I was discussing difficult video games with a friend and he linked me to a YouTube video of PCB's Phantasm Stage boss battle with Yukari. I promptly downloaded PCB.

Listening to Toho Mathematics on some stream, which got my interested and after some looking around I got the games.

Back when Touhou was still on /a/, i wondered what Anime or Manga those girls were from.

A friend linked me to a download for IN all of a sudden with no explanation or even real previous knowledge or interest in Touhou from either of us. Now I'm a touhoufag and he's become a touhoufag because of me.

Played the first 3 windows games by chance, by randomly trawling the net. Thought it nifty, since I liked shmups already but it wasn't such a big deal at first.

It was during pre-split /a/ and the touhou hijacks that things clicked. Since then things have never been the same and it's been a one-way walk down the road to perdition.

Heard about it, assumed it was generic anime crap.

Wasn't until I seen a game based music video with a remix of U.N. Owen was she, that I bothered looking into it and finding it was a shump with great music funny dialouge and cute girls.

Fun stuff.

Youtubed for 1213 (hooray for horror games), picked up a random video which happened to be GIL's Youmu solo run in IN Extra, asked someone about it, and the rest is history.

Also, I also got to watch MotK announce IOSYS's first flash and the dramatic increase in Touhou hijacks in /a/.

Kinda like >>1434 but without the anime/manga part.

I still remember a bit of the OP in the thread I learned what Touhou was. It appeared that the OP had lost a bet or something, and he linked /a/ to the Marisa Stole the Precious Thing on danbooru. I asked wtf was that and he/someone explained IN to me. Of course I didn't understand most of what he said, at the time I didn't even know what shmup meant! But the link he provided for IN was explanation enough.

Heh, funny thin, now that I remember it: my first download of any touhou game was an incomplete download of IN. The game worked (almost) fine and had me addict in no time. BUt since the game was incomplete and it weighted 48mb, I couldn't use any continue or even pause the game or it would crash. I was a better player during that time.

I knew a few characters from /a/, had a Cirno folder but didn't really care otherwise.

Then one day, I woke up in Gensokyo.

In my senior year of high school, me and some friends didn't have a first period class, so we hung out around school and messed with our laptops. One day one of my friends came in and was like "You have to see these videos I found on YouTube. Crazy shit is going down!" Intrigued, we gathered around and watched IN's Extra Stage. Ever since, all of us who were there that day became hooked, and I didn't even like STGs before Touhou.

I had seen it on /jp/ and /a/ before, assumed it was generic frilly anime crap, and then I Woke Up in Gensokyo.

I was browsing Gaku Gaku Animal Land wondering if they had any new Type-Moon doujins there and decided to click the "Touhou" link on the sidebar

It pretty much went from there

Friend linked me to PCB years ago. I played it, but was horrible at it.

Then I discovered this site and started getting much more interested in it. I also managed to get better at the games.

Wanted to play more crazy STGs. Someone mentioned one that didn't have ships at all. I was intrigued, the concept seemed alien to me. I ended up growing fond of it since the patterns have names, it's a bit of a downer in other games you can only describe waves with "that swirly bit with lasers".

Apparently I was already a fan of some of the characters for years, until a friend told me that they're all part of the same title, and that they all happened to be from a series of computer shooting games(first reaction: what?). I still wonder how I was able to go that long without even noticing the name Touhou. I must be very dense; but I already knew this.

However, it was this site in particular that turned my love for the cast into a full-blown obsession. I'm glad the site is back; I was in hell without it, and there were no bullets. ;_;

I saw Why Why Why don't I miss you a lot forever on /a/ years ago, then played the games for a bit. I sucked then and I suck now.

>>1448
Similar experience. Randomly downloaded a load of translated Touhou doujin because the scanlator was doing a ton of Fate/Stay Night stuff at the time. I put 2 and 2 together when I got familiar with 'lol touhou hijack' shit on /a/. The /a/ - /jp/ split and hoarding C74 releases from NEET drove it all home.

I saw a run of a friend 1CCing IN's Extra mode. I was generally confused as all fuck and had no fucking clue what was going on at all.

So I downloaded it and the soundtrack and floundered around like an idiot, while thinking the music was pretty cool. And then I was talking about it to a friend until he mentioned THERE WERE *OTHER* GAMES which I proceeded to grab the music for that too before the games. Which eventually amde me realize that /a/ was posting Touhou. So I became vaguely interested in that, and then fully interested, and then moot decided to split /a/ and make /jp/. So I went to /jp/ and enjoyed Touhou by listening to musics and remixes of said music while looking at the nonporn doujins.

And then the whole WuiG thing happened, with the ensuing fiasco and oh holy hell I'm at /th/ and ENJOYING IT.

Some guy was posting Touhou doujins in thread at /a/, and among them was Genocide Kitten's Remily the Strange and I immediately fell in love with it, even though I had no idea who the characters were. When somebody asked for link to Zip, he linked Touhou Wiki(when it was still hosted on Pooshlmer, oh the times). I then proceeded to download tons of translated doujins.
Some time later I also got the games, and started listening to music remixes.

Saw the Mcroll. Found that the song was called U. N. Owen was her, googled it. Found it was from something called "Touhou Project", googled that, and found this site.

I came across a thread during one of my infrequent visits to /jp/ of Tenshi getting tortured, and thought it was hot. Found out she's from a shoot-em-up game series, and thought, "Hey, the music's not half bad, and the games can't be too terrible. If I can clear Gradius III I can probably beat this." Developed a frame of reference for posting on /jp/, and stuck around because it was less terrible than /co/.

I'd heard of it before this, but didn't pay it much mind.

Those poorly-drawn TOUHOU HIJACK images on /a/ did it for me. But at the time my only option for actually playing the games was through VPC on my centuries-old Mac G4. So I started with PC-98 thanks to VPC's dismal video memory support. So yeah. Lotus Land Story has been my favorite ever since, even after I bought a proper PC.

I played an untranslated PCB demo about, 3 to 4 years ago when it was included with some free shumps on a demo/preview disc from a gaming magazine I used to read. I couldn't afford new games so I played a lot of stuff like that, Touhou (which I didn't know was the name at the time) was my favorite out of a batch of 5 games. It was the music really, a few years later just before the formation of /jp/ I heard the PCB soundtrack somewhere and did a little research which lead me here in the end.

It's funny, thinking back on those early days with that demo. Because it was untranslated all I knew how to do was move and shoot, no bombs or focus or PoC and yet I still managed to beat Alice on one continue on normal mode without using any of those things. I also used to hate Marisa for being the hardest to use, now I main her.

Life's funny really.

I... I have no idea, I can't remember how I found out about touhou anymore. It's just been there forever.

I think my first experience with Touhou was WHY WHY WHY WHY DON'T I MISS YOU A LOT FOREVER. After that, after that, I watched a few vids of playthroughs, but didn't have much interest at that point.

And then I fell in love with the music, started playing the games, reading the doujins, and ended up here.

How I discovered Touhou... Well, when I was checking one of my nintendo news sites, gonintendo, I stumbled across a promotional video for Etrian Odyssey. It was the "FOE" video by IOSYS and it was so catchy that I had to check out their website and see what else they had done. Lo and behold I find the "Marisa Stole the Precious Thing" video and found the characters cute and interesting, so I looked more into it. I eventually found threads about it on /jp/, then the board on poosh, and finally ended up here somehow.

>>1519
Exactly the same.

I saw a video of someone playing IN in a shumups thread way back around 04-05. I tried to figure out what it was and get a copy, but didn't have any luck. Years later I recognized a screenshot someone posted in /a/ and went on from there.

IOSYS boom in 2007 on /a/ got me. Read an endless amount of doujins on the wiki and spent some time on poosh till the attention whore tripfags and the loss of over 100 pages of image threads pissed me off enough to give it up.

Oh yeah, played the games too way back when. Can't even beat IN on easy mode.

I think someone posted screencaps of IN on /b/ (I think) like a year and a half before anyone knew what Touhou was, and then I played it, got my ass kicked, then I fell in love with it.

The rest I can't remember, let alone how exactly I learned what a Touhou was.

For a while, I knew that there was some kind of franchise/fiction/internet phenomenon called 'Touhou' out there, but I didn't really care.

Early in 2008, I made a few attempts at finding out exactly what Touhou was, just out of curiosity - I had come across pics of Marisa and Alice (along with that IOSYS song), and they seemed like interesting characters. And as I was hoarding Fate/Stay-night doujins at the time, it didn't take long before I noticed the metric fuckton of translated Touhou doujins at Gaku Gaku Animal Land.

But due to the sheer volume of fanmade material, injokes, memes and other stuff like that, it actually took me a few months and several serious attempts to find out even the basic facts about the series and its fandom.

But when I had finally reached that point, I was like "fuck, I wanna play these games!" - and once I had finally gotten myself to download some of the games, I was addicted to them, and particularly their music, within minutes.

>>1560
Exactly like this, except replace:
>Early in 2008
with
>In late 2006 or thereabouts

Replace:
>pics of Marisa and Alice (along with that IOSYS song)
with
>pics of Cirno

--And remove everything on, starting at:
>But when I had finally reached that point, I was like "fuck, I wanna play these games!"

Hell, I never got into the music at all until I watched that one IN Extra Stage Clear video on youtube, and simultaneously gained an appreciation for the music (Still love those two songs) and for the ludicrous level of skill needed for some of this shit.

I discovered my first Touhou character when I downloaded a Mugen character called "Marisa Kirisame from Immaterial and Missing Power". I looked up the game and discovered it was part of a series called "Touhou Project". Back then I just assumed that it was a series of fighting games.

It wasn't until years later that I found out that Touhou was a series of shmups when I accidentally stumbled upon an IN Extra Stage playthrough on YouTube.

And then I found /jp/

First saw it on one of Dom's post blog pictures back when I used to read Megatokyo(the one with Yukari's 2nd-to-last card). Unknowingly, I only downloaded the PCB demo and thought Alice was the final boss for a while(sure seemed like it). Then I downloaded Imperishable Night.

I think this was 4, 5 years ago. Did get around to downloading full version of PCB(some of the best music in the series IMO), and now I have all the Windows games minus the fighting games.

Became interested in Touhou after a friend of mine let me play IAMP on his laptop (it was two years ago, if my memory doesn't fail me). Then he recommended that I played PCB for the actual Touhou experience and since then I became hooked.

Though the real reason I discovered Touhou was because of the music. To be more specific, remixes and arranges done by various circles (COOL&CREATE, Demetori, TAMusic, to name a few), so yeah.

A few net friends were always discussing about Touhou back in early '08, which got me interested but not to the level of searching it out. Then one of them posted a full-cast image at the time and a link to the wiki, which I clicked. Read some stuff up, google around a bit more, and the rest is history.

I still couldn't most games, even in Easy.

>>1577

>I still couldn't most games, even in Easy.

Neither can I. I was too busy her horns.

I discovered touhou through the fact that someone had given me a PC engine emulator and Rondo of Blood. Found the PC-98 games while searching for roms, back in like, 2001. Found EoSD by searching for information on the first 5 games. The rest came after that.

Several years ago, I was playing a lot of Ragnarok online (you may taunt me for this now). Like Touhou, that game also had a pretty large amount of fan art and comics, so I had become accustomed to finding an artist's site (nearly always in moon), downloading every image, and then finding a link to another artist.

I remember having this one artist who's style I really liked, and I kept seeing these interesting characters I didn't recognize, so I thought they were his original characters. "Wow, she's kinda cool. Is she a ghost or something? She's got one of those headband things.... but why does it have the dreamcast logo on it?".

Its funny, because I came close to discovering the series several times. Around the time IaMP was getting big for online play, I had seen some youtube videos, thought it was cool, but didn't really bother getting it. Its doubly funny because none of the videos I watched had Yuyuko in them, so I never made the connection to the images I saw before.

A while later, I was on a doujin game site and found a demo for this band new shooter game (Mountain of Faith). I played it and loved it, but my google fu was not very strong at the time, so I never bothered getting the full game or the rest of the series, and I STILL did not make the connection to the original images I saw, so I didn't even think to look at the fan creations.

It wasn't until shortly after MOF's actual release that I finally discovered a link to perfect cherry blossom. From there I got really into the series. Its been around 2 years now.

- - -

As an aside, I'd like to bring something else I think is interesting to the discussion. We've been hearing about how all of you found the series, and many of you found it through fan works. What kind of fan did you become aftewards? Do you like the actual games? How much of the official side stuff have you experienced/liked? Etc etc. Did you mostly stick with the fan stuff instead?

As for myself, I've pretty much embraced all of it. I enjoy the fanworks quite a bit, but I still love the games themselves to death, even if I suck at them. I've cleared all the games on normal (EXCEPT FUCKING MOF. GOD DAMN YOU KANAKO!), and I'm slowly working at 1CCing all the windows games starting with EoSD. So far EoSD and PCB are out of the way, but IN's 4th stage keeps depleting my stock of lives. Fucking ordinary black white bitch.

So what about the rest of you? What kind of fan did you become?

>>1723

Even though I can complete most of the games on Normal, Except EoSD and UFO. I cannot defeat Patchouli with enough lives to survive the rest, and UFO is still new-ish and I've only played it like 4 times. I actually don't really like the genre that much. I've dabbled in a few shooters since, but I just can't get into it. More or less, I only play the games for the initial experiences to say 'I've beaten them all so far on Normal', but that's about it until the English patch is released, then I actually play to see the endings and that's when they get the most play time.

I don't know what I would say I am. I like what official works there are, even with the dubious information on the various girls, it does have information that makes Gensokyo a lot more interesting and gives me a better idea of how it is. I've been plotting to take a shot at what I'd think would be the closest-to-canon map of Gensokyo as well.

>>1728

In one of the official manga being tranlated on voile, I remember seeing the 3 fairies pulling out a map of gensokyo. It wasn't incredibly descriptive, but does give an idea of where some stuff is in relation to the shrine.

At the time, I was browsing mostly /b/ only to find out pictures of Cirno fucking everywhere. I wondered from where it was and my answer was Gensokyo.
A few googles later, I found PCB and started from there. It took me a month to finish it with 5 continues (On Lunatic, I refused to try any other difficulty) and I was starting to give up when I give 'Normal' a try. Shortly thereafter, I found out about the other games.

The rest, as they say, is histWTF FLANDRE STOP WITH THE FUCKING BULLSHIT AND THERE WAS NONE MY ASS

I really got into it recently, starting with the Yukkuri, though previously I had played shoot the bullet and seen some Flandre fanart.

I THINK it was started by coming across the video with octopus Luka on top of the Reimu yukkuri.

First I heard of Cirno day was people saying they missed it.

Also, what's a good order for the difficulty curve? I was going to play in order, but then I read EoSD is one of the hardest.

>>1773

Personally, I would recommend starting with the earlier ones. Getting good at those will set precedent for the rest of the games that follow, simple, pure danmaku skills and dodging, no collection point, no hitbox (I think). Once you get into the later games, the new game mechanic additions will be easier to adapt. If you get too used to the newer mechanics and try to go back, you will have a much harder time playing.

>>1802
Seconded, but I'd start with PCB rather than EoSD. It's easier to adapt to the lack of hitbox display in EoSD when you've already gotten a good sense of where it is by playing other games, and the fact that EoSD won't let you complete the game on Easy is extremely frustrating for new players.

>>1773
1-Play and 1 cc PCB
2-Play and do the same with the rest (IM POFV MOF SA UFO)
3-Go back and try to finish EOSD
4-Cry.

>>1812

Its funny, because the only games I've even 1CC'd (on normal) were PCB, EoSD, and IN. In that order. Oddly enough, I had the hardest time with IN, even though it's pretty much the easiest in the whole damn series. I think its the fact that Marisa/Reimu rape my face, so I end up not having enough lives and bombs for the last two stages.

When I finally did 1CC IN, I completed Kaguya's last non last word card with no lives, no bombs, and with a bullet one pixel from my hitbox.

... Then my laptop ran out of power during the ending. FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF

>>1813
Same for me. I don't know why but I found PCB and those silly red butterflies a hell of a lot easier than IN stage 4.

>>1813
>... Then my laptop ran out of power during the ending. FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF
Hahahahaha
If you're having problems with IN, try the border team: their deathbomb period is like one week, Yukari (That is, Ran) deals a good amount of damage (second only to Alice's) and locks on bosses, whereas Reimu's homing shits can clear stages in seconds. Just remember to let the shift button go when bombing/deathbombing: Yukari's (Again, Ran's) bomb sucks ass.

Oh, and that fourth stage? Harder than the final boss fight. I dunno what the heck was ZUN's drinking when he made that boss fight. I know that the main characters are suppossed to be strong but DAMN

>>1816
>Yukari (That is, Ran) deals a good amount of damage (second only to Alice's)

And Remilia outdamages both on bosses when you use her Familiars right, Malice Cannon or not.

Speaking of which, Scarlet Team is pretty newbie-friendly too. While the deathbomb period isn't retarded like Border Team, if you die with any bombs left you get one extra bomb when you respawn, so it's still helpful to those that suck at deathbombing.
Sakuya's spread shot is pretty good for clearing the screen of enemies, and powerups fall slower when in Sakuya mode.
Remilia can kill things with her butt; when in Remilia mode, and shooting, anything that flies up her butt will die. And she does hilarious amounts of damage on bosses if you park her Familiars right.

>>1816

my suspicion is that he was thinking something like "you're fighting the protagonsits that beat all the other charachters in the series. They better be tough."

>>1818
Well I can understand reimu being so tough since her ability is ten inch thick, studded +5 platemail plot armor, but what's with marisa?

>>1826

My first thought would be: "Its magic, lol"

But seriously, Marisa works her ass off to be the best, and technically Marisa's spells ARE more powerful (much more?) than Reimu's and always have been. Its just that, as Rinnosuke once put it, the way Reimu moves is practically cheating. Marisa also mentions in the Grimoire of Marisa that fighting Reimu is downright confusing.

Of course, none of that really matters when you can fire a laser cannon that's twenty feet wide while shooting five foot wide stars all over the place.... then proceed to shoot ANOTHER laser. So yeah. Marisa is pretty badass.

>>1827
And let's thank the gods that she hasn't learned Trinity Spark yet.

I wonder how'd that work out anyway?