- Joined
- Sep 23, 2004
- Messages
- 1,925
Okay I have to thank a couple friends for getting me hooked on this extremely addictive and EXTREMELY difficult game. Lemme run this down.
Touhou (Shrine Maiden series) is a "danmaku" style shooter game, which is essentially a curtain-fire version of a Gradius or other kind of overhead scrolling fire shooter. However, this Japanese style of shooter is based on dodging a flooded screen of bullets which appear in intricate and often neat-looking patterns. Example:
And this is really "simple" compared to some of the spells. The characters in the game supposedly are part of a long series of other danmaku games by the same creator, who I am very impressed with. This guy develops the graphics, music, and stages for his games practically solo, with the occasional help from some other developers. For an independant game, this one is *REALLY* worth the time, if nothing else for the decent music composition. The artwork is kind of lacking and amateur, but it isn't god awful.
I've played some of the other games in the series and didn't find them to be as good in quality or challenge as Imperishable Night (#8 in the series) and there's also some neat spinoff games like a Street Fighter style game, and one where you shoot pictures of the bullet patterns (?).
The story behind the game isn't really that intricate (or interesting, so say some of the people who have English patches for the games), but they're simple and really the emphasis is on the insane challenge of the game. Even the easy levels are pretty tricky later down the road.
Supposedly there is an english patch out there for it but I haven't found it. Otherwise enjoy the Engrish interspersed throughout the game. Since I can't post torrents on here, just search for "Shanghai Alice" on your favorite torrent search.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Nb5Ohbt1Sg - Video of someone clearing Extra Stage, which is the most difficult stage in the game, consisting of a boss encounter which takes upwards of about 10 minutes of nonstop complex bullet dodging. I just finally cleared it tonight after about a month of playing the game in my spare time, and only barely at that. The video is a replay which you can save after finishing a full story mode run, or an extra stage run which will let you watch your plays again, or you can trade them with other players for an idea of how to do certain spells or stages. Replays also let you watch *just* the boss encounters (boss mode replays just skip through the non-boss parts).
You can probably find tons more of the more difficult stages on Youtube and replays of them as well from several different players. Also a nice challenge are the "Last Word" stages which are unlocked by beating the hard parts of the game and are just a single spell encounter which you get 1 life and no spell cards to fight with, these are also exceptionally difficult, but easier to learn since you can repeat them.
Touhou (Shrine Maiden series) is a "danmaku" style shooter game, which is essentially a curtain-fire version of a Gradius or other kind of overhead scrolling fire shooter. However, this Japanese style of shooter is based on dodging a flooded screen of bullets which appear in intricate and often neat-looking patterns. Example:
And this is really "simple" compared to some of the spells. The characters in the game supposedly are part of a long series of other danmaku games by the same creator, who I am very impressed with. This guy develops the graphics, music, and stages for his games practically solo, with the occasional help from some other developers. For an independant game, this one is *REALLY* worth the time, if nothing else for the decent music composition. The artwork is kind of lacking and amateur, but it isn't god awful.
I've played some of the other games in the series and didn't find them to be as good in quality or challenge as Imperishable Night (#8 in the series) and there's also some neat spinoff games like a Street Fighter style game, and one where you shoot pictures of the bullet patterns (?).
The story behind the game isn't really that intricate (or interesting, so say some of the people who have English patches for the games), but they're simple and really the emphasis is on the insane challenge of the game. Even the easy levels are pretty tricky later down the road.
Supposedly there is an english patch out there for it but I haven't found it. Otherwise enjoy the Engrish interspersed throughout the game. Since I can't post torrents on here, just search for "Shanghai Alice" on your favorite torrent search.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Nb5Ohbt1Sg - Video of someone clearing Extra Stage, which is the most difficult stage in the game, consisting of a boss encounter which takes upwards of about 10 minutes of nonstop complex bullet dodging. I just finally cleared it tonight after about a month of playing the game in my spare time, and only barely at that. The video is a replay which you can save after finishing a full story mode run, or an extra stage run which will let you watch your plays again, or you can trade them with other players for an idea of how to do certain spells or stages. Replays also let you watch *just* the boss encounters (boss mode replays just skip through the non-boss parts).
You can probably find tons more of the more difficult stages on Youtube and replays of them as well from several different players. Also a nice challenge are the "Last Word" stages which are unlocked by beating the hard parts of the game and are just a single spell encounter which you get 1 life and no spell cards to fight with, these are also exceptionally difficult, but easier to learn since you can repeat them.
