I've announced this numerous times on IRC, but I'll do it once more here.
I've been actively editing/maintaining some of the articles that may be of interest to people here.
http://touhou.wikia.com/wiki/High_scores
A hybrid of Plasmo's WR topic and Royalflare scoreboards. Features fully up-to-date WR scores and replays, including those that have been deleted from the scoreboards by their authors (which happens way too often recently, to my disappointment).
http://touhou.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Touhou_players
Writeups on some notable Touhou players (mostly those that have/had WRs all over the place). You may find some familiar names there.
http://touhou.wikia.com/wiki/Touhou_influences
List of references to other games that influenced Touhou. I need your help with this, so please post your discoveries here.
Some Touhou wiki picks
Some Touhou wiki picks
Matskat wrote:This neighborhood USED to be nice...until that family of emulators moved in across the street....
Wow, you're gonna laugh at my ignorance, but I didn't know ISO was a Touhou player. 
You don't plan to track high scores for the other Touhou games? (STB, POFV, the PC98 games) I know you should only update what you're interested in, but please don't make it a high priority regardless. I'm just curious, although I wouldn't mind seeing top STB and POFV replays.
I assume with the influences that you don't care about the Tasofro games and also don't care about Touhou games taking ideas from other Touhou games? I know I would be able to name a lot more if I had written these down while playing. Anyway it's been a long time since I played any of these games but here are some easy fill-ins:
Highly Responsive to Prayers: Reimu inspired by Sayo-chan from Kiki Kaikai, game inspired by Arkanoid
Phantasmagoria of Dim Dream: game inspired by Twinkle Star Sprites (if you want to go into details like the other page entries, all of those are taken from TSS like fireballs, charge levels, boss attack, extra attack, combos, HP, etc)
Imperishable Night: Youmu's option is inspired by the Battle Garegga option formation.
Phantasmagoria of Flower View: I don't remember PODD well enough to be sure that anything TSS-related I say here wasn't already in PODD. Medicine's attack has a slowdown effect but I don't know what shmup would be the first to have this.
Shoot the Bullet: Which shmup pioneered a rechargeable mass bullet clearing mechanic? This could vary a lot depending on how this is defined.
You don't plan to track high scores for the other Touhou games? (STB, POFV, the PC98 games) I know you should only update what you're interested in, but please don't make it a high priority regardless. I'm just curious, although I wouldn't mind seeing top STB and POFV replays.
I assume with the influences that you don't care about the Tasofro games and also don't care about Touhou games taking ideas from other Touhou games? I know I would be able to name a lot more if I had written these down while playing. Anyway it's been a long time since I played any of these games but here are some easy fill-ins:
Highly Responsive to Prayers: Reimu inspired by Sayo-chan from Kiki Kaikai, game inspired by Arkanoid
Phantasmagoria of Dim Dream: game inspired by Twinkle Star Sprites (if you want to go into details like the other page entries, all of those are taken from TSS like fireballs, charge levels, boss attack, extra attack, combos, HP, etc)
Imperishable Night: Youmu's option is inspired by the Battle Garegga option formation.
Phantasmagoria of Flower View: I don't remember PODD well enough to be sure that anything TSS-related I say here wasn't already in PODD. Medicine's attack has a slowdown effect but I don't know what shmup would be the first to have this.
Shoot the Bullet: Which shmup pioneered a rechargeable mass bullet clearing mechanic? This could vary a lot depending on how this is defined.
One of the games in Rob's late-80s-early-90s hidden gem countdown had a chargeable bomb in it, but the name has completely flown out of my head. Maybe someone else will remember it.Enhasa wrote:Shoot the Bullet: Which shmup pioneered a rechargeable mass bullet clearing mechanic? This could vary a lot depending on how this is defined.
Twinbee Yahhoo has a chargeable bomb for type 3 or whatever, but I'm not really sure that feels like STB anyway. I guess there should be a distinction between full-screen bomb like Yahhoo and selective bullet clearing like Giga Wing and STB.
Also the Medicine slowdown was in Metal Black (when these enemies latch onto you), can probably do a lot better than that though but I'm tired.
Also the Medicine slowdown was in Metal Black (when these enemies latch onto you), can probably do a lot better than that though but I'm tired.
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Afterbirth
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The ghost enemies used throughout the PC-98 games seem to be the same as the ghost enemies in Kiki Kaikai as well.
Mystic Square has a few things borrowed from Cave. Shinki's overall character design looks to be influenced by Garra from Esp Ra.De., and they also share a couple of bullet patterns--I counted two, last time I played Mystic Square. In Extra, Alice's final attack is an easier version of Hibachi's last attack in DoDonPachi. This attack is also where ZUN got the arrowhead bullets from. And finally, the main component of Alice's second attack is very similar to the final attack of DoDonPachi's stage 6 boss, although it's a pretty basic pattern so it could just be a coincidence.
The conversations in the games and the bullet pattern names are also full of references to various literature and other things, and some of the stories are based on other stories or myths, but the wiki already points those out, and you seem to only be focusing on influences from games, anyway.
As for games influenced by Touhou, apart from the doujin sea of Touhou clones, a segment of Samidare's Extra stage is dedicated to Mystic Square. The three Seihou games also contain homages to Touhou in the form of character cameos, but ZUN worked on those games, so I'm not sure if they count.
Mystic Square has a few things borrowed from Cave. Shinki's overall character design looks to be influenced by Garra from Esp Ra.De., and they also share a couple of bullet patterns--I counted two, last time I played Mystic Square. In Extra, Alice's final attack is an easier version of Hibachi's last attack in DoDonPachi. This attack is also where ZUN got the arrowhead bullets from. And finally, the main component of Alice's second attack is very similar to the final attack of DoDonPachi's stage 6 boss, although it's a pretty basic pattern so it could just be a coincidence.
The conversations in the games and the bullet pattern names are also full of references to various literature and other things, and some of the stories are based on other stories or myths, but the wiki already points those out, and you seem to only be focusing on influences from games, anyway.
As for games influenced by Touhou, apart from the doujin sea of Touhou clones, a segment of Samidare's Extra stage is dedicated to Mystic Square. The three Seihou games also contain homages to Touhou in the form of character cameos, but ZUN worked on those games, so I'm not sure if they count.
And one of the most active ones, too. It always surprises me how he managed to find time to play these games, arcade games, and possibly something else at the same time while also living in Japanese society. Though maybe he is a NEET. ;)Enhasa wrote:Wow, you're gonna laugh at my ignorance, but I didn't know ISO was a Touhou player. :o
StB is up for consideration, but tracking 110 categories is going to be a chore. PoFV is a multiplayer game in the first place, so I don't know. People don't really play it for score, do they? As for PC-98 games, they are impossibly hard to track. I'm not aware of any "official" scoreboards for them, much less such that would work like Royalflare (with downloadable replays and such).Enhasa wrote:You don't plan to track high scores for the other Touhou games? (STB, POFV, the PC98 games)
Anyway, at least with StB you should check out Royalflare. Dame K.K has a lot of records there, btw.
Recurring ideas are listed at the first iteration. As for Tasofro games, I played only Samidare (and didn't beat stage 3, either).Enhasa wrote:I assume with the influences that you don't care about the Tasofro games and also don't care about Touhou games taking ideas from other Touhou games?
I was thinking about it, and decided I won't touch generic gameplay elements because then I'll have to return to nonsensical depths like LLS's gameplay inspired by Space Invaders, smart bombs inspired by — uh, was it Xevious? — or something else like that. Sayo-chan counts, I'll write it.Enhasa wrote:Highly Responsive to Prayers: Reimu inspired by Sayo-chan from Kiki Kaikai, game inspired by Arkanoid
Are you sure it was Garegga in this case? Youmu's option behaves differently, like it changes direction instantly, and its distance from the character isn't fixed. Maybe there was some other game that had such an option? I'll put Garegga for the time being, though.Enhasa wrote:Imperishable Night: Youmu's option is inspired by the Battle Garegga option formation.
Matskat wrote:This neighborhood USED to be nice...until that family of emulators moved in across the street....
Added all these, thanks.Aisha wrote:Mystic Square has a few things borrowed from Cave. Shinki's overall character design looks to be influenced by Garra from Esp Ra.De., and they also share a couple of bullet patterns--I counted two, last time I played Mystic Square. In Extra, Alice's final attack is an easier version of Hibachi's last attack in DoDonPachi. This attack is also where ZUN got the arrowhead bullets from. And finally, the main component of Alice's second attack is very similar to the final attack of DoDonPachi's stage 6 boss, although it's a pretty basic pattern so it could just be a coincidence.
I'll leave the "games influenced by Touhou" section to be edited by someone else, because I'm really unexperienced here.
Matskat wrote:This neighborhood USED to be nice...until that family of emulators moved in across the street....
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SockPuppetHyren
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- Location: Chillin in Southtown
I may sound silly for this, but I always got a Radirgy-ish vibe from SA's score system. The way you had to constantly increase the the multiplier gauge, how some bombs seemed to be designed to be used aggressively and often (And also being effectively rechargeable), and the little signal icon (but that's superficial at best). I'm more than likely wrong, but the idea still won't leave my head.
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Afterbirth
- Posts: 148
- Joined: Sat Jul 16, 2005 11:12 am
I remember ZUN saying he made Reimu because there wasn't any Shrine Maiden themed games, or something along those lines. The sceptic within me says he was well aware, and inspired by, KiKi KaiKai / Pocky & Rocky, though...
Satori does a similar pattern as the Stage 3 DoDonPachi boss as one of her non-cards. It's not exact, but the blue/red colour scheme seemed like a homage to me. The latter half of stage 3 in SA plays eerily similar to the same in Mushihime-sama, with bullet grid overlays mixed with aimed fire...
But to be honest a lot of these will be coincidence and people looking for things that aren't there. i.e. I don't buy that ZUN copied Progear's final boss pattern for Flandre; they both use the screen edges and radial patterns, but in practice they are very different (Progear fires missiles that explode on the edges, EosD uses the boss's origin and fires a bouncing pattern (err, that's right, right?)) and it's viable both those parts could be thought up independently.
Satori does a similar pattern as the Stage 3 DoDonPachi boss as one of her non-cards. It's not exact, but the blue/red colour scheme seemed like a homage to me. The latter half of stage 3 in SA plays eerily similar to the same in Mushihime-sama, with bullet grid overlays mixed with aimed fire...
But to be honest a lot of these will be coincidence and people looking for things that aren't there. i.e. I don't buy that ZUN copied Progear's final boss pattern for Flandre; they both use the screen edges and radial patterns, but in practice they are very different (Progear fires missiles that explode on the edges, EosD uses the boss's origin and fires a bouncing pattern (err, that's right, right?)) and it's viable both those parts could be thought up independently.
Well, the goal of that page is not to blame ZUN for evidences of plagiarism, hence why it reads "likely origin". I decided to make this page to list such obviously similar elements in order to promote non-Touhou games they were probably borrowed from, just to let shmup newcomers know that some things were thought up longer ago than they know by Touhou games.
Matskat wrote:This neighborhood USED to be nice...until that family of emulators moved in across the street....
Ok, I went back through the Windows games to check stuff. I didn't have time to play through all of them to remember patterns though, which is a shame because I know some are familiar.
First, one minor unimportant note. Seihou and Samidare are Amusement Makers. By Tasofro games I mean the fighters (Immaterial and Missing Power and Scarlet Weather Rhapsody). They also made the platformers (Super Marisa World and MegaMari) and the RTS (Patchcon), but those aren't official.
Youmu's option is not like Air Gallet's hunter. That starts off shooting backwards wrt movement but as soon as you power up, becomes both forward and backward... in other words, exactly like Reimu C in SA (another one to add). I think Garegga's last option formation (only shoots backwards wrt movement) is really the best you can do. It makes sense because:
Yukari's option is just like the homing special option in Garegga.
You have the Batrider sticky options under Marisa C in MOF, but they arguably came first in Remilia's option, also in IN. They don't have the sticky delay, but it's not as if Marisa C is precisely the same as the Batrider/Bakraid options either (the delay is extremely short, just a fraction of a second, and Batrider's options will return to you if you keep moving). I remember when full version MOF came out, the delay was added to Marisa C, and everyone I asked couldn't tell the difference between demo and full. I think IN Remilia is more than close enough to be considered the first instance, and thus three different options in IN came from Raizing.
Mystia has a unique mechanic but I don't know if I've seen it anywhere else. Same with Sikieiki in POFV. Also Sakuya B in PCB feels like something but I can't figure out what. Suika from IAMP has one of the coolest mechanics I've seen in any game, but that's Tasofro anyway.
Autobombing and reaction bombing are perhaps non-generic enough to be credited, but I have no idea what games invented this.
Since "split-screen vs shmup" is too generic, there are still a bunch of extremely specific and unique mechanics (i.e. not something like HP) taken from Twinkle Star Sprites for PODD. They include fireballs, reversals, boss attacks, extra attacks, and combos. These may have generic names but they are very specific mechanics that are not ubiquitous in vs shmups.
Youmu's level 1 charge shot in POFV is a sword that kills bullets. Radiant Silvergun for sure. Medicine's extra attack slows you down when it hits you, but doesn't hurt you. I can think of multiple examples of this. My earliest is Metal Black. Someone will probably name some very blatant popular game like R-Type or something that I will be embarrassed to have forgotten, but I'm ready to be obsoleted.
POFV has some extra attacks that are directly like certain extra attacks in TSS: La Petite Princess, but since they came out in the same year, I doubt there was any influence.
The way MOF's meter works, with fragments that you collect to bomb, is like Gun Frontier.
It sounds a bit silly, but I don't think there's a better influence for STB than Giga Wing. Rechargeable limited-area bullet clearing is not a concept most people would invent without outside influence, and Giga Wing seems the best, but it might not be close enough to count. Your call of course.
First, one minor unimportant note. Seihou and Samidare are Amusement Makers. By Tasofro games I mean the fighters (Immaterial and Missing Power and Scarlet Weather Rhapsody). They also made the platformers (Super Marisa World and MegaMari) and the RTS (Patchcon), but those aren't official.
Youmu's option is not like Air Gallet's hunter. That starts off shooting backwards wrt movement but as soon as you power up, becomes both forward and backward... in other words, exactly like Reimu C in SA (another one to add). I think Garegga's last option formation (only shoots backwards wrt movement) is really the best you can do. It makes sense because:
Yukari's option is just like the homing special option in Garegga.
You have the Batrider sticky options under Marisa C in MOF, but they arguably came first in Remilia's option, also in IN. They don't have the sticky delay, but it's not as if Marisa C is precisely the same as the Batrider/Bakraid options either (the delay is extremely short, just a fraction of a second, and Batrider's options will return to you if you keep moving). I remember when full version MOF came out, the delay was added to Marisa C, and everyone I asked couldn't tell the difference between demo and full. I think IN Remilia is more than close enough to be considered the first instance, and thus three different options in IN came from Raizing.
Mystia has a unique mechanic but I don't know if I've seen it anywhere else. Same with Sikieiki in POFV. Also Sakuya B in PCB feels like something but I can't figure out what. Suika from IAMP has one of the coolest mechanics I've seen in any game, but that's Tasofro anyway.
Autobombing and reaction bombing are perhaps non-generic enough to be credited, but I have no idea what games invented this.
Since "split-screen vs shmup" is too generic, there are still a bunch of extremely specific and unique mechanics (i.e. not something like HP) taken from Twinkle Star Sprites for PODD. They include fireballs, reversals, boss attacks, extra attacks, and combos. These may have generic names but they are very specific mechanics that are not ubiquitous in vs shmups.
Youmu's level 1 charge shot in POFV is a sword that kills bullets. Radiant Silvergun for sure. Medicine's extra attack slows you down when it hits you, but doesn't hurt you. I can think of multiple examples of this. My earliest is Metal Black. Someone will probably name some very blatant popular game like R-Type or something that I will be embarrassed to have forgotten, but I'm ready to be obsoleted.
POFV has some extra attacks that are directly like certain extra attacks in TSS: La Petite Princess, but since they came out in the same year, I doubt there was any influence.
The way MOF's meter works, with fragments that you collect to bomb, is like Gun Frontier.
It sounds a bit silly, but I don't think there's a better influence for STB than Giga Wing. Rechargeable limited-area bullet clearing is not a concept most people would invent without outside influence, and Giga Wing seems the best, but it might not be close enough to count. Your call of course.
Raizing games, Radiant Silvergun, Air Gallet, and Metal Black fixed/added.
Several Cave shmups had tilting shots, but arguably none of them behave exactly like Sakuya's (at least you can't fix the tilt degree).Enhasa wrote:Also Sakuya B in PCB feels like something but I can't figure out what.
I think it comes from the wrong perspective. The core aspect of MoF bombing is the fact that you have to sacrifice shot power. I don't know of any game that has it.Enhasa wrote:The way MOF's meter works, with fragments that you collect to bomb, is like Gun Frontier.
Yes, I don't consider them close enough. GW shield is a shield (stays with the craft) that reflects bullets. StB's camera is a variable-area-of-effect function that isn't fixed to the player character, and it just cancels bullets, not reflects them.Enhasa wrote:It sounds a bit silly, but I don't think there's a better influence for STB than Giga Wing. Rechargeable limited-area bullet clearing is not a concept most people would invent without outside influence, and Giga Wing seems the best, but it might not be close enough to count. Your call of course.
Matskat wrote:This neighborhood USED to be nice...until that family of emulators moved in across the street....
Yeah, it was the fixing that feels familiar. Just tilting by itself is common.moozooh wrote:Several Cave shmups had tilting shots, but arguably none of them behave exactly like Sakuya's (at least you can't fix the tilt degree).Enhasa wrote:Also Sakuya B in PCB feels like something but I can't figure out what.
Yes, I was just focusing on the fragments. I should have said Metal Black (aka Gun Frontier 2) in the first place. You pick up power/bomb fragments and power down when you bomb.moozooh wrote:I think it comes from the wrong perspective. The core aspect of MoF bombing is the fact that you have to sacrifice shot power. I don't know of any game that has it.Enhasa wrote:The way MOF's meter works, with fragments that you collect to bomb, is like Gun Frontier.
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Momijitsuki
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You can't hurt EX-Alice (Mystic Square) or Mugetu/Gengetu (Lotus Land Story Extra Stage) with bombs either.Embodiment of Scarlet Devil
"Boss invincible to bombs (entire time or during last pattern) Stage 6, Extra True last boss of DoDonPachi (Cave, 1997) "
Anyone wanna unlock Story of Eastern Wonderland's Extra stage to see if that boss is immune as well?
Re: Some Touhou wiki picks
I wanted to post this back in May but I forgot to.
Cho Ren Sha 68K's TLB (2nd loop final boss) is also immune to bombing. It might not be the first, but it beats out DDP and was popular enough (and also came from the doujin scene) to be an influence. Famibe no Yosshin, 1995.
Cho Ren Sha 68K's TLB (2nd loop final boss) is also immune to bombing. It might not be the first, but it beats out DDP and was popular enough (and also came from the doujin scene) to be an influence. Famibe no Yosshin, 1995.