~Hakurei Shrine~ > Help Me, Eirin!
How did you LEARN about Touhou?
Tonepoet:
I can't remember the dates, but as a fan of the anime art style, I've been viewing images on 4chan's /a/ and /c/ boards for years now. Very infrequently I used to come across Touhou threads and noted the exceptionally high fanart quality. I think one of the first pieces I ever saw and was stricken by was of Sakuya serving tea in the library to Patchouli, who was writing something in quill. I didn't know their names back then or at least I hadn't committed them to my memory yet. Despite this, Patchouli's image of that as an intellectual had stuck in my head and made her an instant favorite for me, although not knowing much at the time, I made the mistake of thinking Sakuya was Patchy's servant.
Looking into the matter further did me not much good however, as I've been a Macintosh user all my life and may as well be illiterate when it comes to japanese. I've mostly ignored it, with the exception of enjoying those once rare times when a Touhou thread would surface and I would get to see the pretty art. Well, about a month before /jp/ lost any resemblance as to what you might uncertainly call actual japanese culture, I found a thread on the 4chan archive once more exhibiting the wonderful quality of fanstuffs. I ended up making the mistake of spamming all the images into a friend's chat window and telling him what little I knew about the series. After the introduction had been made, I could no longer remain in my quaint general ignorance of the series, as pretty much nonstop I'd keep on hearing about how wonderful the gameplay was and all the character interactions, be linked to various Touhou related videos ect. We've fueled each others addictions since then, though I think at the moment mine is currently stronger. Now even with Boot Camp, I still don't actually play the games, Perfect Cherry Blossom demo aside, as for personal reasons I've had no means of electronic payment.
Funnily enough, shortly after I introduced my friend to it, the Touhou fandom on 4chan seems to have exploded. This is probably due to the nature change of /jp/.
As for the off topic conversation, Golbeze did indeed become a good guy at the end of FF IV. The true orchestrater of events, Zemus, was actually somewhat of a disappointment as he got the least development and screen time of any of the game's villains.
I personally feel that graphics don't have to meet high technological standards or even appear realistic in order to look beautiful. I feel the SNES not only had the best selection of games but perhaps even the best overall aesthetic of any video game system to date. Sometimes, rarely, the look of a game will detract from the experience for me. However, games like Space Invaders and Pong are proof enough that a game can be great without any bells and whistles at all, if the core gameplay fun enough. Too many people get caught up about one aspect or another about video games to see what really matters: Is it enjoyable? A pleasing appearance is only one aspect of the palatability of a video game and I too feel that it is the most overrated one.
P.S: Hi everybody. I'm new, obviously.
Djinova:
--- Quote from: Dino_246 on June 28, 2009, 06:23:37 PM ---I found out about the game on shmups.com, when Katchura (the original creator and owner of shrinemaiden.com, going under the name of Seraphim on shmups.com) started talking about it. I signed up into the original boards when there were about 10 active members and we were lucky to get a post every few days. The IRC chat usually had 3 active members in it, no admins or anything. It was usually this guy MARGATROID, who rarely said something, katchura, leviathean, pickie, or I in there. Ahh the good old days of making Hetdegon rage for being a mystia fan.......
--- End quote ---
Oh god, you must be a fossil. I didn't know "pickie" was that old.
As for me, I've been introduced to Touhou in late 2004. My first experience was the PCB demo. I died on Stage 3, but it was awesome. I still consider Alice's danmaku to be the most refined out of all Stage 3 bosses. Nowadays I'm more on lurking mode, but I am still very fond and watching eagerly its development. Actually, I just recently finished what's translated about CoLA and thought it was great.
About the current discussion, "graphics" is just a feature like anything else and different people have different affinities towards certain features. Don't hate them if they prioritize certain things, but naturally it is a mistake if they lean to heavy towards it (just like anything) and ignore everything else.
I'd be more careful if you want to introduce people to Touhou. Is it necessary that they should feel the same as you did? Is it even possible given their inclinations? Is Touhou really better than what they have? If some people made a really stupid remark about Touhou, maybe it's because you did something you shouldn't have (maybe).
ceiling hat:
I was watching ddp doj videos on the tubes (intentionally, from a superplay link or something). That lead to Mushihimesama, which somehow lead to a laggy Cho Ren Sha video, which somehow lead to a tate'd Triggerheart Exelica video (one of two that existed at the time).
Then I finally stumbled upon Dracil's infamous IN Extra replay from there. The aesthetics and music quickly drew me in, and I spent the next month scouring for a demo. It was nice to be able to pursue a game that wasn't PCB only, and that I could actually try before buying.
Tru fax
lmagus:
i've only ever played RPG games in my life. i have friends who play shmups but i never liked the whole war themes.
then one day i watched a mushihimesama video on youtube and loved it because it wasn't about WWII or futuristic or whatever and decided to download the iso to play... got hooked on it and even got to the TLB once on Arrange mode... Then i got bored of it...
So I looked for another shmup and found out about Touhou. I first played IN but I don't remember why I didn't play much. I think my gamepad had just broken... Over a year later I was bored at work and found a link to download all the games so I dowloaded them and started playing MoF because I had just gotten bored of Dragon Quest 8... That's been about a month ago and I still can't beat Kanako on Normal :(