Your favorite Touhou gameplay memory?

[williewillus]

I was going through my old replays to upload to Silent Selene, and found my first Touhou 1cc's ever (EoSD Normal) from 9 years ago. Lots of good memories and fun to watch myself fumble around on normal and clear with no resources.

So I wanted to ask everyone what some of your favorite Touhou gameplay memories are?

I think my top 3 would be my EoSD normal 1cc (first Touhou 1cc), my PCB lunatic 1cc (first lunatic 1cc), and my HSiFS ExNN (first ExNN).
Also a recent one would be my miracle of a TD Sanae Lunatic 1cc.

All of these were blood-pumping, edge-of-my-seat clears that are still fun to go back and reminisce on.

[HartWurst]

Sadly I don't have the replay file anymore but one of my favourite Touhou gameplay moments was probably my first 1cc as well, which was of EoSD normal. But another good memory I have is of my Reisen PointDevice clear in LoLK, since at the time a friend of mine was also doing a Sanae run of LoLK so it sorta felt like a race to see who could beat the game first. I also remember clearing Joon and Shion's story mode in AoCF on Overdrive pretty clearly too since I would constantly wipe to Tenshi's final spell card so being able to finally beat it felt cathartic.

[CyberAngel]

Learning the safespot for Eirin's "Apollo 13". Too bad doing FinalA runs was kinda pointless back then. Now that I found scoreboards that do those separately, I'm not even sure I can learn it all over again. But yeah, grinding clears, scores and spellcard practice in IN back in the day was quite fun in general.

[Suspicious person]

For me it'd be my back to back first time clear of UFO normal with Sanae : I've had a handfull of 1cc at that point but was still a bit of a rookie, and I got BATTERED by the game as I had to try so many times for like 2 or 3 hours per day over the course of 2 weeks or so : had some nasty moments where I've failed at the absolute last part of the game, went from full life to only 2 remaining against Shou, and even an extra dumb one where I mechanically reseted a very good run into stage 4 cuz I paused in order to check something out ... eventually, I had commited my routes to muscle memory, disciplined myself not to chase after the stupid UFOs, even remembered which enemies dropped which non-changing UFOs, and bombed much more freely ... when I beat the game, it was with Sanae B and it was NOT EVEN CLOSE : had like 5 or 6 lives remaining, and I didn't feel anything in particular ... then I proceeded to check the extra stage, and a thought crossed my mind like "hmm, would the snakes be more comfortable against this opening section ?" so I checked Sanae A, she wasn't available so I quickly had another run with her, got a clear with 4 lives remaining, tried her a bit in the extra and was like "yeah, I like the frogs better", then it hit me : I did it ! I conquered the game ! Smacked my foot hard on the ground, stretched for a bit, and kept playing the extra stage for fun with a dumb grin on my face until 3 AM. Game's brutal, but man, seeing the effort pay of was extremely satisfying ...

[degradingwindow]

My fondest Touhou memory was when I first played stage 4 of PCC on Hard. I remember going through the long stage with the exciting music. And, then the music looped back into the calm beginning, and the gates of the Netherworld rose into view. Seeing such a serene sight after a very long and arduous stage (for me at the time) was just breathtaking.
It wasn't some epic gamer moment where I jumped out of my chair palms sweaty, knees weak, arm heavy. It was a very different feeling and I don't know why, but that feeling of serenity is something that stands out to me more than blood-pumping excitement. I don't really know how to describe the emotion I felt in that moment. Replaying through the stage countless times over has diminished that feeling because my brain has been hardwired to just focusing on dodging, but I still remember that memory fondly to this day.

Touhou has some very elegant stage backgrounds, they might not be intricate and detailed, but they still show the emotion of the location.

[QwcKappa]

My first EoSD 1cc. It was my first 1cc ever in a Touhou game and felt pretty great about it, however it was a normal no focus 1cc. The only reason my first 1cc was without focus is because I didn't know how to, which understandably made the game a little bit way harder than it should have been