Touhou Project 12.5 ~ ダブルスポイラー (Double Spoiler) announced, girls are preparing.

[Lucarius]

Also, I like that Lucarius is here, so we can have a connection with the Japanese Touhoudom. I always felt that we were too far away from them, or maybe they don't even know about us.

I don't know if the greater half of Japanese Touhou players know shrinemaiden, but there are tons of foreigner reaction videos on nicovideo (mostly consisting of youtube feedback).

Many were worried when CNN trashed Bad Apple, but I told the people on niclopedia that most of you already knew that CNN was bogus.

More importantly however, I don't go to any of the major boards/places of discussion for the Japanese Touhou fandom anyway. Most of my knowledge about the Japanese view of Touhou is from my actual experiences in Japan, and other people I know well. In essence, shrinemaiden hasn't secured any trustworthy connection to the Japanese Touhoudom through me.

Besides, I'll probably be gone until people start bugging me about American views again. I'm also not as involved with Touhou as I was before either. Touhou just happens to be a major part of the nicovideo culture, is all.

Rather, I'm surprised I see this comment. Is there absolutely no one else here that has any connection to Japan whatsoever?


It's been a while since I participate in an American forum, but I don't remember such excessive derailing happening.

[Gpop]

I forgot that I can still talk to you on MSN Lucarius.

[Furienify]

Who has been shoving rods up people's behinds? The amount of barely-provoked-or-warranted rage towards fellow forumgoers here is baffling.

[Kilgamayan]

Who has been shoving rods up people's behinds?

[Grand Octopus]

HA! HAHAHAHAHA

no it is not and you know it. if you really gave half a damn about this series you wouldn't be saying this nonsense.

Hoo boy. First off, in that bit you quoted "people" meant people in this thread (with reference to me particularly), NOT the Touhou fandom in general. Secondly, where the hell are you drawing this notion that the fandom dislikes StB primarily because they suck at it from? 20% of people in the 7th TPP (about 4500 people) were apparently turned off from StB without even playing the game. There's more evidence to suggest that people're just adverse to the modified gameplay mechanics/style/whatever than anything else.

if you had real opinions, being able to express them without sounding like a complete jerk really wouldn't be that hard! unless you were just trolling. oh wait!

Well lookie here, real opinions! Edit: Ah, Furienify's right, this'd only keep things going. Sleepy time.

[brocoli]

O_O
DOUBLE SPOILER!!!!!

Darn, couldn't use my PC yesterday, and only got to know of this now
IT'S AWESOME!
StB is one of ZUN's best games, it is only comparable to PCB and UFO in my opinion. Even if this is just an expansion pack...
...StB2 ? OMG YES!

[HakureiSM]

He. Muon said you'd be excited :V

[Lucarius]

Even if this is just an expansion pack...

It's not. At least not in the manner that 12.3 was to 10.5.

[WanderingKnight]

Registered just to post this.

Most people in Japan have a traditional or out-dated mindset about commercial products always being better than doujins. There are various reasons to this I don't want to expand on, or know really well enough to be confident about what I'm saying.

Anyway, those who own games like Gradius and other commercial shooting games (sorry, I'm not really fond of shooters) tend to have a degraded view on the quality of doujin products within the same game genre. Touhou does not seem to be an exception.

I personally find this out-dated thought ridiculous.

I might be completely off the mark in this and my opinion might be nothing more than speculation based on subjective inferences about the games themselves, since I'm not too familiar with the Japanese fandom at all, so feel free to correct me if that is the case.

Could it be that such "elitism" towards the Touhou danmaku shmups has to do with the fact that they are easier than most industry-standard Cave arcade shmups? I'm by no means a good shmup player, my skills are barely average and substandard most of the times (I haven't played them too much either, I've only gotten immersed in the genre via Touhou and I've only returned to it fairly recently after taking a break after MoF was released), but I've found that no amount lolMAME practice made me good enough to reach Stage 5 in Dodonpachi and ESPGaluda, but I've managed much more with most Touhou games in just a couple of weeks.

I personally find Touhou games much more enjoyable than Cave shooters, since the latter are much more about muscle memory (yes, much more than Touhou in my opinion) and twitch reflexes due to absurdly fast-paced danmaku, while Touhou feels more laid back and a bit more "strategic" in its patterns. However, I can see how people who are gods at Dodonpachi and the like can feel that Touhou is substandard in this respect--not that I share those impressions, though, since I believe the game stands with a style of its own in the danmaku genre.

However (and here is from where I take this previous idea from, so you'll see why I say it's completely subjective) I certainly feel such is the case with the Touhou fighting games. I'm a competitive fighting game enthusiast, to be honest, and though I'm not a really good player by Japanese standards, while the Touhou fighting games look nice and have some neat ideas here and there, they're completely substandard when compared to industry leaders such as Guilty Gear and Street Fighter, or even newcomers to it like Arcana Heart. However, the fact that Melty Blood was originally a doujin game by no means prevented it from garnering a huge following in the Japanese competitive fighting scene, making it one of the usual games in the Tougeki SBO competitions.

I don't know, maybe I'm completely off the mark here. Feel free to shoot my argument down if that is the case.

[Lucarius]

Could it be that such "elitism" towards the Touhou danmaku shmups has to do with the fact that they are easier than most industry-standard Cave arcade shmups?

It's not about difficulty level that gives most Japanese people this mind preset. Rather, it has nothing to do with the game quality itself, though that's how many Japanese people like to phrase it.

It has much more to do with the past of the doujin culture, the differences between the concept of doujin and the concept of industry-standard games, and the difference between the resources that doujin and industry-standard games have or had.

Essentially, when Japanese people say "Something is just a doujin," they mean it was made by a single or a small group of amateurs, not given that much time/effort/money into it, and therefore should not be compared to industry-standard games. That's really just a minor part of the entire history, but it's all I will say now.

Touhou has an even more complex situation. When Touhou 6 came out, various unrelated boards on 2ch got trashed by "Touhou is god" "[insert industry-standard product here] sucks" sort of comments, which gave most of the Japanese community a terrible impression of Touhou as "an upstart doujin for the immature Middle Schoolers." Even now, using nicovideo as an example, if there happens to be a Touhou song in a workBGM video, there are all of these storm comments that trash Touhou as a doujin.

Hence, most people think bad of Touhou before they start it, if they come to the point of trying to get to know Touhou at all.

Again, that's really only a small part of the story. Your ideas may have some influence, but is not really what I was talking about.

[Ghaleon]

That's not really the issue, though. It's that the people within the Touhou fandom care more about the music, characters, and the joke of a "story" than they do about the fact that it's a top-down, vertical shoot-em-up at its very core. The spell cards that set it apart in the shmup world has taken a back seat to the fandom, even in the region that the game is from. At this point, ZUN could remove the game aspect entirely and just release soundtracks and pictures of new characters with vague background stories, and according to those stats, nearly 80% of the Touhou fandom will not care. That is all sorts of sad.

This...But also

100 charismatic points for the first person that doesn't think they're better than other fans purely for differences in methods of enjoyment.

This too.
While I find it shocking how few people actually give a nod towards Touhou's TRUE nature, it's also somewhat justified given how niche STGs are in general. I mean someone isn't at fault simply because they don't like shmups, enjoying the music and fanon, along with whatever else is completely up to them. I know if I didn't like shmups, I probably would have never discovered Touhou, but if I disliked shmups, and I WAS somehow introduced to the things I like about Touhou (the music and fan games mostly), I'd still consider myself a fan in the end because I find that the OODLES amount of quality Touhou-content that isn't actually a shmup to be quite staggering.

Shmups in general turn off alot of people for a number of reasons, a big one IMO is that it's just plain too hard for your average casual gamer (and even some non casuals). STB only accentuated this. But I still think STB to be a good idea on Zun's part because there is already SO MUCH quality fan-made content for Touhou, and so little of it are shmups. Why shouldn't the guy who most likely does Touhou shmups best, continue to do it? While I'd love to see his attempt at making other games using the Touhou universe, I still think that continuing to make Shmups is really his way of providing his original and shmup fans with what they enjoy.

It's not about difficulty level that gives most Japanese people this mind preset. Rather, it has nothing to do with the game quality itself, though that's how many Japanese people like to phrase it.

It has much more to do with the past of the doujin culture, the differences between the concept of doujin and the concept of industry-standard games, and the difference between the resources that doujin and industry-standard games have or had.

Essentially, when Japanese people say "Something is just a doujin," they mean it was made by a single or a small group of amateurs, not given that much time/effort/money into it, and therefore should not be compared to industry-standard games. That's really just a minor part of the entire history, but it's all I will say now.

Touhou has an even more complex situation. When Touhou 6 came out, various unrelated boards on 2ch got trashed by "Touhou is god" "[insert industry-standard product here] sucks" sort of comments, which gave most of the Japanese community a terrible impression of Touhou as "an upstart doujin for the immature Middle Schoolers." Even now, using nicovideo as an example, if there happens to be a Touhou song in a workBGM video, there are all of these storm comments that trash Touhou as a doujin.

Again, that's really only a small part of the story. You're ideas may have some influence, but is not really what I was talking about.

I think that is human nature, not just Japanese culture. I know a vast majority of ordinary gamers who haven't even heard or seen Touhou would snub it and say something like "I only like REAL games" just because Touhou isn't made by Blizzard, or Square, or whatever.

I know the other day I put on my iPhone in the car while my brother was driving to listen to some Touhou metal (myon myon at the time), and my brother whined "Why don't you listen to other stuff", I said "because I've only just started listening to this and like 90% of it is still new practically, and it sounds great". My brother replied "I prefer REAL music". I said "this IS real music, what, you want vocals?". Brother: "No, like actual bands"..

As much as I want to tell my brother he's a moron, fact is his opinion is probably perfectly normal for your average human. People by nature typically don't respect something without recognizing a big name sitting in front of it telling them "this is good.

[Matsuri]

That's not really the issue, though. It's that the people within the Touhou fandom care more about the music, characters, and the joke of a "story" than they do about the fact that it's a top-down, vertical shoot-em-up at its very core. The spell cards that set it apart in the shmup world has taken a back seat to the fandom, even in the region that the game is from. At this point, ZUN could remove the game aspect entirely and just release soundtracks and pictures of new characters with vague background stories, and according to those stats, nearly 80% of the Touhou fandom will not care. That is all sorts of sad.

Seriously.

It's the games that matter to me. Touhou could use spaceships, robots, or even dudes as the characters, and as long as it's still fun and colorful with ZUN's trademark patterns and his music that sets his work apart from the other doujins, I'd still be all over it.

Then again, I'm a shmup fan first and a Touhou fan second.

Either way, I think much of the fanbase is sadly out of touch with what they're fans of!

Registered just to post this.

I might be completely off the mark in this and my opinion might be nothing more than speculation based on subjective inferences about the games themselves, since I'm not too familiar with the Japanese fandom at all, so feel free to correct me if that is the case.

Could it be that such "elitism" towards the Touhou danmaku shmups has to do with the fact that they are easier than most industry-standard Cave arcade shmups? I'm by no means a good shmup player, my skills are barely average and substandard most of the times (I haven't played them too much either, I've only gotten immersed in the genre via Touhou and I've only returned to it fairly recently after taking a break after MoF was released), but I've found that no amount lolMAME practice made me good enough to reach Stage 5 in Dodonpachi and ESPGaluda, but I've managed much more with most Touhou games in just a couple of weeks.

I personally find Touhou games much more enjoyable than Cave shooters, since the latter are much more about muscle memory (yes, much more than Touhou in my opinion) and twitch reflexes due to absurdly fast-paced danmaku, while Touhou feels more laid back and a bit more "strategic" in its patterns. However, I can see how people who are gods at Dodonpachi and the like can feel that Touhou is substandard in this respect--not that I share those impressions, though, since I believe the game stands with a style of its own in the danmaku genre.

However (and here is from where I take this previous idea from, so you'll see why I say it's completely subjective) I certainly feel such is the case with the Touhou fighting games. I'm a competitive fighting game enthusiast, to be honest, and though I'm not a really good player by Japanese standards, while the Touhou fighting games look nice and have some neat ideas here and there, they're completely substandard when compared to industry leaders such as Guilty Gear and Street Fighter, or even newcomers to it like Arcana Heart. However, the fact that Melty Blood was originally a doujin game by no means prevented it from garnering a huge following in the Japanese competitive fighting scene, making it one of the usual games in the Tougeki SBO competitions.

I don't know, maybe I'm completely off the mark here. Feel free to shoot my argument down if that is the case.

It's not like there isn't any Touhou elitism toward other shmups either, you know. Go to any Youtube video of a CAVE shmup and I guarantee there will be a comment saying 'Touhou is harder!'. Whoever says this is a) a troll or b) an elitist drooling retard.

[orinrin]

Elitists will be elitists.

これわこれ、それわそれ.

[Suikama]

Elitists will be elitists.

これわこれ、それわそれ.

hatersgonnahate.jpg

[Bananamatic]

well, I dislike StB because of
1) extreme memorization
2) BAD controls(I mean Silver Surfer bad)
3) repetitiveness, you are forced to go through the trivial crap again and again just to fail at the final part for the 100th time because the controls suck

cave etc

I kinda understand these elitists...there was this thread on the shmup forums

Slow doesn't just refer to bullet speed. Enemy movement, your own shots, backgrounds, sound, everything in those games just lacks dynamics.

I became bored with the series even with lunatic.. and the fanbase is obsessed with things that involve not playing the game.

yeah, that gap basically separates touhou fans and other shmup players

touhou fans want the story, the music, the characters, the art and they mostly discuss that stuff
to be completely honest, 90% of the fanbase treats it more like an anime than a game and more than 50% doesn't play the games

shmup players don't give three shits about story, characters and stuff.
They want fast paced gameplay.

And they are also tired of that "touhou is harder hurr durr" as Matsuri said.
But yeah, both sides have elitists :V

[Matsuri]

It's not that I dislike the characters or story or anything. It just takes the back burner in comparison to the games themselves.

What really upsets me here is that ZUN goes out of his way to make a new game for us, and all some people are doing is whining about it. Not only is it completely ungrateful, it's pathetic.

[Lucarius]

I wonder how many people here consider themselves to treat Touhou as what ZUN meant it to be, and what they think ZUN's intentions are.

I also wonder how many people here treat Touhou as an anime-like game or a hardcore shmup without considering what ZUN's intentions are.

Or perhaps these wonders were out of the question here.

[orinrin]

Touhou is something I want to enjoy, regardless of anyones opinions.

[Bananamatic]

well yeah, you are somewhere in the middle :V

I'm kind of disappoint with the new game being another StB, but then again I'd be disappoint even with a normal shmup because MoF and beyond didn't appeal to me with all these gimmicks and poor balance.

I wonder how many people here consider themselves to treat Touhou as what ZUN meant it to be, and what they describe ZUN's intentions to be.

What zun meant it to be anyways? I just treat it as a slower shmup.
It's hard to understand a permanently drunk dude :V

[Nobu]

What really upsets me here is that ZUN goes out of his way to make a new game for us, and all some people are doing is whining about it. Not only is it completely ungrateful, it's pathetic.

Y'know, ZUN does makes money off of his games. It's not like it's a completely noble endeavor. :x People are obligated to not like things.

[Sapz]

What zun meant it to be anyways? I just treat it as a slower shmup.

This, pretty much. The only reason I got into Touhou at all was because of the sheer challenge it gave me (it was my introduction to shmups, pretty much). I don't play them all that much any more, but I've found all of the shooters enjoyable, and I'm looking forward to the new one quite a lot... I'm anticipating some lovely, brutal patterns if what ZUN said about the difficulty is correct. Then again, I think I remember him saying UFO was supposed to be easier than SA, so... :V

[Matsuri]

Y'know, ZUN does makes money off of his games. It's not like it's a completely noble endeavor. :x People are obligated to not like things.

Noble or not, and liked or not, there's really no reason to complain this much over a new game, treating it as if it's something horrible just because it's a StB sequel and not a new 6-stage shooter with new characters and music that most fans won't even play more than once, let alone buy.

Furthermore, if the fans who claim to be fans because of everything but the games, why are they complaining about something that they wouldn't normally care about at all?

[LiteYear]

Well, I'll admit my enthusiasm for this game is slightly dulled because it will probably destroy me (although I was able to unlock stage 8 in StB, I couldn't capture anything reliably in stage 6 and beyond), I think I could enjoy this game as long as some of the technical issues I had with StB are removed, mainly involving the controls.

[Lucarius]

I guess it will never change that playing comes before buying, if buying comes at all for most of you here. （?・ω・）

[Nat Tea]

I guess it will never change that playing comes before buying, if buying comes at all for most of you here. （?・ω・）

I need to ask though: Does money revolve (made a prioritiy) around doujin works a lot more than commercial works?

[WanderingKnight]

It has much more to do with the past of the doujin culture, the differences between the concept of doujin and the concept of industry-standard games, and the difference between the resources that doujin and industry-standard games have or had.

Essentially, when Japanese people say "Something is just a doujin," they mean it was made by a single or a small group of amateurs, not given that much time/effort/money into it, and therefore should not be compared to industry-standard games. That's really just a minor part of the entire history, but it's all I will say now.

But what about Melty Blood? It's a doujin but it's pretty well accepted as a "REAL game" in the Japanese fighting scene.

shmup players don't give three shits about story, characters and stuff.
They want fast paced gameplay.

Maybe I'm just a shitty shmup player but I think Touhou games stand well on their own against Cave shmups, since they are so different.

It's not that I dislike the characters or story or anything. It just takes the back burner in comparison to the games themselves.

Yeah, me too--obviously the music and the aesthetics of the games are a big plus, but that's just background (I find 90% of the rest of the shmups completely dull and boring in presentation and aesthetics, exceptions might be made for Mushihime-sama and a couple others I can't remember at the moment). But it's not like it's the be-all, end-all of everything. ZUN's artwork is sloppy at best and terribad at worst, the sprites are not exactly detailed and most of the stage enemies haven't changed since EoSD. The music is good, though, but still it's not like it's OMG AWESOME, either. And I don't really care about the characters other than the fact that Reimu has a small hitbox and Marisa is fast and has an uber forward shot.

I wonder how many people here consider themselves to treat Touhou as what ZUN meant it to be, and what they think ZUN's intentions are.

I also wonder how many people here treat Touhou as an anime-like game or a hardcore shmup without considering what ZUN's intentions are.

Why would I care about ZUN's intentions? I only care about the fact that it's a very enjoyable shmup game. Whatever ZUN wants to make of it shouldn't matter to anyone, I think.

[Suikama]

I need to ask though: Does money revolve (made a prioritiy) around doujin works a lot more than commercial works?

Ironically I think ZUN said something along the lines of "even doujin companies are still companies and thus need to have some focus on selling" or something like that

[Menreiki]

There is no doubt that Touhou is great. It is a decent as a shmup series, and that there lot of ways to enjoy it even if it isn't inside de games exe. There is when the problem starts, I like to share my opinion on anything related to it, and the thing is when the retarded side of fanbase actually gets in your way.

I know lots of people that enjoy Touhou that doesn't play the games, but they know a lot about the subject. It has been pretty enjoyable to actually hold conversation with these people, even if it is not game discussion. Sadly, I have encountered lots of fans that don?t seem to have the amount of intelligent to be able to hold a 30 seconds conversation. I always try to stay away from this the most I can.

Luckily, this isn't something that happens too often. This is pretty much the only Touhou related community/forum in which there is actual game discussion. I don' take part of it really often since I don't have anything interesting/relevant or something that have already been said. As long as ZUN continues with his fabulous work (even if he stops) I will follow the series closely.

Going back to the subject, it is a matter of opinion to like StB or not. Maybe some hardcore shmup player may find it extremely boring/weird, but it is quite fun once you really get into it. I always see StB as ZUN's danmaku players training facility and it is always fun to see more patterns from character that you have already beat. Subterranean Animism is still my favorite Touhou game by far, but Shoot the Bullet has a special spot in my heart because of how hard it is and because of all those painful hours trying to complete it, which is pretty much the reason I love it. Harder is always better in my opinion.

[theshirn]

This topic is so intellectually disingenuous it's painful to read.

People are allowed to like and to dislike things.  They're going to.  People can also like or dislike the fact that other people like or dislike things, but at that point we're just going in circles.

ZUN isn't doing anyone specific a favor by making another game.  He's doing it a) because he wants to, and b) to make money.  And you know what?  Even if he made the game only as a favor to the fans of the series, there are still going to be some fans who would dislike it, and they are still allowed to express their damn opinion.

People are also allowed to like and dislike certain aspects of things.  Just enjoying the music, for example, in no way makes you a "bad fan".  As far as I'm concerned, there's no such thing.  Uniformity ain't gonna happen, and going on about how people are bad for the series or ungrateful little pricks is just about as annoying as said people going on about how they don't care about the games or that they don't like certain ideas.

There's so much stupidity flying back and forth from both sides that sometimes I can't believe I even bother to read this topic.  Seriously, people, whether you enjoy the game and the idea or not, there's way too much ad hominem going around.  We can debate stuff without assuming everyone who does not think as I do is criminally stupid.

tl;dr, people are scum, but so are you, so quit yer whining :V

[Slaves]

Touhou seems to be focused on being pretty with music, patterns, and characters rather than being focused on difficulty. that's why i like it so much. i have to admit, removing the games would definitely lower my interest in it a bit. i can't quite explain why.

when i was complaining about 12.5, i was just in YOU WA SHOCK mode. now i see it's not all that bad, a game is a game and i'll give it a go regardless.

however, i still am saddened by no new Touhous just yet. but that's simply because i wanted something new to draw.