Now this explains why I suck at sniping ;p

Getting better at touhou though, almost beat easy without losing a continue today, just need to start properly using bombs, I keep dying with plenty of them

DON’T be afraid.

If you see an opening, just GO! Don’t think twice about eet. It’s a bit like sniping a moving enemy target. If you don’t do it within the tiny opportunity window, you’ll die. Sure, you might die if you do it, but it’s a good death. You’ll slowly learn the places where you can and can’t dodge, and when to really dodge and when to bomb. Which brings us to another thing.

Plan your bombs.

Sure, it looks cheap, but it’s the good type of cheap. Find the spots where you frequently die, and bomb when you feel overwhelmed. Over time, as you feel more confident, you can try and tackle that specific spot without resorting to bombs. But, for beginners, JUST BOMB IT! BOMB IT TO THE GROUND!
*shakes fist furiously*

*ahem*

Again, good post. As for me….
*shifty eyes, kicks bad replays under the rug*

@ Scamp: To be honest, you have a point. I enjoy most of the secondary material, but I always find the dialogue in the games to be awkward. At any rate, the bullet patterns are incredibly pretty – I took the screencap for this post a year ago when I went through my Phantasm run to ogle the shiny danmaku. It’s something you can’t really appreciate when you’re busy dodging through it.

@ Shmup Gamer: Oh, Aya, how I hate her. She’s one of the reasons why I gave up on trying to beat MoF on Lunatic.

Anyway, it sounds like you’re less interested in the secondary material than me, but part of me agrees with your comment on the remixes. I honestly think there are some great Touhou remixes out there, but it bugs me when half of the doujin music from any given Comiket is a rehash of the same old ZUN melodies. For every Touhou album that gets released, I feel like I’m missing out on a great original album that could have taken its place, but maybe that’s just me.

@ zzeroparticle: Now that’s an interesting way of looking at it. Truthfully, nothing beats the feeling of dodging through a spellcard first-hand, but you can check out some replays if you want to see just how crazy some of the patterns can get without having to ace the card yourself. One of my favourite aspects of getting a new Touhou game is the anticipation of seeing the last/Extra boss’s spellcards.

@ Blowfish: Touhou is pretty much completely otaku-targeted, so there’s definitely the whole moe element among the male fans. I guess that’s why I find the franchise so interesting: ZUN knows his frilly dresses and coloured hair, but he really knows his game design too!

@ Shance: Well said. Our conversation the other day got me thinking about the gameplay side of the series again, and somehow or the other I got fired up to start taking bullet dodging seriously again. I’ll be glad if at least one person reads this post and starts working away at the games.

People, listen to ETERNAL here. He’s probably the exemplification on all of what he said on this post. But thinking he’s listing the hell out of what you should do as a primary fan, I might as well add some more:

6. Explore, Explore

There’s more than one way to play the game. After finishing some standard achievements (1cc Normal, Easy, etc.), challenge yourself and try playing the game with some restrictions (no bomb, no focus, etc.). That way, a single game would have countless replayability potential.

7. Don’t Give Up!

Most of the people took a try on this, dodged bullets, and then called it quits. You can’t be a Touhou fan with that, can you? You just have to practice, practice, practice, till your mind memorizes every single spellcard there is to memorize. There’s no shame in using bombs and credits, because the glory a Touhou fan achieves after finishing the game without giving up is enough to bring him/her to Nirvana.

All in all, it’s up to you people to explore. ETERNAL here just laid down the foundation, so it’s up to you to give it a try. Stick to the program, and you’re good.

I guess most people are secondary fans though because they simply find the characters cute as so often with “Otaku Culture”