The Times When I Hosted Touhou in My College

seeing touhou inperson is somewhat of a rare sight (unless you live in japan), let alone someone playing the games. im that person who makes it happen. and it started around 2024 where i finally bothered to get into the series, and it permanently changed me. overall, its pretty much improved my social life for the better, new irls and online friends make my life so much more better now. however, it did leave me with lots of stories and moments to share when i showed the games in college but ill be describing the ones that were noteworthy to me.

SOME CONTEXT BEFORE WE GET GOING

i didnt start hosting touhou in college until fall of 2024 and its the same location of some unused tvs with tables below and two seating booths.

also ill be referring to two recurring friends. ill be calling them konpaku and shameimaru. youll see why those names once we start getting into the stories.

SHOWING MY RUNS ON THE TVS

probably the easiest way to get people's attention. usually not that many people bat an eye but that's moreso not that many people come by and already know what touhou is. if they do, they will call it out and i just continue my session. in rare cases, they may come over. this is how i befriended some people, however, i've not kept up with all of them.

one story related to this was some guy coming over who seemed enthusiastic about bullet hells and i let him do a run of DDC on easy. unfortunately his run ended on stage 2.

LETTING MY IRLS PLAY TOUHOU

really fun when it happens. usually short sessions or a few matches depending on the game but there were some that went longer than that. one of them was letting konpaku play IN on easy. i also decided to be nice and increase the starting lives. he ended up 3CCing it, which is nice on its own, but i hope i can enourage him to go further. another one was konpaku also doing WBaWC. and he decided to give every boss an accent. this was really funny for me. my favorite accents were californian yachie and baltimore keiki.

for games that had longer and frequent sessions, they'll be in their own sections.

PLAYING TOUHOU 3

this may seem weird since finding someone whose obsessed with the pc-98 games in-person would be really hard. but handing my friends it ended up with really fun matches.

both konpaku and shameimaru played it and the gameplay is very intense despite its simplicity compared to 9 and 19. i main yumemi, konpaku keeps picking different characters, shameimaru mains marisa. one match i remember is when i was about to get hit by an extremely fast bullet and i died since i didnt notice it in time.

SOKU AND AOCF

these are the games that got the most mileage when i hosted touhou in college. in terms of which one individually, its soku. however, i do have memorable moments with both games.

for soku, i had tons of memorable sessions with both konpaku and shameimaru along with other people. some of my moments include losing a match to a really high youmu j2A, experiencing a double KO, trying out tagsoku and soku unlimited, and getting lots of people into soku. of course, shameimaru mains aya and konpaku mains youmu (both of them have to deal with iku cuz i main her). but there's also a suwako main ive not talked to in a while and recently, showing a pair of guys the game and one of them decided to main utsuho. however, ive never meet anyone who would main reimu, yuyuko, and sanae.

there's way more cool moments i forgot about when i writing this but this game basically improved my life the most.

for aocf, it was sometimes the more preferred one, konpaku has his own copy so i can play with him. however, it did leave me with probably the craziest story so far.

i had someone who had not played fighting games in a while and i let her play AoCF while there was another guy at the setup already. their team was sumireko and reimu. she ended up winning the match despite the other dude's experience with AoCF, who played with primarily with me when it came to that. I started calling AoCF a masher friendly game despite it clearly not being one.

CLOSING

while im currently not in college as of this writing, this series has pretty much improved my life for the better. im not sure if ill be able to top any of these moments for future semesters but ill continue doing my shenanigans whenever i get the chance.

i guess the lesson here is dont be afraid to introduce stuff to people and ease them into it too.