "regular" accomplishments (1cc's for each difficulty, extra clears, etc - everything that didn't involve self-imposed challenges, in short) in about 5-10 attempts with little to no stage practice. Major exceptions:

PCB extra: dozens of attempts (it was the first extra stage I tried)
PCB phantasm: first try  :V
SA normal: this one took loooooong
SA extra: another one which took far too long, probably more than twenty attempts
PCB lunatic: quite a bunch of stage 2 ragequits, after I decided to bomb Chen it went back to normal though and I got the 1cc rather quickly
MoF lunatic: TONS of early ragequits (history for Falling Leaves of Madness shows about 40 attempts, and there were runs which were aborted even earlier) and many chokes at Kanako, also quite a bunch of stage 6 practice runs which is unusual for me
SoEW lunatic: three attempts, had only ragenotcontinued normal at Meira twice before
SoEW extra: AAAGGHGHGAGHAGGHHHH
UFO normal/extra: three attempts each, when coming back from a six-month layoff
PoFV lunatic: AAAGGHGHGAGHAGGHHHH x 100
PoDD lunatic: about 15-20 attempts, but that one was expected to take longer than the average anyway

I also "jumped" SA's and MS' hard modes when I started playing lunatic, so when I came back to try these I got them first try, but that's different. The remaining lunatics are already past the 10 attempts mark, and UFO hard has seen somewhere around 20-30 early ragequits to go with the four or five runs where I bothered to soldier on despite horrible mistakes everywhere.


edit: *of course. to dodge the occasional sophists.

[Ghaleon]

I didn't keep records, but going from memory.

day 1: tried EoSD as my first Touhou.
day 2: 1cc'd it on normal
day 4: pawnt Flan
week 1: 1cc'd PCB
week 2: Pawnt ran and yukari
week 3: 1cc'd IN
week 4: 1cc'd MoF
week 6: 1cc'd SA
month 2: beat suwako
month 3: beat Koishi, 1cc'd lunatic EoSD
month 4: 1cc'd LLS and beat Mokou.
month 6: 1cc'd lunatic PCB, hard IN, hard MoF.
....stopped playing Touhou, started playing other games like eXceed, mushi, Touhou fan games, etc.
I 1cc'd UFO normal and beat Nue sometime within a month UFO was released, Which was probably at around month 5ish.

I still have yet to 1cc hard SA and UFO, and lunatic IN+.
I intend to play PC98 games more later on as well. I tried to earlier but the emulator d idn't really run very well on my machine, baitysm helped me set it up so t hat it was better and playable, but that happened pretty much after I stopped playing Touhou alot in general.

I haven't really done much since then (almost 1 year now), I just play occasionally to maintain my Touhou skills, which I'm doing, not really improving.. I like the game and all, but I like alot of the fangames too, plus they tend to tell me more story. Since I don't read or watch manga, I don't really have any other fun method of learning about the Touhou universe.

[Azinth]

I've forgotten the dates of a lot of my accomplishments, but these are the ones I remember:


January 2008-Discovered Touhou fanon, lost interest after a few weeks

June 2008-Tried my very first Touhou game with PCB.  1cced Easy in about a week, and Normal a week after that (it was with SakuyaA )
August 2008-1cced EoSD Normal (obviously took a lot more effort than PCB)

December 2008-1cced SA on Normal and EoSD on Hard within a week or two of each other.
Next few months I just played leisurely and 1cced more Hards, as well as tried a bunch of other Doujin shmups (SG, BWR, etc.)

February/March 2009-Grinded PCB lunatic like a motherfucker, got my first Lunatic 1cc on 3/20 (the only date I remember offhand)
1cced EoSD Lunatic two weeks after that.
1cced Shuusou Gyoku Lunatic in May I think?

The rest is kind of a blur, except for August 2009 right before UFO, when I discovered MAME, but that's for another thread.

[Sen]

I don't recall a lot of dates...hm. The few dates I can remember (plus some I still have the replays for):

August '08 - Started playing (Perfect Cherry Blossom Easy)
October '08 - First 1cc* (Normal; stopped playing Easy after a month)
March 30th, '09 - First Extra Clear (EoSD)
May 16th, '09 - Yukari's Last Word captured
June 6th, '09 - MoF Extra clear
June 19th, '09 - SA Extra clear
August 15th, '09 - UFO Normal 1cc (day of release)
November '09 - Keyboard breaks, I start playing no-vertical for the next month
December 24th, '09 - Perfect PCB Stage 3 Lunatic (used a key remapper and prayed it didn't malfunction for once)
January 10th, '09 - All Last Words in IN captured

Don't remember dates on any of my other real accomplishments...:V

*Amusingly enough, I didn't even realize I had 1cc'd until the credits roll. I was half-asleep at the time >_>

[Formless God]

1 year ago : Master LL's Project P3 (featuring U.N. Owen Was Her ?)

6 months ago : Rondo of fantasy, Necrofantasia (original, PCB, approx. 90 loops), Ancient Temple (IaMP). Okay, this game has godly music.

5 1/2 months ago : Tried SWR. Okay game, cute characters, Evening Star and Fragrant Plants are awesome.

5 months ago : HAS UFO ! Took an entire morning to 1cc Easy. And an entire afternoon to loop Cosmic Mind.

1 month later : UFO Normal 1cc. I decided to try the other games.

1 1/2 months later : ... PCB Normal, IN Normal, MoF Normal, EoSD Normal 1cc'd in one go.

2 month later : IN Extra clear.

3 1/2 months later : MoF Hard and IN Hard 1cc, first try. BOMBS.

3 2/3 months later : Cleared the other Extras.

3 3/4 months later :V : PCB Phantasm.

4 months later : Random IN accomplishments. Captured most SCs and Last Words. SA Normal 1cc because I almost forgot that game.

4 months later : EoSD Hard 1cc.

4 3/4 months later : Cleared most Extras for the second time, more IN accomplishments.

5 months later : 2D Koishi, ND Suwacko, random S1, S2 Perfect runs.

5 1/3 months later : MoF Lunatic 1cc.

1 day ago : Failed Nue 6 times with Sanae B. Pulled off a successful run with Reimu A in the end.
4 hours ago : 25DNB Byakuren Pacifist.
2 hours ago : PoFV, Komachi vs. CPU Cirno. Lasted 7 minutes. Opponent didn't even lose a life.

;_;

[Bananamatic]

13th June - started playing touhou
5th December - first lunatic 1cc
somewhere after that but before christmas - second lunatic 1cc

[theshirn]

September 2008: Started with EoSD and PCB
November: 1cc'd PCB Normal, then EoSD
December: Flansocks and Ran, IN Normal
after that things get hazy, but somewhere around August I 1cc'd LLS Lunatic
derp
then 1cc'd MS, SoEW, MoF, PoFV and PCB Lunatics (not in that order)
1cc'd SA Hard last week
still raging at UFO's ungodly terrible design and characters, Hard 1cc forthcoming, I hope

[Hyperbole1729]

Around march 2008: first discovered Touhou. Started playing a bit but like once or twice a month.
Fall 2008: Started playing a bit more regularly. Most easy 1CC.
March 2009: First normal 1CC on MoF with MarisaB bug  :V

August 2009: Some friends got into it and the feeling of competition suddenly boosted my skills. EoSD normal 1CC.
October 2009: All windows (except SA) plus LLS and MS 1CC on normal.
End of October: First extra clear (Flandre with 200+ attempts)
December 2009: Most extra bosses cleared. (Mokou 10 attemps+lots of spell practice, Suwako 60 attempts, Yukari 100 attempts not counting Ran) and SA normal 1CC
January 2009: Koishi cleared with 350+ attempts. IN, EoSD, PCB, LLS hard 1CC. SoEW normal 1CC
Last week: LLS extra and MS extra cleared.

Yeah I got stalled on the same level for a long while...

[Lybydose]

June 21st:  Played Touhou for the first time.  I had never played a shmup in any form before except like space invaders.  Finished EoSD Easy using all continues.
June 22nd:  Totally failed PCB Easy.  Slow mode was on and I managed to run out of continues on resurrection butterfly. 
A few days later I discovered IN and spell practice mode.  I also got a score.dat with everything unlocked.  Awesome.
July 9th:  First Extra clear (IN)
A few days later:  First Normal 1cc (IN)
August 28-29th:  Deleted my IN score.dat and actually unlocked everything myself.
August 29th:  First Hard 1cc (IN)
September 19th:  FINALLY completed SA Extra, so that was all Extras in the 6 "main" windows games clear.
September 22nd:  Random SA Extra run to see if I could capture Genetics.  Ended up finishing with no deaths.  I DIDN'T CAPTURE GENETICS THOUGH.
November 8th:  First Lunatic 1cc (IN)
November 25th:  SA Lunatic 1cc (after raging and failing at UFO Hard for a while, I decided to try something easy)
November 25th:  PCB Lunatic 1cc (first try!)
December 18th:  MoF Lunatic 1cc
January 12th:  6 games 1cc'd on Hard (EoSD was last)
February 6th:  EoSD Lunatic 1cc

[trancehime]

Expect month overlaps in this timeline, which is ordered by game.


Nov. 2004 - Discovered Touhou

HRTP
Dec. 2004 - Began playing Highly Responsive to Prayer, 2cc'd Hard Jigoku
Feb. 2005 - 1cc'd Hard Jigoku/Makai
Apr. 2005 - 1cc'd Lunatic Jigoku
May 2005 - 1cc'd Lunatic Makai
Aug. 2005 - 1LC'd Normal Jigoku

SOEW
Jan. 2005 - Took a break from HRtP, began Story of Eastern Wonderland
Mar. 2005 - 1cc'd Normal
May 2005 - 1cc'd Hard
Jun. 2005 - 1cc'd Lunatic
Aug. 2005 - 1cc'd EXTRA

PODD
Feb. 2005 - Began Phantasmagoria of Dim. Dream
Feb. 2005 - Practiced the game using Rikako, 1cc'd Normal
Apr. 2005 - 1cc'd Lunatic
May 2005 - 1cc'd EXTRA with Marisa

LLS
Aug. 2005 - Started Lotus Land Story
Sep. 2005 - 1cc'd Normal
Nov. 2005 - 1cc'd Hard
Jan. 2006 - 1cc'd Lunatic
Feb. 2006 - 1cc'd EXTRA
Mar. 2006 - Almost 1LC'd Easy

MS
Feb. 2006 - Started Mystic Square
Apr. 2006 - 1cc'd Normal
Jun. 2006 - 1cc'd Hard
Dec. 2006 - 1cc'd Lunatic
Jan. 2007 - 1cc'd EXTRA

SSG
Jan. 2007 - Started Shuusou Gyoku
Feb. 2007 - 1cc'd Normal
Apr. 2007 - 1cc'd Hard
Jun. 2007 - 1cc'd Lunatic
Jul. 2007 - 1cc'd EXTRA

KG
Jun. 2007 - Started Kioh Gyoku
Aug. 2007 - 1cc'd Normal
Lost interest, greatly preferred PODD

BSR
Aug. 2007 - Started Banshiryuu C64 version
Sep. 2007 - 1cc'd Normal
Oct. 2007 - 1cc'd Hard
Dec. 2007 - 1cc'd Lunatic
Long gap of practice
Aug. 2008 - Updated, started C74 version
Sep. 2008 - 1cc'd Lunatic
Oct. 2008 - 2cc'd Extra
Nov. 2008 - 1cc'd EXTRA
Long gap of practice
Aug. 2009 - Updated, started BSR v3.00
Sep. 2009 - 1cc'd Lunatic
Oct. 2009 - 1cc'd EXTRA

PoFV
Jan. 2008 - Started Phantasmagoria of Flower View
May. 2008 - 1cc'd Lunatic

[Solais]

All 1cc's are in Normal, and I never go beyond that difficulty level.
2009 April - Discovered Touhou... more like I allowed myself to discover it (I knew about it for a few years)
2009 May - Between my study session for the Final Exam, got the PC-98 games first, HRtP was meh, 2cc'd SoEW and 1cc's LLS on Normal by accident, I actually haven't found this out for months. In same month, EoSD discovered and 1cc'd on Normal after a week.
2009 July - Big jump because of Finals, I tried some games, but first serious 1cc's of PCB and IN, and PCB Extra.
2009 August - 1cc MoF, SoEW, LLS again, MS, maybe even PoDD and PoFV, I don't remember. Did IN extra just two days before UFO. 1cc'd UFO after 8 tries, it was kinda easy.
2009 December - Thanks to Ruro, I finally 1cc'd SA for my first try. After months of practice, one single replay taught me how to do it.
2010 January - Lost interest, I may pick up them some day, I want to do the remaining Extras.

[Nyyl]

A little over a year ago (middle of December) I discovered Touhou. I didn't know it was a game until maybe January when I played EoSD for the first time, and I couldn't even beat easy with all my continues. I pretty much did not progress at all for the space of 10 months and lost interest in the games, opting to be a music fan instead (though I'd play them occasionally for fun). Then about October or November, I started playing vividly, and over the past few weeks I've been able to 1cc Normal on EoSD, PCB, and IN and beat their extra stages

tl;dr it took me a year to be able to play decently

[Zengeku]

I don't remember any dates at all. It was around May in 2008. I got a hold of a bunch of Touhou games. Learned of them through youtube videos one of my friends showed to me. Didn't make any progress at all for 3 months mainly due to playing on Easy, then Normal, with slow-mode activated and 7 lives and all that. Then i managed to clear IN Extra and shortly after that, PCB Extra+Phantasm. I don't remember the details much but at my 1 year anniversary i had cleared all Windows bosses + all Hard modes.

Since then i was running in loops. It never felt as if i got better and Lunatic felt incredibly punishing. In May 2010 i will have my 2 year anniversary and i have now done 5 lunatic 1cc's.

As you can read from this... i'm incredibly slow. I'd come try something, i'll be like "i can't do this now" and then attempt it a couple months later. I have had a serious lack of confidence and clearing extra's would easily be postponed because of retrying got frustrating.

[Tapsa]

2009 January, started playing EoSD
July 1st, tried Reimu solo Hard challenge in IN for a week, failed though.
November 22, 1cc'd SA on Easy with ReimuB
December, beat arcade mode Lunatic on UNL with Marisa by spamming C
2010 January, almost beat P
February 6th, 1cc'd MoF on Easy with ReimuB

I would probably play Touhou on higher difficulties some day again if I could devote more time into practising.

[Iryan]

Summer 2007: Discovered touhou.

Autumn 2007: Got Mountain of Faith.
   A week later: Discovered the focus key.  :V

Late 2007: Easy 1cc.

...

1. 12. 2009: MoF Lunatic 1cc + first VoWG Lunatic capture in the same run.

Don't really remember any other dates...

[Sapz]

I don't remember most of the dates, but I'm sure I started in November '08. Got my first Normal 1cc within a week (EoSD), and beat EoSD Extra about two or three weeks after that, with possibly a few more 1ccs in between. 13 months after starting, I managed to 1cc all the standard Touhou games on Lunatic; the last two months of which were spent solely on UFO Lunatic.

Spoiler:

One and a half months after that, I entered DoDonPachi's second loop for the first time.

:V

[Jaimers]

Can't remember the exact dates, so this is coming from memory, my old posts and guesswork.

April 09, saw someone LP the PCB demo and it looked like a fun game. I got it myself not too long since then. I had never played a schmup before Touhou.
I remember going through the games from the oldest to the newest (pc98 aside), so I spend most time on EoSD in the beginning.
1cc'd normal in about a week? I Do remember I had beaten Flan after a month.
Don't remember having much problems with any extra stage after Flandre.

July 09, beat PCB lunatic somewhere during this time.
July 09 - Okt 09, beat a bunch of games on lunatic.

October 22, 2009, 01:47:03 pm - PoDD lunatic 1cc
October 27, 2009, 07:58:13 pm - all spellcards in the series captured.
December 05, 2009, 03:00:02 pm - Every lunatic in the series beaten.
December 10, 2009, 02:53:59 pm - VoWG timeout.
February 06, 2010, 08:02:07 pm - SA perfect stage 5 lunatic

So yeah, all that in 10 months.  :V

...I just made a bunch of people writhe in agony, didn't I? 

[Alfred F. Jones]

I took two years or so to beat my first extra. Beat that, suckas. :V

And yes, it took me one month to beat EoSD easy with all continues, two more after that to 1cc EoSD easy, and six-seven more months after that to beat EoSD normal. Whee!

[Helix ⑨]

Everyone seems to be so much better than me, and I thought I was average.
3 attempts for an extra? wtf :S
phantasm first try? How the fuck? When I did my first phantasm run I was greeted by the same mobs, only faster, and more, sometimes different angles. I needed a few attempts to adjust and after that it was easy, but defintely not first attempt.

UNLESS you guys count attempts as in 'reached the boss'. I beat UFO extra in 20 attempts on nue, but I had like 40-50 on kogasa's first. And at least that much ragequitted on the stage before kogasa.

[ebarrett]

phantasm first try? How the fuck?

It's the ugliest replay ever, I'm pretty sure of that. Still finished 0/2, if you needed further proof that SakuyaB is Broken.
(replay submitted under a different name, a long time ago, in a- wait)

3 attempts for an extra? wtf :S
(...)
UNLESS you guys count attempts as in 'reached the boss'.

No, but would make no difference for this one anyway, seeing as my first UFO extra run ended on Danmaku Chimera  :V

[Poochy.EXE]

Well, looking at the dates on my old replays, here's a reconstruction of my timeline:

2007/10/31 - First played Touhou; my friend showed me PCB. Never heard of Touhou before this, minimal prior experience on shoot 'em ups. (I remember having casually played exactly ONE shoot 'em up game ever before Touhou, for maybe an hour or two.)
2007/11/22 - First no-continue clear with default starting lives and no Slow Mode, on PCB Easy with SakuyaA. (I think sometime before this was at least one no-continue clear with 5 starting lives and Slow Mode, and another with just 5 lives and no Slow Mode.)
2007/12/08 - First Extra clear. PCB SakuyaA.
2007/12/11 - First Phantasm clear. SakuyaA.
2007/12/28 - Cleared PCB Extra with SakuyaB. 5th try with SakuyaB. Discovered that homing shot types are pathetically weak.
2007/12/31 - Cleared PCB Phantasm with SakuyaB. 22nd try.
2008/01/20 - IN Extra cleared, Border Team
2008/04/05 - Cleared PoFV Extra with Komachi. Cleared it again with Sikieiki a day later.
2008/04/17 - No-miss clear on MoF Extra, through flagrant abuse of the MarisaB glitch.
Sometime before late August 2008 - Cleared Normal (default starting lives, Slow Mode off, no continues) on PCB, IN, and MoF (without MarisaB). Also EoSD, but not sure if that was done with default starting lives.
Late August 2008 - Between developing other interests and getting annoyed at SA's memorization-heavy stage design, I set aside Touhou and mostly forgot about it until UFO came out, save for a brief stint in May 2009 and another one playing with the UFO demo when it first came out. So no achievements during this period. Pretty much no records of me playing, either.
August 2009 - UFO came out, renewed my interest in Touhou.
2009/08/18 - UFO Normal cleared.
2009/08/28 - UFO Extra cleared.
2009/11/28 - Picked up SA again and cleared Normal.
2009/12/30 - SA Extra cleared.
2010/01/27 - Picked up MoF again and decided to try Extra without MarisaB, and cleared it.
2010/02/08 - EoSD Extra cleared, for an Extra Clear on every Windows Touhou game.

[Fate]

Since I just registered today, greetings everyone, I'm Fate and caught the Touhou virus a week ago.

On topic:
First play of EoSD (Or Danmakus generally) (Started right on lunatic): 3rd Feb 2010
1 day later: Moved difficulty down to Normal
2 days later: Finally reached Remilia
5 days later: Beat Remilia
1cc Run on Remilia yet to be done xD.

[Generalguy]

First easy 1cc : 2 days (EoSD I think)

First Normal 1cc : 2 weeks (IN)

First Extra 1cc : 4 months (PCB)

First Hard 1cc : 7-8 months (IN or MoF, I'm not sure)

First Lunatic 1cc : 11 months (HRtP. Easily the best choice if you want to 1cc a Lunatic as quick as possible, but learning the game can be very frustrating)

Experience with similar games : Before Touhou, I absolutely LOATHED shmups. In fact, 6 months before I started playing, I ended up on the wiki because I wanted to know who Patchouli was. Upon finding out Touhou was a shooting game, I closed the wiki almost immediately. That explains why I average about 2 hours of gameplay per week currently.

[Doomsday]

From what I can remember:

June 2008: first clear (using all my continues to pass PCB normal I believe) first Normal 1cc later in that month
July/August 2008: All other games 1cc'd on Normal (Including SA soon after the release). EoSD/PCB Extra/Phantasm cleared
September 2008: IN/SA Extra cleared
October 2008: MoF Extra cleared

Not much happened. by this point I was playing Touhou much less

August 2009: UFO Normal 1cc'd
December 2009: IN hard 1cc'd

I've yet to beat the UFO Extra yet. I haven't tried clearing it all that much really.