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it feels like I've basically always been aware of touhou. Through stuff like Bad Apple or Ronald MacDonald Insanity, or Perfect Math Class. It's always been some kinda nebulous connection between random parts of the internet, something people kept talking about in passing. My first actual run in with a game was actually Rensenware, even tho at the time I didn't realize it. Don't remember where I even got it from, but my parents had to give the computer to a Guy who managed to unlock it.
then, maybe 5-6 years ago I started going through the games just out of sheer curiosity, and got thoroughly hooked on EOSD. Fast forward 3 ish years from that, and now I constantly have a couple tabs open on the wiki, learning Touhou songs on piano, trying some fan games and reading official and fan written works, getting into the weird ends like KKHTA or Osana Reimu, etc etc... I find everything about it so immensely comforting now, and it's genuinely got me through a bunch of rough times. Feels kinda weird to say that, but das how it be hahah
Your engagement with the Touhou fandom sounds pretty similar to mine, right down to trying to learn the songs. What fan games have you tried?
Also you got me to look up Rensenware. At first I thought it was maybe a typo, but the "rensen" bit sounded familiar, once I found out what it was it made sense:
Rensenware (Korean: 련선웨어; stylized as rensenWare) is ransomware that infects Windows computers. It was created as a joke by Kangjun Heo (허강준; alias "0x00000FF") and first appeared in 2017. Rensenware is unusual as an example of ransomware in that it does not request the user pay the creator of the virus to decrypt their files, instead requiring the user to achieve a required number of points in the bullet hell game Touhou Seirensen ~ Undefined Fantastic Object before any decryption can take place.
(source: Wikipedia)
I ended up delving into yukkuri as my weird end. I'm the type who can't watch Fight Club without being told when the violence occurs so I can look away, so it's very weird that I was a-okay with yukkuri (as in consuming the content personally, it existing is fine regardless of if I can personally handle it haha).
the interesting part about Rensenware is that as far as I know, it doesn't come with the game on its own, yet I vividly remember trying to play it. my best guess is that was a very deliberate prank set up by someone on some file sharing place or something.
I've tried most of the better known danmakufu games, one of the mahjong games, thoroughly hooked right now on Lost Branch of Legend, and watched a friend play Artificial Dream in Arcadia. Plus a random dozen of other small games from gamejams and such. Asprey on youtube also covers a lot of fan content, so I watch them once in a while.
Thank you for telling me about Artificial Dream, I'll have to check it out!
Gensokyo no Nazo was fun, forget if I finished though. Started and didn't finish Satori Komeiji's Mental Education, it was cute. Bunny Love Expert was a cute and short puzzle game. Forgot how far I got on Koumajou Densetsu II: Yougen no Chingonka but it was gorgeous. I do not know if these are still here but there were a couple bullet hells I found when searching "Touhou" on the iOS App Store and I enjoyed them, and I found one freemium idler on the iOS App Store that I had a lot of fun with cheating for the premium currency and rolling the gacha with it. Might have played Touhou Luna Nights, if so it was also fun.