Non-default life settings go away after Imperishable Night, by the way, so prepare for that if you do decide to go with non-defaults. Also funny how you mentioned tracking down the origins of Touhou patterns during Remilia's 2nd non which is one of the most famous examples of a Touhou pattern that came from CAVE, that one being one of Garra's patterns in ESP Ra De.
It's great to see you doing this content. A weird thing I've never understood is that there seems to be many Touhou players who just play Touhou and not other shmups, and a lot of shmup players who play everything else but turn up their nose at Touhou. So you rarely hear the perspective of someone who'll play both. Oh, and if you're going to do hard mode clears you should consider doing the extra stages, they are the TLBs and final stages and are tuned similarly in difficulty.
Lots of touhou-only players (including myself) have started getting into other/cave shooters recently. I believe it to be "natural progression" when you've either had enough, or want to experience new and/or other great shooters.
I think 2 misconceptions play a big role from shmup players: "Touhou just has little girls in it" from touhou players "these other games have just generic space ships,no waifus and uninteresting music"
A masive reason alot of touhou players don't know much about other shmups is because of the many games there are, usually when a new person chooses touhou, you have a very large library of games for the series, especially when all the games have a simple name being "touhou X", also most new players will probably try other games after playing touhou 6 for the 6th time, and it's much easier to carry on with the series than finding some other game that has a different name so little timmy will most likely move to touhou 7 then 8 then 9 and will then forget that other shmups exist
Touhou is the franchise that got me interested in shmups and those are the games I've put the most time into (and actually got 1cc's on) so I am looking forward to seeing how this series goes!
So nice to see touhou being commented like this. Makes me appreciate it even more. I really enjoy these games but I can’t clear one on hard. One day maybe. Great vid Mark. Looking forward to the next one.
Gave me some good nostalgia vibes looking at the screen and listening to that music since I haven't played or seen this game for a long time haha. Great perspective from a person who's from arcade games, like all the bosses are like Hibachi lmao. It's great to see you play and have interest in games from the Doujin realm which I adore. Totally agree on the final bosses last pattern being horrendously long. It tests your patience and preciseness which is fun once you get used to it, but too much to handle or kinda soul breaking if you're not used to it. Looking forward for more!
Honestly, I really like the simple backgrounds. Makes the bullets not blend into the background too much. Also great video, can't wait for the rest of the series.
Yeah that is a nice aspect of the more minimalist background design, I'm excited to see how they evolve as the series goes on. Glad you liked the video :-D
While we're on the topic of Touhou and Cave stuff, here's a quote from Touhou 6's extra text file. "There haven't been any shmups released since Dodonpachi Daiohjou, yeah? I've gotten to the second loop, but I've already given up on that. (^^; (I use A-type Leinyan.) I can't even 1cc Progear after 2-5 tries, so beating Daiohjou's second loop is going to be impossible by my estimate (Due to physical limitations)." ZUN then talks about why many people don't get into the shmup genre. it's a pretty good read tbh. Also Lyrica's 3rd nonspell is just a stylish version of genbu's 1st pattern from Daioujou.
I'm not sure if its in this one, but usually in touhou games there's an indicator at the bottom of the screen that shows where the boss is. I wish more games had that feature, it's especially useful for the heavy danmaku segments. If the "stay under the boss" thing gets too repetitive, you'll be happy to know that Subterranean Animism (11) has a bunch of patterns that have you using the entire field, even the area above the boss. I'm a long time fan of this series, super excited to hear more of your opinion on it!
I've been looking forward to this for a while and you didn't disappoint. I just got my first lunatic clear and it was this game so watching this was cool. I feel like there's still a bit of a barrier between TH and arcade fanbases for a variety of reasons so hopefully this video series will help to bridge that gap a bit.
I'm really glad to hear that! I tried really hard to make the production look cool :-) Yeah a huge goal of this series is to serve as a bridge between arcade and touhou players!
EoSD is my first touhou game I played and I enjoyed it. I was amazed with the danmaku patterns and the characters (Patchouli best Touhou waifu). Also, all Touhou music makes me hum to it while playing. I think that ZUN really did his best in the Touhou series! All hail ZUN and his beer!
I accidentally stumbled into your channel and your content is really cool, I subbed right away lol. I personally like playing as Marisa instead of Reimu, as Marisa feels more like a glasscannon-like character, high fire power and fast movement, but bigger hitbox and smaller damage range, if you can stay below the boss she will clear bosses faster and that in itself will help survive for longer. Sadly ZUN sometimes misses the memo and the shot-type balance goes out of the window, usually favouring Reimu's strenghts, but in the earlier games (6-7) I can't stand how slow Reimu is.
I m really glad to hear that! Than you for the sub :-) I agree marisa is the cooler character I like how her design is too :-) I 'll try to play her more as I go along
Yo, I love what you did with the UI bars on the side! Looks super cool. Anyway, this was a great watch! Touhou 6/EoSD is my favorite Touhou game in the series; I have a Lunatic No Bombs 1CC and an Extra Perfect NMNB, if that speaks for itself. I really love the simplicity of this game in particular; no annoying gimmicks or anything, just classic RNG shmup action featuring some of the most classic characters and music that the series has to offer. Looking forward to seeing more of these, man! Really fantastic series this is going to be. ^o^
Touhou is my Shoot'em up series of all time by the way here's a fun fact I loved the characters, gameplay, music and lore so much that it inspired me to learn Japanese I have been learning Japanese since December of 2016 I still have a lot to learn though but it's fun and that's the important thing.
One of the things I think is the coolest about EoSD, and probably plays a factor into some of the limited graphics, is just how low the system requirements to play this game are. Only 32MB of ram and a 500MHz processor! Kind of interesting to think how big a leap that must of been for ZUN though considering that Touhou 5 ran on a 66MHz i486 and 520KB of ram. All that aside I think this series premise is pretty neat and I'm really looking forward to later episodes!
Ya the JP PC market never went through the hyper rapid iteration that the US PC market did because their preferred PC's were set standards that weren't compatible with the IBM PC Compatible (PC-98 and FM Towns). They were almost like game consoles back then. The PC-98 was basically done for when EoSD came out. It had to be wild to go from what was a potato by US standards at the time to a modern PC.
Oh man, I'm excited for this series. You should definitely take a look at the extra stages that you unlock after 1CCing the game. They're absolutely brutal. I know you're a big fan of Danmaku Unlimited 3. I grew up on Touhou games, and was excited to play Dan 3, but found that I just didn't like it very much. Not really sure what the difference is that makes me like the Touhou games more. There's some more subtle mechanics to keep in mind when playing Touhou games as well. You mentioned how well-defined the hitboxes are on the bullets, but I also noticed you were dodging the big multicolored spheres entirely. Their hitbox is actually only the colored part, so you can hang out in the white edges all you want without risking damage. This can make some patterns much easier to dodge, and if I remember correctly, I think it's mandatory in one of the later games. Another interesting feature is that if you fly up to the top of the screen, all powerups on screen will instantly fly to you. In Touhou 6 this only works if you're fully powered up, so it's mostly only good for scoring, but in the later games you may find that it can be a good way to not only get fully powered up more quickly, but getting your score up will also net you some more 1-ups. There's also a really cool feature that I saw you pulled off in the final battle. If you press the bomb button on pretty much the same frame you get hit, it causes a deathbomb to happen. Basically the bomb goes off and you don't die, but you still hear the sound effect for dying, so if you're super on top of your bombs, you can try and only ever use them when you absolutely know you are getting hit. Great stuff dude, looking forward to your take on the rest of the games. I think 6 is my favorite, but 7 and 12 are also way up there for me
Yeah ha I actually am familiar with the bubble hitboxes (thanks to dan 3 ha) but I was playing super conservatively in the last stage because the run before I died just a few moments away from the clear (ugh) so my strat for the last stage was bomb at the slightest hint of danger ha (since the bombs aren't really that useful on the final attack). Yeah I need to remember that I can autocollect when I'm fully powered, I really like the change they make in the later games where you don't need to be fully powered up ha. Yeah deathbombs are great! They spoil you, but in a good way. I think the meta of being able to react bomb to getting hit is really cool and a skill I'll hopefully refine as we move through the series :-) Cherry Blossom next!
@@TheElectricUnderground good approach as EoSD bubbles (among other things, like rotated knives not actually rotating hitboxes) have infamous hitboxes, them being squares and very... not great
@@TheElectricUnderground The deathbomb window is too short to react to, though, except in Imperishable Night, where they're much more lenient but cost 2 bombs. Deathbombing for the most part is like coyote time: a small mercy so you don't feel cheated.
I've been looking forward to Touhou Quest since you announced it! EoSD aged pretty poorly IMO, especially in the graphics department. As you said, it is understandable given that ZUN is developing on Windows for the first time, but it still made the game pretty unappealing to me, so I gave up on it and played FDF instead (and working on a Hard 1cc there as we speak). EoSD really showed me the importance of good presentation, as I used to think that good gameplay was all that was needed. Also, shoutouts to Ms Garra at 14:30. Now that I've tried out some non-Touhou shmups, I've become less of a fan of the Touhou games, specifically in the way they are designed. Of course, there is a big difference in how doujin games are made, compared to indies or arcade or M2. ZUN's design style isn't necessarily inferior, but it doesn't jive as well with me compared to CAVE shmups or CCWI. The stages aren't particularly interesting, while boss fights are such a pain due to the reasons you identified in the video (relatively small hitboxes, spell cards testing endurance). I really dislike the power system as well; shattering power items into tiny pieces make them so much harder to collect and adds a lot of visual noise (if I saw a reddish cloud in my peripheral vision, would it be a bunch of power items or red bullets?). Doing the same for lives and bombs in later games doesn't help. Bullet patterns can also be very difficult to read due to bullets abruptly changing trajectory mid-flight, or having too much overlap. That said, I'm not saying I hate Touhou; after all it introduced me to shmups, the music and characters are amazing, and I plan to play more of them in the future. It's just that Touhou has its own style which isn't for everyone, and little surprise why there seems to be a divide between the Touhou and arcade playerbases. Frankly, I'm afraid I may be too close-minded. Everything has its own strengths and flaws, but I usually only focus on the latter and discount the former. Once I find something better, my expectations for what a good game is increases as well. As a result, the bar keeps getting raised and I see objectively good games as being poorly made just because they don't do . I need to learn to appreciate games for the things they did well and be less critical, so I can enjoy them as they are. And playing more Touhou games in spite of my preference for a different style of shmups is a step in the right direction. I also wanted to do a Touhou Quest of my own from the very beginning. Maybe I should come back to EoSD after playing more Touhou games and getting more used to the Touhou style of shmups. I just wonder if the non-Touhou shmups were just as popular, would shmups have more appeal to the mainstream? Right now, the mainstream only sees Touhou and Ikaruga, and both are pretty puzzle-y shmups, and Ikaruga is the "only one that is unique" (because the rest are just Touhou games). Perhaps if Ketsui, Darius Gaiden, Garegga, Blue Revolver etc. had the same popularity as Touhou, more people could find a design style that suits them, and shmups won't all look the same.
I think the popularity is based around the strength of the IP, which is where shmups are always super weak. And yes, ZUN was doing a lot of learning in those days. He jumped from the PC's that were primarily equipped with 486's (best case a Pentium 1), all the way to Pentium 3 based machines. That was a massive leap forward in technology for the time.
I wonder this myself, why aren't more arcade shmups popular with the masses, other than ikaruga and raiden. I think a lot of it has to do with the really poor accessibility of cave games and cave's poor marketing skills (sorry cave, it's true). What helped touhou blow up, in my opinion, is it's open license as well where fans were able to create and sell derivative products. I'm making a topic vid about this soon, but I do wonder if cave would benefit by adopting a similar model.
@@TheElectricUnderground I wasn't in the shmup scene in the early 2000s so I can only speculate, but I would say it comes down to luck. Why did Ikaruga succeed? Because its console port gained popularity outside of Japan. Well, CAVE also ported their games, but the mainstream didn't pick up on it. At the time, I don't think Ikaruga's ports had a worldwide release, so it was in a similar position to CAVE's PS2 ports (no marketing was done outside of Japan, imports are required to play the game). So why did Ikaruga become so coveted while CAVE games continue to remain in obscurity? As for Touhou, the fanworks were a major factor, but the question is why did Touhou get way more fanworks? I don't think CAVE was particularly against people making fanart or fan arranges, and they haven't gone all Nintendo over ROM hacks or Touhoupachi, so they don't seem to be against fan games either. When it comes to selling fanworks, CAVE can't oppose the selling of fanart or fan arranges. For fan games, ZUN was also initially against selling them, and only changed his stance recently (which is why it's only in the last few years we see Touhou fan games on consoles and Steam). It's pretty normal to not allow people to sell fan games, actually. So it's not as though CAVE doesn't allow derivative works to be made, it's just that Touhou has an unnaturally huge fanwork ecosystem. When it comes down to it, most people find Touhou because of the fanart and arranges first. What inspires people to make those? For music, it's easy: they're nice to listen to. But are we then saying Namiki is that much worse as a composer? Obviously, that's not the case. For art, it's because of the interesting characters. While CAVE had a greater focus on characters from Mushi onwards only (probably learning from Touhou), they had human characters even before that in ESPrade and Guwange. I suppose the ESPrade and Guwange cast aren't as fun or interesting as the EoSD cast (since EoSD was what made Touhou blow up, which also means that the reason people like these characters then isn't because of the massive world of Gensokyo as EoSD was a soft reboot for the series, so there is essentially nothing before and after EoSD at the time). But still, it's weird how they get so much attention. So when it comes down to it, ZUN was just at the right place at the right time, with the right game on the right platform. He simply got lucky. And back to accessibility and marketing, both Touhou and CAVE games are equally easy to pirate (albeit CAVE games have to be emulated with MAME) and neither were marketed to the west. At the end of the day, CAVE simply didn't get a lucky break, as with many other shmup developers past and present. If Ikaruga didn't get ported to the Dreamcast, if ZUN made EoSD for the PC-98 and PCB his first Windows game, neither would've reached the same level of overwhelming success. When it comes to this type of success, it is always due to luck, or rather a very specific combination of external factors.
Funny bit on Touhou's Cave likeness, the extra boss on TH18 is literally a dragon eating princess in a cave named Himemushi. (Anybody know what happened to the other vids?)
I have perfect cherry blossom ready to go, just need to get it edited ha. I think I m gonna try to do a bunch of them in August. The series is still alive 😀
@@TheElectricUnderground that's awesome. btw. I'm surprised you didn't seem to do the extra stage given your hard 1cc and preference for games getting you into action faster. Some people will try to convince you its comparable to lunatic (which is ridiculous) extra and Hard are very comparable difficulties. Just extra happens faster. (With the caveat that Extra bosses are almost always immune to the damage from bombs)
Great video! This gonna be an awesome project of videos for the future. Although I know the franchise for a very long time, I barely can enjoy the games anymore.
Just want to recommend that you don't skip the spin-off games ZUN made. That's Shoot the Bullet, Double Spoiler, Great Fairy Wars, and Impossible Spell Card. (You can skip Violet Detector if you feel like it.) You don't need to play every scene in the scene games, but it's definitely worth checking out for a while to see what you get up to. Also congratulations on getting past EoSD, every game after this is much easier to get working.
@@TheElectricUnderground For STG fangames, I highly recommend Shining Shooting Star, Ephemeral Unnatural Balance, Servants of Harvest Wish, and Book of Star Mythology, they are the best of the best. If you want more recommendations, the STG Fangame Discord Touhou ~ Fanwork's 'n Chill could lend a hand ;)
I like how you addressed the music, it was always one of my favorite things about these games. Unfortunately it's been many years since I've played a touhou game because I just haven't had a windows computer to play them on. I may eventually end up building a PC (nothing too crazy) or just picking one up used so I can play these games again. What kind of moniter do you use for playing shmups? I'm in the market for one right now and would like to buy one that has the lowest amount of lag as possible, I'm just not sure what all the different specs mean. I would mainly be using it for my consoles, but it would be nice to hook up something like a mister or pgm board in the future if at all possible.
Don't stop making these, man. I am interested a lot in the score you give at the end. Difficulty i see it's 7 out of 10. Can you give us examples of each difficulty level from 1 to 10?
@@TheElectricUnderground Ok so the scale is within touhou games? i saw a list somewhere that it had games ordered by difficulty from 0 to 50. And i think ufo 1cc lunatic i think they placed it around 29 i have been wondering how accurate these lists are because i kind of want to the easiest ones and then climb up, (touhou and everything else) I wonder if that's a good idea to do or should i just use touhou 8 to build fundamentals?
@@huevonesunltd It based on, if you want to play for survival/1cc or scoring. For survival/1cc, Touhou 4 (only playable on PC-98 emulator), 7, 8, 13 and 17 are the easiest of the series, while 11, 12 and 15 are the hardest. Another option is, that you start with 15. It's on of the hardest Touhou games, but it has a checkpoint mode (which is the reason for the high difficult), but once you beat it on Easy, you nearly can beat any other Touhou game at least on Easy with nearly no problem (it's basically learning it on the hard way). I think, you are talking about this list www.shrinemaiden.com/index.php?topic=16.0 From what I see it's relativ accurate (even it's incomplete and also cover the Seihou games, a sister series of Touhou).
@@TheElectricUnderground I just tried them out in RetroArch and tweaked core settings Really easy to get them running using .hdi files for the games I use LaunchBox for a front end
So my plan is to do the main games first, then I will go through and pick out the "best of" fangames because there are some seriously good touhou fangames.
@@TheElectricUnderground It might be fun to try the "Fantastic Danmaku Festival" games since they're kind of covers/remixes of the older Touhou games but with much higher production value. The first one is actually a cover of TH6.
Ignoring the power items is a legit thing to do. The screen is cleared when you get max power. If you wait then you can pick up that last power item just when the screen is full of stray bullets.
@@madichelp0 You make a point for stage sections, but power items only drop in boss battles when you clear a spellcard, outright limiting the help that tactic would normally serve.
Watch this channel boom just because of Touhou Quest lol. Can't wait to hear what you think about the other games. I play this one the least since I cant fullscreen it or else it runs wayy too fast. :/
Man, seeing a proper review of a Touhou game on here is...surreal, to say the least. Honestly, I feel like I personally can't judge EoSD objectively anymore. I don't play the actual Touhou games all that much since I got into shmups as a whole (though of course, Touhou is where I got started) but I still keep up with the series and am still very much a fan of it...which is why I'm just sick of EoSD. It's by far the most popular game in the series in terms of characters and music and I have no idea why. It's all subjective of course but I don't see why people love this particular cast and soundtrack more than the rest. The music is great of course, but compared to almost every other Windows-era OSTs (and hell, even Touhou 4 and 5), it kinda pales in comparison for me, and the characters from the later games are just as charming as the ones here imo, only some of them have much more interesting backstories. All that aside though, I don't know how I'd rank it in terms of gameplay. It's quite basic compared to the later entries and the patterns are much more RNG-heavy (which I don't think is inherently bad btw but EoSD kinda goes too far for me sometimes), but it also has this "purity" to it that I like. It's definitely still a good game and I'm glad you enjoyed it, since this is basically "vanilla" Touhou, and almost every future game is based on EoSD's gameplay to some extent. I can't blame you for not going into too much detail on scoring since playing Touhou for score is often quite different from standard play while still requiring you to be already quite good at survival if you want to get a decent score, but I would be interested in hearing about what you think of the mechanics introduced in each game. Like I said, EoSD is pretty much the basis for the rest of the series and it's the first game to have autocollecting and spell card bonuses which I don't remember you mentioning, even though they show up in every future main game (well except for 9, but that's its own thing lol). The Touhou Wiki is a good place to read up on this stuff since the games don't have built-in manuals until Touhou 13 (well technically 12.8 was the first but idk if you plan on covering the spinoffs). I would have also liked to see your thoughts on the Extra stages which are completely separate from the main 6 stages. They're usually a pretty fun extra challenge and shouldn't be overly difficult for you since you can clear Hard, since an Extra clear tends to be between Normal and Hard in terms of difficulty. And hey, if you end up enjoying the series, you'll have plenty of fangames to check out as well! There's a page on the wiki for those as well which has a pretty nice list of the important ones, and some lesser-known stuff as well. They definitely...vary in terms of quality but there's some really good ones out there, and the bad ones are fun to meme about I guess. There's also the PC-98 games as well which often go overlooked, 4 and 5 are surprisingly close to modern Touhou and are both quite fun while 3 is basically the precursor to Touhou 9. Touhou 1 is kinda jank but I have a soft spot for it, it's an interesting take on Breakout with a dash of bullet hell in some of the bosses. 2 is just kinda ehhh though. Definitely a great start to Touhou Quest and I can't wait to hear your thoughts on the rest of the games!
sort of! I did a commentary video of it and discovered the scroll rollover. So as far as I am aware, I think I have the highest score of the game ha. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE--19eiYaGwQM.html
i feel like if you can get a 2-all of dodonpachi you can easily beat all touhou games on lunatic also don't listen to people that say extra's harder than lunatic it's not that difficult lol i use marisab cause i like master spark but the extra stage was harder cause the boss has a bomb shield just like hibachi i don't really mind bosses having a small hitbox, it makes you focus on shooting and dodging at the same time also in the older games when you get full power it clears all bullets
Yeah I definitely think I have the chops to get a lunatic clear, it s more about finding the right touhou that speaks to me the most to dedicate the time to :-)
@@TheElectricUnderground different games also have different extend reqs, quite a few are point item based and modern games only games that come to mind for score are EoSD, MoF, -PoFV-, and HSiFS
PCB and IN are point item, SA is survival, (DDC also is kinda survival with a PoC gimmick), UFO and WBaWC are a token mechanic, TD is "trance"/hyper for multiplying spirits with gauge gained by pointblank (and I hear TD is good for scoring), and LoLK is graze and shootdown
