Screens and demo from Phantasmagoria of Flower View

Knoskoloz · Post by **Knoskoloz** » Fri Apr 01, 2005 10:26 pm

Zun (known for the toho series Imperishable Night for example) is working on the 9th part of the toho series and relvealed some screens.
http://www16.big.or.jp/~zun/html/th09ss.html
It seems to be a shmup battle game like the vs. puzzle games we all know.

got the news from http://www.shrinemaiden.com

demo mirrors
http://www16.big.or.jp/%7Ezun/html/th09dl.html

Usefull thread at shrinemaiden.com

subcons · Post by **subcons** » Fri Apr 01, 2005 10:58 pm

Looks nice.

Post by **system11** » Fri Apr 01, 2005 11:32 pm

Looks more like a plain shmup to me? (and that's not a complaint)

BrianC · Post by **BrianC** » Fri Apr 01, 2005 11:40 pm

It looks like a vs. or puzzle shmup (either that or two player split screen). I'm looking forward to this. I can't wait for the demo to go up.

Kaspal · Post by **Kaspal** » Sat Apr 02, 2005 1:22 am

it looks pretty like Touhou 03 (Phantasmagoria... coincidence???) and theres another game pretty much alike that one... and so far, i remember ZUN worked in the development of that one too... its name is Project Kyoh (dont remember its japanese name... sorry).... lets start the countdown, since those screens looks pretty promising.... and i love all of those Touhou games! ....

Post by **BulletMagnet** » Sat Apr 02, 2005 1:51 am

Methinks any of the Twinkle Star Sprites characters would start waving the white flag if they saw torrents like that heading their way, heh heh. But as a proud owner of all of Zun's 3 previous PC shooters, I will be watching this one eagerly...

alpha5099 · Post by **alpha5099** » Sat Apr 02, 2005 4:43 am

Where the fuck does this man come up with these titles?

I'd love it if some magnanimous soul were to port these to Mac. Kenta Cho's games got ports, we need more people doing Mac ports.

Zhon · Post by **Zhon** » Sat Apr 02, 2005 4:18 pm

alpha5099 wrote:Where the fuck does this man come up with these titles?

You need to remember these titles originate in Japanese, where they may hold more meaning than they do now.

alpha5099 wrote:I'd love it if some magnanimous soul were to port these to Mac. Kenta Cho's games got ports, we need more people doing Mac ports.

Need to find a Mac guy - only someone who has Macs can do ports. Plus the source to Kenta Cho's games is open, which makes the task, oh, about a billion times easier. (And given that Zun makes money from his games - it's highly unlikely he'll go open source.)

Kaspal · Post by **Kaspal** » Sun Apr 03, 2005 5:49 pm

thats true, actually, i remember that ZUN has been asked many times to release the source code of the older games (the PC-98 ones) since those games where considered abandonware, but somehow (since ppl got a lot of interest in touhou series) ZUN said that the PC-98 games ARE NOT abandonware, actually, he still sells them!!! .... so, theres no chance (at least not now) for those games to be open source........

sad thing is, that for what ii heard, that those games have some pretyy neat code and comments in there, that it would be great to have a look at it....

lets hope ZUN releases the source code some day.... it doesnt matter if its in 5 years or so ... just for the pleasure to make ports of those games to another system... and know the compression schemes he uses on them (thats my pov).................................

Knoskoloz · Post by **Knoskoloz** » Sun Apr 03, 2005 5:59 pm

Kaspal wrote:it looks pretty like Touhou 03 (Phantasmagoria... coincidence???) and theres another game pretty much alike that one... and so far, i remember ZUN worked in the development of that one too... its name is Project Kyoh (dont remember its japanese name... sorry).... lets start the countdown, since those screens looks pretty promising.... and i love all of those Touhou games! ....

The name of that other game is Kioh

The demo will be probably released around May.

Blade · Post by **Blade** » Sun Apr 03, 2005 6:21 pm

Some of the best music in Shmupping is found in Zun's games....at some point I want to collect them all.

SheSaidDutch · Post by **SheSaidDutch** » Sun Apr 03, 2005 8:08 pm

Not my kind of shooter, but I'm impressed inthe quality of his games.

Kaspal · Post by **Kaspal** » Fri Apr 08, 2005 6:34 am

Blade wrote:Some of the best music in Shmupping is found in Zun's games....at some point I want to collect them all.

theres some remixes of his original arrangements, so you can start buyin'em

.... ZUN always sells the games, and a original CD with new music arrangements of'em ... as far as i remember, theres about 5 music CDs from him.

zimeon · Post by **zimeon** » Wed Apr 13, 2005 10:28 am

Kaspal wrote:theres some remixes of his original arrangements, so you can start buyin'em .... ZUN always sells the games, and a original CD with new music arrangements of'em ... as far as i remember, theres about 5 music CDs from him.

Three, to be correct. On those, about half of the songs are original for the CD, and half are remixes of some songs in his games.

Knoskoloz · Post by **Knoskoloz** » Sat Jun 11, 2005 9:52 pm

So update today Zun released the official demo
http://www16.big.or.jp/%7Ezun/html/th09dl.html

Cthulhu · Post by **Cthulhu** » Sun Jun 12, 2005 3:04 am

Zhon wrote: You need to remember these titles originate in Japanese, where they may hold more meaning than they do now.

Bzzzt, sorry, the Touhou games' titles in Japanese have nothing to do with the wonky English subtitles. Perfect Cherry Blossom is "Touhou Youyoumu" in Japanese, which (while not really meaning much) translates out to "Eastern Demon Dream" (Eastern-direction Demon-demon Dream if you want to be really literal). It's not particularly meaningful Japanese either.

postman · Post by **postman** » Sun Jun 12, 2005 4:19 am

Tried the demo, it's pretty much a manic version of Twinkle Star. Only I find it hard to attack, since there is so much room to dodge with..........therefore the matches last longer. It's cool if you like both TSS and Zun's style of games........if not, you might not like this game at all.............

Post by **BulletMagnet** » Sun Jun 12, 2005 5:14 am

DL'ed it myself and gave it a quick try...yep, Zun's take on TSS, indeed. This time, though, there's less puzzle and more manic-ness: for instance, whereas in TSS to attack opponents and fill up your special gauge you'd have to figure out how to take a lot of enemies out with one shot, this thing has a "chain" system more like DDP, wherein you just hafta blast a bunch of enemies in quick succession. In terms of special "charge" attacks, when you unleash one, a double of your char appears in your opponent's screen and unleashes a signature shot pattern (Reimu's got the Yin-Yangs and spell cards, Sakuya's got knives, etc.); the higher the charge level, the nastier the pattern (and you can also eliminate some bullets around you). It also seems you can eliminate some bullets by destroying enemies close to them, a la Progear. The thing that puzzles me most atm, though, is that now when you go into "slow" mode, a transparent shape (different for each char) appears around you; I wonder if it's a lock-on or something else, I'm not sure yet. You've got the usual set of options, a 1-player "story" mode, an "extra" mode you hafta unlock, and a 2P versus mode. I think 5 chars are selectable in the demo...maybe there are more in the full ver. The demo also lasts 3 levels.

I'll probably hafta check over at the Shrine Maiden forums to see if any of them have discovered anything else, but that's as far as I can figure out so far.

Post by **BulletMagnet** » Sun Jun 12, 2005 6:10 am

After reading up at the forums it looks like most of what I said above is wrong, heh. Head over there and read what they've got, it's a lot more useful than this, heh.

SAM · Post by **SAM** » Tue Jun 21, 2005 5:28 am

BulletMagnet wrote:Methinks any of the Twinkle Star Sprites characters would start waving the white flag if they saw torrents like that heading their way, heh heh. But as a proud owner of all of Zun's 3 previous PC shooters, I will be watching this one eagerly...

This definately not somthing a TSS cat would pass. TSS in ZUN's style. *Meow*

BulletMagnet wrote:... The thing that puzzles me most atm, though, is that now when you go into "slow" mode, a transparent shape (different for each char) appears around you; I wonder if it's a lock-on or something else, I'm not sure yet. ...

That region would "activate" "soul" (those bird sharp like white thing), "soul" would round sharp and stop moving after "activate". They can be easily distory after "activate". But if you left an "activated" "soul" alone, it would explove into 3 bullets after a while. *Meow*

I guess TTS LPP would come out first. I really wish ZUN would include online vs function in the final product. *Meow*

Post by **BulletMagnet** » Tue Jun 21, 2005 5:43 pm

The one thing I dislike most about this one (of what I've seen so far, at least) is that it feels like the most derivative of Zun's projects I've played thus far...his past few games did take some "inspiration" from other series, but they still felt unique. This one really "feels" almost exactly like TSS in terms of how it plays; that's not a bad thing in itself, but it just doesn't have the same appeal as his past stuff. I might pick it up anyhow, just because I like to support Zun's work, not to mention I'm curious to see how many playable characters he decides to put in the full version, but from here I'm not as impressed with it as I was with his past few games.