I decided to try and get into the Tohou fandom

[dunpeal2064]

You should see stage 7 Pink Sweets. That many bullets, but going WAY fast.

Those screens are nice looking though, I'll give you that.

[Hatta]

Yeah, I'm sure Cave does it better. I started playing Dodonpachi around the same time I started Touhou 6. Hit a wall around the end of level 3 and was never able to get any further. Touhou I just kept getting better at. So for now I'm playing Touhou and not Cave games. I'm sure experts will have other better supported opinions.

[dunpeal2064]

If Dodonpachi isn't your thing, try out Mushihimesama

Touhou isn't a bad place to start. I just saw the word "fandom" and my nerdrage kicked in

[ZenErik]

You should see stage 7 Pink Sweets. That many bullets, but going WAY fast.

Those screens are nice looking though, I'll give you that.

I absolutely love Pink Sweets. One of my friends hated it at first until I started playing it and showed her that it's more of a Mars Matrix style shmup and not just guns a blazing like she was doing. But I have to admit that I still suck at Cave shmups. I am not a high caliber player and have only 1CC'd Twinkle Star Sprites.

The bullet patterns in Touhou games are nice to look at sometimes, but I was more referring to the average enemies throughout Touhou games. They look like fairies and are just really bland and boring.

[hurrito]

I'm still on the fence on how i feel about this series. As cute as it is, I find the official art to be godawful. It's fun though challenging. Maybe this is be a fine chance to finetune my Shmup skills. (they are seriously lacking)

[Nemoide]

I got The Embodiment of Scarlet Devil not too long ago. While I like the music and Touhou fandom does produce some neato things, it's not at the top of my pile. Like other folks here, I would prefer to be playing shmups on consoles and found the art to be lackluster.

If you're looking to buy copies of the games, you can get them on J-List. However, it takes a bit of messing around to get it working on an English-language comp.

[ZenErik]

I also recommend buying from rancor: http://www.sk8tokyo.com/shmup/

He has a very nice selection of console and doujin shmups. If you can't find what you are looking for on the site just send an e-mail, and he will most likely help you out. Great guy.

[dunpeal2064]

Buy from Rancor!

That guy is freaking aweseome. Even if you don't want Doujin games, he can usually find anything you want.

I've got the following from him:

Battle Garegga (Saturn, CIB and Mint)
Dodonpachi Dai Ou Jou BLEX (360, mint)
Agetek Dreamcast arcade stick (CIB, MINT)

And just last night I hit him up to see if he could find me a copy of Batsugun. As of now he has already gone out and purchased the copy for me, CIB, and cheaper than I have ever seen the game sell for.

I plan on buying pretty much everything from this guy from now on. If you buy enough stuff, he usually even throws in some cool japanese candy (I got a chai kit-kat with my garegga )

[ZenErik]

I've gotten Ikaruga and Triggerheart Exelica from him. This coming week I will likely be purchasing Trouble Witches, Espgaluda II, DoDonPachi Daifukkatsu, and/or Ketsui. Highly recommended.

[dunpeal2064]

I highly recommend Ketsui.