Touhou Project
Backstory The Touhou Project, or just simply Touhou, is a series of vertical scrolling shoot 'em up games that take place in the magical realm of Gensokyo. They are made by a One Man Team of ZUN who is the only member of Team Shanghai Alice. There is a wide cast of characters, almost all of which are female, who are Human, Youkai, Fairies, Lunarians, Fairies or otherwise, and they all have some kind of special ability, and the stronger of these tend to cause incidents. The main characters, Reimu Hakurei and Marisa Kirisame, often accompanied by other incident solvers, usually end up going through six stages to beat the bad guy, plus an extra stage for the aftermath. As for the games themselves, they are renowned for their amazing soundtracks, beautiful patterns and great characters. Mechanics The mechanics of the main series are pretty simple - shoot down opposing magical girls with Z, bomb with X, move with the arrow keys and focus, or slow down, with left shift. There are four difficulty levels to the games: Easy, Normal, Hard, and Lunatic. The Extra stages are somewhere between Normal and Hard difficulty. The scoring mechanics between each game slightly change too, such as the time system in Imperishable Night or the Faith system in Mountain of Faith. Power, Range, Speed and Bombs vary between characters and their shottypes - for example, Marisa tends to have little range but large power, strong bombs and faster speed, and Reimu tends to have less power and weaker bombs, but a wider range and a slower speed. As of Perfect Cherry Blossom, when one focuses, they can see their hitbox to help with dodging. Games The Main series and side games can be split into different eras quite easily, based on their overall style and mechanics, as well as the OS they were on. Here is the entire series of games, listed with their genre! It's recommended you start with 6 or 7, but any is fine, really. PC-98 Era Touhou 1 - Highly Responsive to Prayers (Breakout shmup thingy) Touhou 2 - Story of Eastern Wonderland (Shmup) Touhou 3 - Phantasmagoria of Dim. Dream (Multiplayer Shmup) Touhou 4 - Lotus Land Story (Shmup) Touhou 5 - Mystic Square (Shmup) Classic Windows Era Touhou 6 - Embodiment of Scarlet Devil (Shmup) Touhou 7 - Perfect Cherry Blossom (Shmup) Touhou 7.5 - Immaterial and Missing Power (Fighter) Touhou 8 - Imperishable Night (Shmup) Touhou 9 - Phantasmagoria of Flower View (Multiplayer Shmup) Touhou 9.5 - Shoot the Bullet (Photography Shmup) Modern Era 1 Touhou 10 - Mountain of Faith (Shmup) Touhou 10.5 - Scarlet Weather Rhapsody (Fighter) Touhou 11 - Subterranean Animism (Shmup) Touhou 12 - Undefined Fantastic Object (Shmup) Touhou 12.3 - Hisoutensoku / UNL, SWR expansion (Fighter) Touhou 12.5 - Double Spoiler (Photography Shmup) Modern Era 2 Touhou 12.8 - Great Fairy Wars (Shmup) Touhou 13 - Ten Desires (Shmup) Touhou 13.5 - Hopeless Masquerade (Fighter) Touhou 14 - Double Dealing Character (Shmup) Touhou 14.3 - Impossible Spell Card (Photography Shmup) Touhou 14.5 - Urban Legend in Limbo (Fighter) Touhou 14.8 - TBA Touhou 15 - Legacy of Lunatic Kingdom (Shmup) Manga The manga series focuses less on action, and more on the "everyday lives" of the characters. Of course, this doesn't mean a few incidents aren't involved! Touhou Kourindou Curiosities of Lotus Asia Touhou Bougetsushou Silent Sinner in Blue Cage in Lunatic Runagate Inaba of the Moon and Inaba of the Earth Touhou Sangetsusei Eastern and Little Nature Deity Strange and Bright Nature Deity Oriental Sacred Place Touhou Ibarakasen Wild and Horned Hermit Touhou Suzunaan Forbidden Scrollery Artbooks Bohemian Archive in Japanese Red Seasonal Dream Vision Perfect Memento in Strict Sense The Grimoire of Marisa Symposium of Post-mysticism Magazines Strange Creators of Outer World Fanworks Of course, talking about Touhou would be incomplete without mentioning the one thing that keeps its popularity rising: the fanworks. These range from music covers, to doujins to fanart to even giant scrolls unravelled at Touhou panels and cons. The music arranges are plentiful and definitely in the thousands, and range from Hard Rock to Electro and Techno to Classical Folk to Epic Orchestral, with various vocal arranges mixed in. Other notable works include the Touhou M-1 series, a Manzai comedy contest in which the contestants are Touhou characters, various Touhou flashes, the Touhou fanime known as Memories in Phantasm and 3D Touhou fight simulations. Fangames are very numerous too. RPGs and Dungeon Crawlers such as Labyrinth of Touhou 1 and 2 and Genius of Sappheiros, Pokemon hacks and games such as Touhoumon Word Link and Touhou Puppet Dance Performance, many shmups including the infamous Concealed the Conclusion, Platformers such as Super Marisa World and Koumajou Denjetsu (based on castlevania) - pretty much, if it exists, there's a Touhou version of it. A full list of fangames can be found here. This thread
The reason for me to make this thread was that I noticed many Touhou fans on the Reborn forums, especially with the recent Touhou avatar takeover, who would love to share their achievements, fanart they think is cool, any good music or house sets they stumbled upon, fangames they think are cool, or want some help dealing with troubleshooting or a particularly difficult part they are on, be it a fangame or main series game. This is a place to share anything Touhou related, so have fun and post whatever you enjoy, hate, or are entirely neutral about Touhou!
This OP is up for adding any extra information or links you want, just notify me within this thread or a PM or on server or whatever you like!