Pepi

Any character that is designed to just be stage filler. For example, Koakuma (she literally lacks an official name).

Source: https://www.pixiv.net/en/artworks/110587256

I really enjoy Yumeko's character. She is so pissed at you for destroying Makai she almost disobeys Shinki in stage 5 (thankfully, Shinki was understanding in letting her get revenge). Compared to Sakuya, i like her color pallete more, it's more vibrant and her danmaku patters are really hard, and I am terrible at them. Her swords just annihilate my lives. Her theme "Doll of Misery" feels very tragic to me, it highlights the negatives of being a servant, maybe? Anyway, it's very goood, even more considering the technological limitations of FM Music. Just taking the original apparition into consideration (Yumeko in MS and Sakuya in EoSD), i prefer Yumeko. Sakuya in the long run is more memorable, but in EoSD she is pretty meh, just a maid pissed at you for interrupting her cleaning with a slight hint of worry about her master. The issue of Yumeko is being compared to Sakuya. She was the prototype.

It's pretty close to being a fact that piracy increases sales, look at this story: Notch (the creator of Minecraft) has a fair share of critics, but something he did wonderfully was to allow free access to Minecraft in the early days, it was the basis to allow a big jump in popularity and sales. Meanwhile survival mode was being developed, Minecraft Classic (creative mode) was free, and it was very popular around 2010-2012, increasing the sales a lot. And once the full game released, there was a "bug" where if you entered any username and a random password at the log in prompt, you could play the game for free, until it was patched in version 1.7 (in late 2013 with the "bug" existing since at least 2011, it also coincided with minecraft's early peak of mainstream popularity). I was one of those kids who figured the "bug" in the launcher and played for free, and once a fix was announced, I begged my parents to buy Minecraft and they did.

Be grateful to the universe you became Pepsi-man in a dream, truly one of the experiences that life is worth living for. Honestly, you can make that dream a cool video game (of course, changing Pepsi-man for a copyright free version). Now for my dreams, I'm not someone who remembers his dreams. And when I do, they are usually either extremely incomprehensible to the point it's impossible to remember them, or just straight out nightmares. But luckily for our amusement, I accidentally recorded those dreams by writing them for a friend and ohh boy they are pretty crazy. All of these are real, they sound like insane ramblings from someone in a mental facility, but they are true. First Dream: Fumos Yes, I had the honor to dream about something Touhou related! It was a very short dream, I was in my bed and when I looked at my body (and the rest of the bed) there were a few Fumos lying in my bed (i don't have any), specifically Iku, Yuuka, Reisen and Tewi. When I woke up, I was disappointed it was a dream, I want Fumos . First Nightmare: Kaguya Houraisan Yes, the Fumo dream was the only good dream i remember having in my life. And yes! I also had a nightmare with something Touhou related, in this case Kaguya. I was in my parent's room watching a video from the Spanish YouTuber Dross Rotzank (he makes horror videos about all kinds of topics, usually revolving around rankings). To my surprise, the video was warning the viewer about Kaguya Houraisan, an extremely dangerous entity that has to be avoided at all costs. I shrug it off and i went to my room. When I saw the door, it was open and Kaguya was blocking the way doing some sort of strange pose I can't remember. I screamed very hard in the dream and i woke up. Note that Kaguya didn't do anything dangerous, it was all based on my fear of her thanks to Dross' video. I have a theory that the fear of Kaguya came from my struggle to make my first 1CC (in Touhou 8). Something interesting that happened later is that meanwhile I was trying to record Touhou 8. i had a very strange bug where the recording software started corrupting the image and the result was a frozen frame of Kaguya's face with a very rough recording (about 5fps, with choppy audio), I deleted the video, but that was a real life creepypasta right there. Second Nightmare: Plane Smoke I was in my old house, then I heard a noise and I looked at the part of the sky where the noise came from. 2 commercial planes crashed and meanwhile the first crash was falling, a third plane came and crashed the wreckage. It landed pretty close to my house (about a kilometer) and a cloud of pitch black smoke started to fill the neighborhood pretty quickly like it was alive and after people. I stopped looking and started closing all the windows and then I woke up. Credit to the nightmare, the explosion looked real and it was very scary. Pretty interesting that I watched a TV show with a similar plane crash the month prior. Third Nightmare: Skeletons This is the oldest nightmare I remember, it happened to me at about 5–6 years old. One day, meanwhile, I was discovering what YouTube was, I found a pretty unsettling video of a medical CGI render of a man (luckily no intimate parts were shown) slowly descending from a spiral staircase meanwhile his body layers started to peel off (with the effect to show how the muscles and skeleton moves in that scenario). I was in shock and i watched the whole thing, and it freaked me out so much I was terribly afraid of skeletons after that. Old internet was pretty wild, what was I doing watching that and those creepy my little pony videos at 6 years old, I don't have a clue. I found a similar looking video to illustrate what I watched. This one is less grotesque. Okay now for the nightmare. One day I dreamed that I was falling in a pitch black void (literally imagine Steve falling from the world in Minecraft) and suddenly a giant skeleton skull appeared below me, where I was going to fall, and he laughed before eating me. I woke up just before he ate me. Yes it was short, but ohh boy it was the drop that spilled the glass.

There are some definitive sociocultural influences at play in this discussion. Just like the case with Yankop and CountVonNumenor in the balkans, here in South America (and Central America too) pirating is the norm, and it's even commercialized with things like street vendors selling illegal copies for almost nothing or bootleg toys being overly abundant (does piracy apply to bootlegs?). Unrelated to the topic, but those bootleg toys are nightmare fuel, and you should do everything in your power to avoid them. If your living situation is dire/tight, I find it morally okay to pirate. Let's say your country is suffering a troublesome inflation, if you decide to do the right thing it's likely that you will cut down on let's say desserts you like in order to reach payday. But are you going to give up entertainment for your mental sanity? No! Another situations where I find piracy morally correct is either for preservation or when the pirated version gives you a better experience over the official method. One case that happened to a friend is that he discovered that the best way to enjoy the 90s Sailor Moon anime was to pirate it using a torrent from nyasi that mixed the best quality image with the best quality audio that normally go in different releases, but that are combined in the torrent. Another case is for example Rockstar with the early GTA's getting some music tracks removed from the remasters, essentially not being remasters anymore. Would it be a good idea to make a new topic discussing DRM? There are a lot of things to cover there, just this week Google started to put pressure in Chromium (the open source base for Chrome) to include DRM in it, giving google the ability to completely disable ad blockers (they are considered a form of piracy to some, because you are skipping the payment in form of ads). Something that can completely stop piracy, good or bad, is DRM. It can also potentially harm the right of ownership, what happens if your product depends on a server to unlock the DRM, and the server goes down?

If that guy doesn't end up making an Alternative Reality Game (ARG) I'm going to be disappointed

I found another music player that can utilize WINAMP's skins. I was trying QMMP out and wow! It's blazing fast, and the skin mode is very compact for all the features it has, and it can look very pretty (look at my Sailor Saturn amp, ohh god it's great). Unfortunately, the Linux version has some problems with Wayland, that's where Audacious comes in to save the day (it also looks more well maintained than QMMP) Audacious: It's available for Windows, MacOS and Linux.

I really like that after you beat Louise, she reappears in Stage 4 (with the sprite looking very pissed), makes sense since you attacked her without explanation (not a new thing in Touhou, as Marisa says shoot first ask questions later). It also reinforces my idea that in Mystic Square you are essentially destroying Makai as you go, making her Stage 4 appearance more meaningful as now she is really trying her hardest to stop you from wrecking Makai

Now that we are on the topic, time to do the sorter and see what happens. Well, it's pretty spot on. I didn't expect Shinki and Mima to appear so high, though.

3 Favorite OSTs (not in order of favoritism): 1) Touhou 5 Mystic Square: Mystic Square is my favorite PC98 Soundtrack, i feel all of its tracks are pretty memorable, although they are simpler in composition than the Touhou standard. They are not noisy even with their fast tempos, and they go along great with the stages/bosses. It pushes the limits of what FM Music can do. Well, some of the tracks are pretty boring, like Treacherous Maiden ~ Judas Kiss, at least it's a clear example of the chord progression ZUN uses (VI VII i) My favorite songs from Mystic Square are: Alice in Wonderland (it's one of the few Touhou songs that changes a lot with the loop, it really feels tragic and epic and the same time. The key change near the end and the deeper FM melody makes it one of my favorite songs on all of ZUN's work, it shows the potential FM music has), Plastic Mind (the melody is somewhat melancholic, combined with its speed, really makes me feel this song represents a mix of desperation and anger, probably symbolizing Alice trying to stop you from wrecking Makai) and Doll of Misery (the drums are great here, overall the melody feels overly quiet almost like it's repressed, maybe it highlights Yumeko being a Maid and probably lacking freedom. It's one of the most complex PC98 songs ZUN made) 2) Touhou 11 Subterranean Animism Subterranean Animism's soundtrack is a good song after another good song, it's especially darker in tone and fast paced. The drums and bass are very well achieved (something that is usually overshadowed in ZUN's mixes), they help the songs get a darker/deeper feel that helps convey the overall darkness of Former Hell. It also has some good guitars, like in The Sealed-Away Youkai ~ Lost Place or in Last Remote. My favorite songs from Subterranean Animism are: Last Remote (the tension and release of this track is legendary, combined with the climax, wow!), Lullaby of Deserted Hell (one of the few calm songs in Touhou, i like it a lot due to how it's synchronized with Orin's movements during Stage 5 and the folkish adventure tale vibe it gives me), Corpse Voyage ~ Be of good cheer! (the drums in this one are what i said earlier i liked about this OST, it complements the melody very well as it's rhythmical almost like a machinery moving. When it stops the rhythm at the climax and the guitar kicks in, its glorious.) 3) Touhou 18 Unconnected Marketeers Unconnected Marketeer's soundtrack shines in how comfortable it is to listen to it all in one setting, as an album the tracks go back and forth from being relaxing (as relaxing you can get with Touhou) stage themes and epic boss themes. You can really sense ZUN's improvement at music making here, every song is good without being boring or repetitive. My favorite songs from Unconnected Marketeers are: The Perpetual Snow of Komakusa Blossoms (one of the few times ZUN used a mayor key, and it shines thanks to that. The song feels romantic, like a bird flowing through the wind) The Abandoned Industrial Remains (ZUN really nailed the nostalgic feeling here, the acoustic guitar with the notorious bass and the flutes really makes me feel like im looking at something past it's glory days that has a future filled with hope) A Fantastic Underground Railway Network (That feeling of hope gets realized here as you come back into the mine more prepared, it makes me feel like i can conquer the world and the combination of all the instruments in the mix with the well-placed silences is very well achieved) Least Favorite OST: I'm keeping it shorter here, as i dislike this particular OST for these reasons: I really dislike it when ZUN decides to ignore basic music mixing strategies, and he just pumps the ZUNPets to ear breaking volume, when the entire song is just the same repeated thing with no variation or when he abuses the same instruments in the OST. I'm not a fan of repetition in music, one of the reasons I usually like ZUN's music is how he manages to repeat the same VI VII i chord progression without feeling repetitive (like how popular music abuses one chord progression to death, without variation). Touhou 07 Perfect Cherry Blossom It breaks my heart to include this one here, but ZUN really dropped the ball. Not necessarily with the composition, as most songs have very memorable melodies, including some of my favorites like Border of Life, The Doll Maker of Bucuresti, Eastern Ghostly Dream ~ Ancient Temple and Hiroari Shoots a Strange Bird ~ Till When?. Unfortunately, ZUN forgot to add more instruments aside the piano and ZUNPets. He also forgot to add any kind of bass and to regulate the mix before releasing the game. Why do i say this? Have you ever heard Necrofantasia or Border of Life with headphones? It breaks your ears, the ZUNPets are too loud compared to the rest of the instruments, and it really harms those songs (and your ears). It's not the only problem, the OST uses the exact same instruments on all the songs aside Hiroari and all the bass contained in The Fantastic Tales from Tono. When you play this game, your ears saturate quickly from the barrage of the same high-pitched sounds over and over again (it doesn't help that PCB is one of the longest Touhou games) It's especially disappointing because Embodiment of the Scarlet Devil doesn't have these issues, even if ZUN was an amateur when using Windows and not that experienced with non FM Music. Honorable Mention: Touhou 12 Undefined Fantastic Object Don't get me wrong, this is a great OST, all the songs are good. It's only problem is that all the songs use the same instruments (less prominent than PCB), and they sound too similar, it ends up feeling repetitive, even if by separate the songs are amazing. Thankfully, things change musically in the later half (from Stage 4 onwards), with some pretty unique songs like Captain Murasa and Heian Alien, but the first half almost sounds like the same song.

I just have one word for this character. COW

Toby Fox doesn't "like" Touhou, he adores it! ZUN and Toby actually had an interview together in 2018 (i guess that stopped the "war", i didn't even notice something was happening, even if at that time i was a big Undertale fan) Here's a translation of the most important details, definetly a recomended read: https://clarste.tumblr.com/post/179204742441/interview-with-toby-fox-undertale-and Toby was so obsessed with Touhou he played before there where any good transaltion proyects and he was good enough to beat PCB's phantasm stage. Coincidentally, Yukari and Ran are his favorite characters. He even arranged Necrofantasia and got a standing ovation in school, what else to say? Something i discovered by searching the wiki is that Toby helped compose the Stage and Boss 1 songs for the fan-game Touhou Nemuri Sekai (Sleeping World) ~ Wonderful Waking World . If you want to experience it yourself: https://oligarchomp.itch.io/wonderful-waking-world

Satori is partially guilty of the incident for not controlling well her pet Okuu becoming a living nuclear reactor, in the good ending of Marisa/Patchouli they say this: Patchouli: "None of this would have happened if the Palace of Earth Spirits would take proper care of their pets" Good point, it is too friendly. You made me laugh a lot with the "Reimers" Great example with Okuu, it nails the balance of complexity and simplicity. Sumireko's design is definitively overloaded.

This makes me wonder, why is the logic borked with Sumireko? I mean, Sanae also invaded Gensokyo, but it took Kanako trying to impose her faith in the mountain to make The Tengus and Reimu/Marisa stop them. Other characters also do disastrous acts on their first appearance, but always are pardoned in the good endings, like Yuyuko, Remilia, Kanako, Satori, Clownpiece, etc. Why is it strange that Sumireko befriended Gensokyo residents that fast? Regarding the cape, it does feel over-designed when the runes are highlighted too much. But in the sprite, they are almost the same color as the cape, making it much more pleasing to look at. Searching for an image of the sprite of Sumireko, I found an edited version without the runes and the pattern on her skirt, and it looks pretty good. Rune-less: Normal:

Sumireko's personality does leave a lot to be desired and is kinda overdone, but that's not unusual for Touhou. Exaggeration is a tool in writing, especially for goofy characters. ZUN is not a stranger to this technique, almost all the PC98 characters utilize this writing. It's also common for most of the characters that appear between stages 1-3, like Cirno or Kogasa. I have to disagree with your thoughts on Sumireko. It seems you overlooked how Sumireko's actions in ULiL leave big repercussions for her in the rest of her appearances, forcing her to mature. In ULiL she is actively punished in her story for playing with Gensokyo like it was a game. She got trapped in Gensokyo by the residents reversing the method She used to get in, and everyone decided to welcome her by attacking. She narrowly escapes to the outside and, seeing no alternative, decides to sacrifice herself to break Gensokyo's barrier using the Occult Orbs, revealing it to the Outside World. Not only that, but she was also manipulated by Lunarians to connect the Moon with Gensokyo, unleashing the events of LoLK. Later on Touhou 15.5, her new ability to enter Gensokyo in her dreams got out of control when Dream Sumireko got unleashed in the Outside World due to Sumireko suppressing Her Dream Self from existing. On Touhou 16.5, we discover that Dream Sumireko succeeded in trading places with Sumireko, but the rest of the Dream Inhabitants got angry at that and decided to hunt her dreams. After this, a very pissed off Sumireko does a final battle to retake her body, eventually winning after Okina disabled Dream Sumireko's god like abilities. Sumireko as a character criticizes the people who live in Wonderland. She goes too far to achieve that dream and ends up paying the price. Sumireko is one of my favorite characters in Touhou because the things ZUN criticizes with her are big real world problems that we have trouble figuring out. I like you can gain something out of reading Sumireko's character, not like Remilia that's just a video game final boss without a deeper meaning (other characters like Sanae or Aya and the Tengus can increase the reader's perspective about the topic ZUN choose to explain with them). Is fiction starting to control reality? How superficial can it turn us? Are we too obsessed with fiction? Is social media damaging us? Oh, and her theme is very good, and her design is amazing.

Hard to beat the glorious VLC. Are you looking for a Music Player or one that does Video too? If that's the case, maybe try out MPV Android (i never used it) or search in google for open source Video/Music Players (it's important you search with the "open source" term because phone app stores are full of shady stuff and that guarantees your security) It was very quick, but I found a program that's the middle point between Tauon and Amberol. Strawberry Music Player: It's a Windows/MacOS/Linux Music Player that has a lot of features, but it's pretty fast too. So far it's been working perfectly, and it feels pretty polished, although the interface is a little unintuitive at first. Don't take seriously the "audiophile" label it uses on the website, it's just a music player, lol.

In this day and age, there are a ton of different devices capable of playing music and a lot of programs to achieve that. The choices you get are likely in the thousands. But what is your preferred Music Player? It's more important than you think, almost everybody listens to music and the program must adapt to your use case and be reliable on a day-to-day basis. The programs I use are: Tauon Music Box: Tauon is a Windows/Linux Music Player that has a lot of great features, it shines in the mix of complexity and simplicity it presents. My favorite features are that it treats any folder as an album and the ability to search without clicking anything. Although I stopped using it due to audio cutting when the system load is high (the peak when you open a program, it skips like 0.10 seconds), it's pretty heavy for a music player. Amberol: Amberol is a Linux only (you can run it on Windows with the WSL) Music Player that focuses on simplicity and a fancy UI. It's pretty fast and the interface couldn't be simpler, you also get a sidebar where all of your tracks appear. The biggest downside is the lack of features, but if you like that, it's Amberol's biggest strength. I'm currently using it to avoid the issue I mentioned above with Tauon. I will be honest, the reason I made this topic is to find a new music player that's a middle point between Tauon and Amberol.

I found a creator that recreates/remixes Touhou tracks using a Sound Hardware Emulator of PC98. These two are my favorite remixes. Deaf to all but the Song Spring Lane ~Colorful Path

They all come from this website. Idk about bulk downloading them. https://tohosort.frelia.my/

Archiving is definitely a good reason for having forums. Thanks to forums and leaderboards, we know things like High Scores and runs from 2006... Or people's first impressions of experimenting Clownpiece and getting a Blue UFO after collecting two Red ones. Reddit gets kinda close to having good historical archives, but again it's a company that might decide to delete older stuff to reduce costs of operation or whatever excuse they find. A forum being 100% community based means that we will always give the extra stretch to keep things going and enjoyable for everyone (at least the majority). Me neither. I tried watching it and as soon as Koishi ate the centipede, I was done with it. Honestly, I have never found stories that focus on Gore interesting (biggest example that comes to mind is Higurashi, where the gore is so much it lowers the quality of the story), it's usually overexaggerated for no reason, and it always ends up in a pool of blood. I'm not saying I dislike darker stories, it's when they are "oooh look I'm a dark story, pay attention to me" that gets on my nerves. For Touhou, it's pretty refreshing to have darker tones hidden beneath the surface, one question that rises from that is "Does Yukari bring humans from the outside to feed Youkai without disrupting the Human Village and Reimu?" or revelations like Yuyuko's or Byakuren's backstories that are tragic in nature. You also get crazy things like (spoliers for Touhou 13.5) Sumireko trying a kamikaze attack to destroy Gensokyo's Barrier, oh god. Osana Reimu is an amazing fanfic that really found the right balance between the comical and darker aspects of Touhou.

Disagree? I completely agree with you and @Reitisen. I'm going to use other Online Spaces to get my point across and cover some of the general causes of the decline in quality in the Touhou Community. Keep in mind I will mostly complete the picture in what @Reitisen and @TheM3ds said, aside the "What can we do" section, so feel free to skip to that part directly. I have been a Touhou fan for over a year, so I can't comment much about how things have developed for the Touhou Community (hence my focus on adjacent topics). The least I can say it was a godsend to find this forum, it looks pretty healthy to me and I can't imagine talking seriously (as serious as possible for fantasy) about Touhou, without losing my mind with the practices that today's Web Monopoly enforces on users. I have been using the internet since I was 6 years old (around 2010) and I was blown away with the quality stuff I found of the series I liked (I mainly searched My Little Pony stuff as I was obsessed with it). Day after day, people created extremely high quality, near professional quality stuff. The animations that existed back then were the most amazing thing in existence, and I have fond memories of entering the main Spanish Forum for My Little Pony (20% mas cool). Slowly, but surely, the magic died off. Is The Internet dying? Monopolies and Brain Rot. What can we do? Is The Touhou Community affected by this? Or are we just declining? We are in an especially rough moment, not only we live in an age with lots of monopolies that due to their nature are already hard to get rid of, but they are manipulating us to become their slaves. Although this makes a big impact on the health of the community (with repetitive things like Fumos, Yukkuris or other types of Shitposting), we can't blame it all on Big Tech. We have to remember that Touhou's golden age is long gone and that the world is a very different place compared to the late 2000s. People grow and eventually change their interests or lack the time they used to have. It's normal to feel that Touhou's Community is declining, because it is. We have fewer people, that lack time on a system that favorites Quick Low Effort content, and on top of that lots of people like @CountVonNumenor are experiencing Burn Out. Honestly, we should look at the bright side of things. Even on this era of "decline" we have all of this: ZUN is still making content of all sorts (games, manga, music albums, etc.) we have the Moriya Shrine Forum and a lower but steady flow of high quality creations from the minds of people (and organizations) like: Touhou Patch Center, Touhou Wiki, Content Creators (like Suwawako, LunaPrism, Megapig9001, etc.), Music Makers (like Alstroemeria Records or RichaadEB), Game Developers (like Fumo Racing), Animators (like Mush-Broom), Writers (like the people on this Forum), Artwork of all kinds (just look up Touhou at Pixiv) and more!!! Only thing I'm missing here are some fanfics, but I'm probably looking at the wrong places. Let's survive this, and see a new Sunrise for Touhou! Did i get too poetic?

Don't worry Count! It's natural to get saturated, especially in your case, as you literally wrote essays on a semi-daily basis about Touhou. Just give it time and you will gain the enthusiasm back. You don't have to stay involved in the community to say that you "like Touhou", do what you enjoy. As Space Banana says, try enjoying another part of Touhou. Some ideas: Search for more remixes of the music, play the fighting games, play other main games (16, 10 and 5 are on the easier side, and it inspires me to play them, they are just soo pretty).

Welcome to my first topic in here! Disclaimer: The theory is based on the information given in Touhou 4 Lotus Land Story, Touhou 5 Mystic Square, Kioh Gyoku, Dolls in Pseudo Paradise, Bohemian Archive in Japanese Red Touhou 7 Perfect Cherry Blossom and Touhou 12 Unidentified Fantastic Object. Spoiler warning! If you've spent enough time enjoying the Touhou Project, it's likely you know the saga's origin in the PC-9800 Computers before the jump to Windows with Touhou 6 Embodiment of the Scarlet Devil. ZUN never gave an official explanation citing the reasons for the changes in the continuity after Touhou's jump, aside leaving hints of the past events and characters existence through cameos, like Mima in Akyu's Untouched Score 4, Shinki in Touhou 12 or even character remakes like Yuuka and Alice. What if I told you I found an explanation with somewhat solid footing? Here we go... The story begins in the events of Touhou 5 MS, with Yuuka Kazami, the mysterious, aggressive and powerful Youkai. She noticed the residents of Makai in Gensokyo and decided to explore their origins as a form of entertainment. She just wrecks everything in her way, either by force or words, just read what she said to Shinki: "Massacres are a kind of game, too. It doesn't matter whether it's humans or Makai residents." After you beat the game in a 1 Continue Clear (1cc), the ending is revealed. Yuuka learned something valuable in her destructive tour in Makai, Magic is powerful. She tried to cast her own spells to no avail, so she started stalking Marisa to at best learn from her or at worst steal her magic. Apparently, Yuuka failed. Some time later, a Magician from Makai, Alice Margatroid, that tried to stop Yuuka in Stage 3 of Touhou 5 decided to get revenge with the help of her new magical powers, granted by The Grimoire of Alice. Even with the Ultimate Magic, Alice failed in her mission, but surprisingly could escape total defeat at the hands of Yuuka (or so she thought). After that... "Hhhhh, this time, let's follow this girl around. And then, let's take away her magic. " In Mystic Square, the ending is left open, but Yuuka's plan worked. We can know that from Her Character Profile in Kioh Gyoku (Seihou, a collaboration ZUN did with Shunsatsu sare do? and Amusement Makers). "Also, after Mystic Square's extra ending, as planned, Yuuka received the ultimate magic. The author himself doesn't know exactly what it is." Here's when the theory kicks in into full gear. What's the worst that could happen with the Ultimate Magic (whose limit we don't know) at the hands of a powerful psychopath with no control over magic, like Yuuka? Universal destruction. Yuuka's playing with The Grimoire caused unforeseen consequences that lead to the destruction of the PC98 Universe. Luckily, this Universal Destruction was the Rebirth of the Universe, with unforeseen consequences. Most of the inhabitants of Gensokyo faced one of these fates. Erasure from the Universe Memory Loss Being Replaced by a Doppelgänger Physical Changes Of the main characters, we are certain that Reimu Hakurei and Marisa Kirisame likely suffered physical changes coupled with Memory Loss. Yuuka Kazami, the culprit behind The Rebirth Incident, was replaced with a Doppelgänger as her personality is completely different from PC98. She is now the flower Youkai who lives in the Garden of the Sun. Although, a faint memory of what appear to be the events of Mystic Square remains. "Flowers and ghosts and..., hmm. Speaking of which, this happened once before, didn't it? How many decades ago was it? It's been so ordinary since then, I can't remember." Other characters that we know survived the Rebirth, with a lack of detail, are Shinki and Mima. But what about Alice? Alice was the only true survivor of the Inccident, likely due to her being the owner of The Grimoire. We don't truly know what happened to Alice or how she recovered and sealed The Grimoire (reinforced by her theme in Hisotensoku being a remix of "The Grimoire of Alice"). The story does tell us that she became less childish and is a Youkai-Magician who's very friendly to humans. Alice learned her lesson, The Ultimate Magic brings unexpected consequences. The theory is now over. At first i thought that Alice was the one who reseted the universe, but finding that Yuuka actually stole The Grimoire was unexpected. Without that the theory falls apart, unless you consider Marisa reading The Grimoire in her Touhou 5 Extra Stage as the catalyst. Marisa Stole the Precious Thing, Canon!?!? Before I go, I want to add how this theory ties in with another theory related to Alice. It's a bit of a stretch even for theory standards. This is why it'separated. The Crazy Alice Theory. Alice awakened in Gensokyo without memories in a frail mental state as part of the Eight Honest People transported to Gensokyo in the scrapped story of Dolls of Pseudo Paradise. Keep in mind that this is highly unlikely to be canon, as ZUN changed the story in the next release of Dolls of Pseudo Paradise. It would be a strange decision by ZUN to make 20-year-old side material canon. In this story, these Eight Honest People, suffer death at the hands of the Pierrot (not Clownpiece) except The Coward, who committed suicide in a forest due to his weak will. But something happened to him, He Revived. He then returned to his friends, hiding his Rebirth. Soon after, The Pierrot killed everyone except The Coward, who realized He was the murderer. Filled with guilt, he once again tried to commit suicide. The ending of the story tells us about a Shrine Maiden (implied to be Reimu Hakurei) who saw a Blond Woman coming from the direction of the Western Abandoned House, who stuck her tongue at the Shrine Maiden to quickly bow and walked away (apparently leaving Gensokyo from the Maiden's perspective). She also realized she was the only woman in the Group of Men (was she the murderer and only 7 Men were present?) "Yes, that was the day we were lost in this paradise. And right away, I stopped being human." In Bohemian Archive in Japanese Red, we get to know that Alice performed a ritual pretty similar to one of the deaths of the Honest Men, thanks to Aya's reporting. She also showed sings of bad memory, as Aya spoke with her during the ritual, but Alice forgot about it. Another reveal we get is that Alice is a frequent user of Eirin's Butterfly Dream Pill that guarantees dreaming about becoming a butterfly and enjoying the life. Overdosing in this drug or just having a too enjoyable dream causes the Dream Self to switch places with you. That's maybe related to her personality shifts? After all, it's revealed that the Dream Selfs present in Touhou are much more aggressive and more like a direct line to their feelings, closer to the unconscious. Pretty unsettling, right? The amount of coincidences scares me, although Alice looks too friendly for a mass murderer, even with the Dream Self. That's why I think in this theory PC98 Alice somehow got mixed with the Original Windows Alice, that's crazy. Only explanation that comes to mind.

AntiMicro is also useful to play the PC98 games with a controller. I have to launch it after the controller and retroarch (with emulator Neko Project II Kai) load, then it works.