Welcome to the Touhou Shrine!

What is Touhou?

Back in 1996, some guy named Jun'ya Oota (better known as ZUN) created a game called Touhou Reiiden ~ The Highly Responsive To Prayers for the PC-98 system of computers to practice programming.

Now, fast forward almost two decades later, and Touhou has since become his entire life's work! Almost twenty mainline series games have been released, and it has enjoyed a lot of popularity in its lifetime, especially through the many fanworks produced by its passionate creatives.

The entire series focuses on vertically-scrolling bullet hell danmaku shmups, each with their own unique theme and gimmick. A bunch of spinoffs exist as well, mostly fighting games, that ZUN made in collaboration with Twilight Frontier.

This, of course, is just my own summary of Touhou's history. You should look online for other resources if you wanna know more about it.

How did you discover it, and how has it impacted you?

Admittedly, my memories of how I first discovered the series are kinda hazy... I just remember that it was one of the primary inspirations for Undertale, which was a game I was a big fan of back then.

I also liked listening to a bunch of fan songs made for Touhou before I truly got into it. Stuff like Bad Apple, Cirno's Perfect Math Class, etc...

During the pandemic, I remembered watching a video of Touhou 8, and being captivated by its gameplay. So that day I decided, "I'm gonna buy a Touhou game and see what it's like for myself...!"

So I went on Steam and bought the 14th Touhou game, Double Dealing Character, and the rest is history.

...I cannot even begin to describe how much Touhou has impacted me.

I fell in love with everything about it. The gameplay, the characters, and of course, the music!

It made me become addicted to the danmaku genre of games. Now, whenver I'm out somewhere, I get an irresistible urge to dodge bullets and fantasize characters shooting bullet patterns. (Is that, uh, a bad thing? (^^;;; )

It impacted me in a creative way, too. My games and art are very influenced by Touhou's aesthetic, and funnily enough it was through making designs for stuff like spell card backgrounds and UI elements that my skill in graphic design grew!

Touhou was also the reason that music composition became my hobby. I wanted to make Touhou-style music for my games, and... I eventually discovered that I loved creating my own tunes in this style. While my style has since evolved into something a bit more unique, you can clearly hear the Touhou influence in it LMAO

My gameplay stats!

My current skill level:

My Soku main: Aya Shameimaru

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