gosokkyu

エンド

  • 戦う人間発電所

owatte shimatta


gosokkyu
@gosokkyu

One would be forgiven for not knowing of Touhou Spell Bubble, Taito's Touhou x Puzzle Bobble x music game mashup: never-ending deluge of commercial Touhou side-games aside, the game has remained Switch-exclusive since its original Japanese release in early 2020, and the eventual global release was a very low-key, "we threw together an English build for Asia so we might as well release it worldwide"-type drop that garnered virtually no attention—off the top of my head, it's the only one of Taito's return-to-consoles games that they and their international publishing partner didn't milk to death with eight thousand pointless SKUs.

(It also had the misfortune of being a local-only versus game that released on the cusp of lockdown, but that would've been a demerit no matter what; they eventually patched in online ranked and private matches some eighteen months after the Japanese launch.)

Here's some footage from a rare offline tournament held at EVO Japan a few months back—click through for a systems breakdown, and my own befuddlement at the dev support this game continues to get, all these years later:


gosokkyu
@gosokkyu

(JP - EN)

A little over four years since the initial Japanese launch, Taito's finally wrapping up Touhou Spell Bubble—in the end, it got 49 separate pieces of paid DLC, costing ¥51150 all up. Again, I marvel at their willingness to keep pecking away at it for so long for nobody in particular, but I can't say I'm not disappointed that they never added a spectator mode (necessary for online tournaments) nor bothered with a PC port.


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in reply to @gosokkyu's post:

This has been my subway Switch game for a little while and I gotta say I've had a great time with it. I'm not good or anything-- the hard CPU is more than enough for me-- but it's a lot of fun. I have accepted that I will never purchase the probably $300 or so worth of DLC that's up on the eshop for it.

this has been my go-to whenever I feel like playing some puzzle bobble, it scratches the itch, and as only the most casual touhou enjoyer all those aspects of it are kinda window dressing to me. I was waiting for the next proper Puzzle Bobble, but the new one doesn't seem to be equivalent in terms of polish and features at a glance?

i found this game thanks to someone on here recommending it to me - i tried the demo a few days ago and i was obsessed with it. i kinda figured it wasn't getting much support anymore but its really cool to know it still is

in reply to @gosokkyu's post:

i bought the game at japanese launch and have started doing occasional sessions with a friend and we bought...a bit of the dlc. maybe 10% or a bit more based on that figure of the total? i doubt there are a lot of whales but it is pretty easy to imagine that a solid chunk of the playerbase picked up song packs by their favorite couple circles, a dlc character or two they're really fond of, etc.