Gri

The short one (th7.exe) is for the Japanese unpatched version, and the long one (Touhou7.exe) is for the patched version.

Have you tried LOLK? That one is the only one with the PointDevice mode. A mode where you must do a no-miss clear, but when you get hit, you restart at a checkpoint. Bombs are allowed, but limited so be careful to not use them or you'll be "softlock" at stage 5 or 6. It is also the only game that can save your progression. This feels more in line with what you are searching. Also, the option should be there for touhou 13> to retry from the beginning of the stage. You can use it. Touhou are arcade games, so you are expected to replay them over and over until you've "master them", which the original continue system encourage. The "satisfaction" comes from finally getting the good ending with 1CC. I would mind the other system less if you could still win after retrying a stage, as well as save your progression. It would mean the struggles on a specific stage would be rewarded eventually. As is it now, you might as well give up, start over from the beginning to get more resources and get a better chance at passing the later stages. The worse thing, is that it encourage you to play "in a bad way". Say you are on your last live, on the last spell of the stage 5 boss and still have some bombs, then you'll be very tempted to waste all your bombs and reach the "stage 6 checkpoint" (since you become tired after awhile of playing the same stage), rather than actually trying your best. Personally, I kinda wish Zun would have implemented PointDevice for every game after LOLK. The "issue" in LOLK was that the game was design with PointDevice in mind, so it is much harder than any other Touhou (and they are BS spell that kills you if you aren't in the correct spot before the attack starts. Not punishing with unlimited lives, very bad on Legacy mode).

Nope. As far as I am aware, no patch to do the reverse. The mods just skip the line that tells the game to reset the stage, so it was "easy" to implement. The reverse would be hard, since the code that reset the stage isn't really in the game (you have to recycle part of the Practice Mode and hope it somehow still works in the main game). Haven't try that option on touhou 13>, but there should be an option in the menu to start over the current stage. I am curious, what do you not like about that continue system? The only strength of the one from 10-12 I can see is that it makes clearing a stage for the first time more rewarding. On other playthrough, it's just an annoying waste of time. It forces you to grind a stage, when you might just want to move on to the next one (Not each play session has to turn into intensive training). Arcade game are nice because they are short (~30m-40m) and can fit in a busy schedules. That system just prolong the game too long when you're leaning the game, and may force you to quit (due to rage or lack of time). Not a pleasant feeling. In the "more popular" continue system, you get to choose whether to continue your run as a practice run where you practice each stage equally, or whether to stop and grind a specific stage over and over in the practice mode (or even grind a spell in Spell Practice). Of course, in both case, the moment you use a continue, you lost. So in my case, when I lose, I prefer the system that let's me choose how I want to practice, over the one that force me to grind RIGHT NOW. I'll manage my own training thanks. Note: Touhou8 has the worst system. You can use continues, but not in Stage6B, where you are very likely to use one.

Correction: A is for Aya

Yes there is. You used thcrap for getting the english patch? If yes, simply launch thcrap and when asked to select a language patch, look at the bottom-left for a "advanced" checkbox. Check it, then the full list of patch will be displayed. Search for "continue", then the continue patch for 10-12 will appear. This patch gives you infinite continues, but the moment you use one, you get the bad ending (like Touhou 6-8). If you haven't used thcrap, go download it from their website. Honestly, this is by far one of the worst choice Zun's ever made. It debatably makes the first playthrough more rewarding, since it takes more time to see a new stage, but it just makes all next playthroughs very annoying, since you may not want to grid a stage on repeat to practice (there's practice mode for that). Thank god he reconsidered from Touhou 13 and onward.

Now it makes sense. I wasn't too sure you were referring to fanon. Indeed, canon wise it makes no sense. Fanon likes to overly simplify characters and their interactions or even turn characters into common anime cliché (like Yuuka for instance, who just slightly troll people in PoFV but somehow became a typical Sado-dere in fanon). This is why I tend to avoid fan-stuff until I know about how things are supposed to be officially. Same thing happens with Satori (turned into a weak, frail and lonely person tortured by her ability, when in reality she uses her ability without asking permissions, turns people fear against them and rules over former-hell), and it makes me angry. While Touhou has a girl-only cast and the story is fairly light (nothing bad ever happens), it's never been about "waifus" (at least from my perspective). But, that's another topic.

Actually, this is my question on the topic: Are they still divided? I mean, yes they are from different religion, so they are competing for "faith", just like Reimu and Moriya Shrine, but they are not "at war" with one another. Even then, Byakuren's getting a lot of faith from youkais, so it's not like Miko has to work that hard to get the humans faith (no many human would want to hang around youkais, even if officially youkai stay "undercover" at the temple, rumors would keep most humans away). They are "divided" because of their religion, so they won't hang out together just for fun, but they can talk casually when meeting one another (much like business rivals) and work together when thing get serious like in AoCF. Haven't read the print-works/omakes, so I don't know where that part is coming from.

Aha. Of course I wouldn't notice. There's 18 mainline shumps games (not counting HRtP), and once I'll Lunatic clear all of them (currently about halfway through), I'll take a break of shumps for a while, so I have no interest in shumps fan-games (yet). Well, he's the one that pop-up in my recommendation. You know the algorithm goes: the more popular you are, the more popular you'll get. I also watch Suwako when the topic is interesting (no gameplay video, I hate his) as well as MegaPig, and Tenkko since he advertise his channel here (and he covered fan-game I haven't seen before). For gameplay, there's Jaimers, as well as a few other. Mostly use them for guides. Also, I don't watch twitch. I prefer playing games myself, so I do know much streamer.

The only game I am aware of that was recently released is this Touhou/SMT crossover fangame (played the demo). Other than that, I keep a lookout on Asprey's streaming for new fan-games (I don't watch them. Just take a peek to see what the fan-game is about). Of course, official reviews are better. Honestly, it's hard finding a good fan-game, since there's a lot of fans who would buy anything with the "Touhou" brand. It's hard to tell whether it's actually good, or just carried by the Touhou name.

You can't really blame the Western community to think that Zun won't listen to them. Despise the demand for it, Zun has never bother to add english translation to the game (either by doing it himself or by hiring someone). This alone shows that Zun has little interest in Western community. In the end, yes you are are right, they could try to reach him, but we would need a great number of people sending "proper" email to Zun regarding issues with the last game, and we would need the japanese community to do the same. This part is another topic completely. I wouldn't say that "Touhou remix" are less popular, more like some fan have heard enough (there's only so much remix of "UN Owen was her" you can heard before being tired of listening to the same tune). For fan games, that's up to the dev to announce their game. I haven't play much fan-game, but I make sure to leave review and talk about the game if it is good (which is what people should be doing, but there a lot of "passive" fans which just listen to music and look at artwork. You can't force them to be "active"). Playthrough of a game and stream are actually a very good way of making a game known. This is actually an idea I had when seeing how UDoALG was "unfinished" and "broken", and when seeing the many comments of "Why is character X not there?". The community could come together and try to make a truly good, competitive Touhou VS game. Not need to wait for Zun to do it, he won't (this requires maintenance and updates, which Zun never do aside from very rare post release patch). This would be a BIG project though, since it would "serve" the whole community (so, a lot of pressure to whoever will want to do it). Mods are all well and good, especially for making old game playable, but for new game it just feel like doing the work that Zun should have done in the first place (Modding takes a lot more effort than simply changing the game's original source code). Paying for a game you have to "patch" yourself turns off a lot of people, even if thcrap is easy to use (there's always the possibility of breaking something with too much mod). Pirating is an option, but always risky which turn off more people. So, even with Mods, you can't fix all of UDoALG issues. Only minors ones. For things like missing Extra, Replay and Score, even asking Zun wouldn't work, since he'd never implement these feature post release, since this is how that game was designed. He'll only consider this for the next game, and I doubt it will be a VS game, making the whole thing a bit pointless. I am curious: do you know how the japanese community is reacting to Touhou 19, and if they tried to get things fixed? EDIT: On another note, thanks for sharing the mod list with everyone.

The returns of the bingos (Yeah. I really got nothing to say about Rika)

Quick question: What is the GameEngine most commonly used during GameJams? I have a fair share of experience using RPG Maker, and little using Unity, but I am wondering if people uses things like GameMaker. In my case, I am a programmer, and I might be interested in a GameJam once I get used to some of the tools uses for such short project. My job is to program, so I don't think starting a real Game project is a good idea, as I would be programming all the time (and I need my daily break). In a GameJam at least, it is just "once in a while", and you only focus on making a small and simple gameplay loop.

No worries. They are tons of characters left, so of course you can't upload for +200 days straight (especially if you want to write how you feel about each character along the way).

All right, full post about the concept now: This could actually be a very nice game that combine various gameplay from the mainline game. For example, there's a series of "scene" that are related to the UFO incident, so during those scene you have to play around UFO token to get through (whether aiming for score using blue one, or surviving use red/green, or even trying to break as many as you can). Another example would be the "season" incident, where you have to use you're season release to survive/score as many point as you can. You could even have "survival" challenge where you must last a specified amount of time (much like PoFV). I am getting hyped just thinking about the possibility, image this one: Cirno having to use her GFW ice power to protect an ally (that doesn't move, so there's no annoying random). Or having to use "cherry border" to survive deadly spells (collecting cherry item + unfocus shot to charge it). Having smaller incident also make it easy to justify having a larger cast, and I like the idea of having only some character available for some scene. It can play pretty well into the story, as well as offering some variation into the gameplay. I do think the game should force the player to try out each character at least once, in a kind of "invisible tutorial" way where you force the player to do ~2 scene, but the first one is easy and builds of the character strength (ex: Youmu can take out multiple "strong" fairy in a single charged slash), and the second increase the difficulty a bit using the character's weakness (ex: Youmu's has to get closer, so the player must now learn when to get close, and when to get away). Regarding accessibility, I think simply having difficulty setting would be enough. Currently, this is what makes the Photo games inaccessible to newcomers (only ISC is good since you can "choose" your difficulty depending on which item you use, or not). Maybe give the option to increase the amount of lives for longer survival-scene / boss-scene, or have broze-silver-gold ranks for score-scene. Such game would take a lot of work, depending on the number of character, scenes and difficulty/rank. One can dream (thanks for sharing that dream).

This. So tired of seeing so called "Christians" that are forgetting one of their religion's main pillar: Forgiveness. It ain't just about sin & punishment, only extremist fools will think that way (unfortunately, some churches just LOVE using that to scare people into worship, since many are afraid of the afterlife and facing consequences, which in this case is "hell". Fortunatly, some churches actually help people into finding forgivness). Nobody is perfect 24/7, and nobody can expect anyone else being perfect. It's all a cycle: You live, you make mistakes (sins), you suffer from the consequence of your sin (therefor, it's your punishment), then you seek/ask for forgiveness if the burden is too great to bear alone. Then you continue to live, and strive to not make the same mistakes. Sinning without punishment means you do not realize your are making a mistake, and some punishment will inevitably "strike" you at some point (either you realize your mistake, or someone tells you). Punishment without forgiveness means you're standing still, hurting yourself without learning, growing and moving forward. Honestly, you're the only one to blame for "perverting" your perception of Touhou. How you live with that now is up to you (in other word, how you get forgiveness for that is up to you), but calling out others on doing the same like you did before is just being an hypocrite, and it won't remove the guilt you have, it will just make you feel worse because by judging others you are also judging yourself.