If you've ever played any of the games that I'm allusioning, you doubtlessly know that I'm talking about Touhou.
Touhou is a series of curtain shooter games, more commonly referred to as danmaku. Of course, if you're like I was six months ago, you have no idea what danmaku is. Think of the golden age of the arcade, when people lined up in ungodly hot rooms with countless strangers and pockets heavy with quarters. There are many games to play here. Mario, Frogger, Donkey Kong, Pac Man. The list goes on. The most iconic of arcade games, however, are the vertical space shooters like Galaga and 1912.
These games follow a very simple, very addicting pattern. You play as a small ship or plane situated at the bottom of the screen. Your goal is to destroy other ships and planes coming at you from the top of the screen while dodging the bullets they fire at you.
Touhou is very similar, the only two big differences being difficulty and little girls. While Space Invaders had aliens, and Galaga had space ships, Touhou has little girls. With very few exceptions, everything on the screen from the main character to enemies to bosses are little girls.
These games, despite their simplicity, have climbed their way to the top of Japan's independent gaming scene, having even managed to break its way into the international main stream.
The in-game stories are simplistic, and dialogue is very lacking. The art is sub-par, and the graphics have seen scant improvement since the sixth game in a series that has seen its twelfth debut in 2009. Yet this game has grown a special place in the hearts of almost everyone who has played it.
Touhou fandom is everywhere. It's very likely that you've seen something Touhou related, regardless of how many games and movies you play and watch. Most Touhou fans, myself included, can trace the start of their love to Touhou's music. The entire Touhou Project line of danmaku games have been made in full, gameplay, artwork, graphics, music and all, by one man. This man, calling himself ZUN, never intended to make a series of best-selling internationally loved games. He started off as a video game music composer, and wanted to make a game so showcase some of his newer songs. This the Touhou Project was born.
While ZUN has released a few pieces of supplementary works on the series, a few manga and books here and there, most of the content that keeps the fane coming back is fan made. Musical groups such as IOSYS, Silver Forest, and Sound Holic dominate the scene, remixing both stage and boss themes from the Touhou series and adding lyrics and flash videos.
Most of what we know of character personalities is inferred from the small pieces of dialogue between characters before boss encounters. The biggest example of this would be the main character in the series, a shrine maiden called Reimu Hakurei. She has mentioned in her dialogue before several bosses that her shrine rarely sees visitors. We know from game instruction manuals that her main job, apart from tending to her shrine is hunter youkai, or monsters. This has been spun to turn Reimu into a down-and-out shrine maiden with a shrine in the middle of nowhere who takes her frustration out on the youkai of the world while she takes her donation box out in an attempt to scrape enough money together to save the shrine from falling apart.
This is a wonderful world of fandom. Touhou has a very large cast of characters. I've tried on several occasions to count them, but I always come up with a different number. For the sake of saving time, let us say that there are more than 70 characters. Almost every character in this series has a name, a background, a theme song taken from the official games, and a very dedicated fan following adding the spice needed to make them functional three-dimensional characters.
A screenshot taken from Touhou 08, Imperishable Night. A 'Last World' spellcard made for players to test their skill.
Touhou as a game is famous for one thing other than its spectacular music. This is its amazingly beautiful and complex bullet patterns. While most games of a similar nature use sheer numbers and speed to overwhelm the player, Touhou uses a combination of complex patterns for players to navigate, and intense beauty to distract the hapless player. Combine these elements with Touhou's enchanting music, and it's hardly a wonder they keep players coming back.
Well, this is a basic rundown of Touhou, and what the game entails. I wanted to write this and get the name out there in hopes that people will have a better understanding of what this game is when I talk about it in the future.
For now, this is Brian, the '-Not Very- Original Prof' signing out.
