While I don't think many of you have heard of these games, or even if any of you are interested in the danmaku genre, I am pleased to say that the next installment in Touhou's spin-offs has been anounced last week and is due for release on March 14th. Touhou 12.5 Double Spoiler is what we could consider a follow-up to 9.5 Shoot the Bullet. The video I captured of 9.5 finally serves a purpose, as I will post it here to give an idea of what will this spin-off be, followed by a small development of the game. I will not speak of the main series nor the fighters simply because it would make this a whole lot longer, but I'll be sure to do so whenever they release the next installment ;p.
Here is athe video of stage 2-5 in Touhou 9.5: Shoot the Bullet (the video is supposed to play in HD automatically):
As you can see, the goal here is to take pictures of the other character, or the stage's boss. The more bullets there is in the picture, the more points you gather. Also, there is a red ring that flashes around the boss, in this case, Cirno. If a picture is taken at the right moment, it gives more points as well. Be aware that if you hold the shutter button to take a picture, you can move the frame around.
There are many factors that comes into play regarding the score, such as being close to the bullets, being close to the boss, being inside the photo, the size of the frame (the longer you wait with the shutter button pressed, the smaller the frame gets), the number of colors within the bullet pattern and their sizes, etc. You can see the added bonuses in the top right or left corners of the stage screen after taking a picture (the position depends on which side of the screen the picture was taken). The primary goal in the game is to simply take the required number of pictures of the character opposing you. There's no real story within the game itself, as it is once pointed out in the game;"No one knows the purpose of the photos, except Aya (the character you control)".
Now comes the strategic part of the gameplay. As you noticed from the video, taking pictures also eliminates the bullets that were within the frame. Once your shutter eye is at 100% ready, if you cannot reach the boss or you find the screen to be filled with enough bullets to make you feel dizzy (believe me, there's literally nothing in terms of bullets in the video I posted), you can take the photo anywhere you want to erase some of the bullets and try to create an opening. I personally am not too good with this tactic, as the hole you leave open gets filled back up within seconds. Actually, I'm not too good at the game itself, which I'd consider being the hardest of the Touhou series.
So from what we understand so far, you need to wait for the shutter eye to be 100% ready before taking a picture, with which you try to capture the boss within the frame of the photo, and achieving the required number of photos of a character ends the level. On top of the strategy and beautifully create patterns, as in other TH games, you can focus your attack. In the main games, focusing makes you move a tiny bit slower, but gives your attack more power and overall, makes it easier to overcome some of the bullet patterns. In Shoot the Bullet, focusing makes you ridiculously slow, but greatly increases the charge time of the shutter's percentage. I hardly ever use the focus in this game as, while it charges quickly, the ridiculous speed at which you are reduced makes the game near impossible.
I have never finished Shoot the Bullet, nor do I have any plans on ever finishing it, it is just ridiculously hard and I envy those who can beat it entirely. The video I took is an easy scene, but I liked the way I would spin around and dodge the bullets, so I decided to capture it a long time ago. Despite being bad at the games and not being able to go through most of them, Touhou remains my favorite Danmaku games.
For more information on Double Spoiler, you can check out ZUN's blog if you can read japanese, but if you can't (like me), the translation can be found on Gensyoko.org as well. On both sites there are screenshots of the 12.5th installment.
For more information regarding Touhou as whole, be sure to visit the Touhou Wiki.
You can always go check my YouTube profile as I have a couple more videos like this one coming from different games in the series.