Bullet Hell Reviews

There is more to the fanbase of Touhou than just its mainstream games, there are spin offs (doujins). These range from soccer to strategy games.

Touhoumon is one of the more popular doujin works. It is a modified version of Pokemon Fire red, which if you own the game and the console it operates on then its completely legal to own the doujin. The modified version contains replaced sprites, many references, and a modified stat system.

I had heard about the game for a while but it wasnt until i read this blog about it that it i became interested in playing it.

I just started the game not too long ago but got a visit from my good old friend bsod, so I can’t access my game files for now. However a quick rundown of the game is still possible, I’ll be updating once in a while about the team and the game.

The story is relatively the same, you start out talking to the Proffessor who can’t remember his own grandon’s name. By the way in this game the boy is actually represented by Renko, a close friend of the girl sprite, Maribel. So if you say that you’re a boy, you’ll end up being represented as a girl with a clone, not a good choice.

Anyways you get to choose your starter from the three of Reimu, Sakuya, and Marisa. Reimu is a normal/Something type i cant remember exactly but shes not too great of a choice. Sakuya is an equivalent of a totodile which is Ice/Steel. Marisa is something of a descendant from Pikachu and a Charmander with both electric and fire capabilities.

The starter I chose is Marisa, you can catch them all anyway, but to fit her personality her special ability is Pick Up, where she will “Pick up” things as you go along so check your inventory often if you have her. She also has the theif attack after a bit of leveling which is a weak-medium dark attack as well as stealing an item.

My team so far consists of Marisa Lvl 20ish, Kanako 23-25ish, Alice 23ish, Suwako 20ish, Mystia 20ish, Yukari 18ish, and all of the other pokemon i caught along the way are probably just going to sit in the pokemon computer for a while. By the way on the fossil choice i chose the Miko fossil which would give me a Pc-98 version of Reimu, called Hakurei.

A more specific note on the BGMs that the writer mentioned above was that the battle music is different for certain touhoumon. So far I’ve noticed fighting using Marisa causes a remix of Marisa stole the Precious thing and the pokemon battle music to play. The replacement of the pokemon center is the Eirin Please Cure Me! Center, also has a remixed bgm.

I’d supply pictures of my team as well but with the saves gone now its going to be hard to restart if I can ever get around to it.

A bit more about the rival, Renko. She is a lot more polite than the other rivals which would make you feel bad if you named her something explicit. She still does provide a challenge but if you keep up the grinding then it wont be a problem.

Talking about grinding, a good thing about using an emulator is that you can speed up the grinding by speeding up the gameplay and spending less time in each battle. This also helps with finding the pokemon in each area, which the game comes with a txt on where each one is.

This is a great game if you like RPGs or Pokemon and I’ll review more Doujins throughout this blog.

The first five Touhou games were for the PC-98 platform. Since these games are much harder to acquire now and the step up on graphics afterward, these are usually not mentioned.

Touhou 1.0 (Highly Responsive to Prayer)
The very first one game in the series, the one that started it all. This game however is not one of the many danmaku (bullet curtain) games that are commonly associated with Touhou. This game was breakout style. It introduced the main character that would run throughout the series, Reimu Hakurei. Reimu is a shrine maiden living in Gensokyo and has the job of repelling the many invasions of demons and other creatures that invade it. Anyways on to the game.

Gameplay:

The games objective was to clear the stage of cards while dodging danmaku.
Danmaku at the time was merely white dots that randomly appeared heading towards you. It also came from bosses and the time limit running low which caused a snow of Danmaku to rain down on you. Danmaku can be dodged or removed by throwing purification amulets or the yin yang ball.
To clear the cards you would have to hit your yin yang orb at them by kicking it or throwing purification amulets at it.

Then comes the bosses, which are a very important part in Touhou. The bosses spam danmaku at you while you have to hit them your yin yang orb. The danmaku isn’t colored or arranged as well as it is in the latter games but its still becomes increasingly hard to avoid.

Another crucial part to the game play is the path choices. There are different paths you can take through the game and that will affect which bosses you get and the dialogue. The two routes are Jigoku meaning Hell and Makai meaning Demon world.

Graphics:

Well there isn’t much going for the graphics given the vast improvements implemented in the past few years however for this time this is doing pretty while. Not to mention ZUN is the only one working on these games.

Music:

ZUN wanted to have a way to showcase his music and decided that gaming would be a good way to do so. Then he thought he might as well make the game too. Thus Touhou was born and the massive fanbase began to take the music and remix it as much as they can. The 8bit sound may not be appealing to most people nowadays with their selection of “music” called rap, however the artistic style that has gone into the music in my opinion has been a major part of keeping the Touhou fanbase alive.

Here’s a video demonstration of the game.

Lane plays Touhou 1 Highly Responsive to Prayers: Makai Part 1

This is definitely one of the better yet forgotten Touhou games.

On another topic another fellow game critic, is reviewing American games such as those created by VALVe. Visit him if you want to see a broader spectrum of the gaming world.

Touhou is a series of games featuring a mostly female cast in a variety of different types of games. The types of games range from a breakout-style game to 2d fighting game.
This is one of the more common types of Touhou games. A curtain fire game where the object is to avoid the onslaught of masses of bullets while returning fire.
This blog is to be dedicated to writing about each Touhou from PC-98 and up.