Ok, we need to talk about this

[CountVonNumenor]

7 hours ago, Nekofire said:

Now to go back on the main subject, I’ve found a video about what happened on Moriya Shrine, and it looks like they are really thinking that it’s a piracy website

Oh, I have seen these two videos back in spring. As far as I am aware, there was vey little cover in the Touhou community about what happened here. Almost as it it was kept a secret whenever people did not just celebrate or use us a cautionary tale in the big communities. About the Windows games, the complaint in regards to piracy may be more reasonable. However, in the case of PC-98, that is where it becomes tricky. Given that they are close to impossible to obtain nowadays, and you need a different, discontinued computer to operate them.

[CountVonNumenor]

On 12/14/2022 at 1:17 AM, CountVonNumenor said:

As for the PC-98 part, there is something very fun, yet outraging at the same time. Oh, you wanted to play those games for an abandonware software, are no longer produced and officially sold, and the author all but denies the very existence of these first 5 games? Too bad, we are going to DMCA what is basically abandonware by now. But for the actual context. Together with the big nuke of all official Touhou games and materials here back on the 25th March 2022, one more platform was affected by it.

(I would also like to thank YouTube for having nuked my comment in which I was talking about the taking down of the platform for PC-98 games, therefore making them close to impossible for us to play; basically, since Asprey himself may not be aware of it, his video description is still linking towards a platform that no longer works; more on that later; the very same comment seems to stil exist on a community post from Suwawako, quite ironically)

This very platform was even mentioned, almost 1 year ago, in AspreyFM's presentation of the PC-98 games as the best way to play them on modern computers. They were emulated by one Spaztron64 on GitHub, yet ZUN went after them at the same time as the other materials. Instead on presenting it myself, I will let Spaztron use his own words about what happened (it even was featured here at the Shrine in a thread):

 

Touhou PC-98: The Ultimate Collection

created by spaztron64, 2021

PC-98 Touhou emulation, now for the masses! Setup has been drastically streamlined, bringing it down to 3 simple steps:
1. Download a package based on your emulator preferences
2. Extract
3. Launch and pla-- Uh no wait hold on... oh yeah I got DMCA'd.


So yeah, I recently received this oh so lovely e-mail from GitHub:

This unfortunately means that the actual game data will need to be removed from this repo.
You can still get the preconfigured emulators here (DOSBox-X) and here (np21).
You'll need to... look elsewhere for touhou.hdi (It's circling around, you'll find it).

Now that we got that out of the way, let's address this situation properly.

 

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

ZUN, copyright infringment, and credit theft

One thing about the PC-98 Touhou games that isn't too well known is their...legally questionable nature.
Considering that Ruw (and by extension ZUN) is willing to fight against preservation efforts of a set of long abandoned and discontinued games for a discontinued computer platform with no re-release in sight, there's no better time to bring the legality of these games' existence to the public spotlight.

First, let's go over the most egregious and well documented case: ZUN stealing credit for PoDD's graphics engine.
There's a reason why the game looks noticeably lower res than the rest: It runs in 200-line mode, the only mode that SPRITE16 supports.
SPRITE16 is a software graphics engine written in 1996 by PromisenceSoft, which was used in their sample game Stormy Space.
So far the only other known game to use it is PoDD, but this is something that wasn't known for nearly 20 years because ZUN obscured this information. Don't believe me? See for yourself:



This is the original program.



And this is ZUN's distribution of it in PoDD.

Looks very suspicious, doesn't it? What's with the random whitespace gaps? Well, thanks to m1yur1's research back in 2018, we can see what's really going on:



Why of course, it's a quick hex editing job! Very classy, ZUN.

And that's not all when it comes to PoDD! Let's examine the license terms of SPRITE16 that are included in Stormy Space, which are in SPRITE16.DOC:

_/著作権など 当スプライトドライバおよび付属サンプルゲーム「ＳtormyＳpace」の 著作権は「ＰromisenceＳoft」にあります。 他人への譲渡、コピーは自由ですが、他ネットへの転載は事後でもよろしい ので御報告お願いします。

DeepL traslation is as follows:

_/Copyrights, etc. This sprite driver and the included sample game "StormySpace PromisenceSoft" is the copyright holder. You are free to transfer or copy it to others, but you are not free to reproduce it on other websites Please report to us.

This confirms that PromisenceSoft is in fact the true copyright holder, but we also have to examine that second sentence: "No redistribution on other websites".
ZUN is guilty of this too, because the PoDD demo on Aotaka's website contains SPRITE16 in the download.

ADDENDUM 2022-04-13: The DeepL translation is kinda screwed thanks to the text wrapping. According to several people from the community, it actually says something in the likes of this:
"PromiscenceSoft have the copyright of this sprite engine and the game Stormy Space. You are free to give it to others/copy it, but we would be grateful if you told us that you re-upload it somewhere else even if you tell us afterwards.”

This means that we can only guess if ZUN contacted PromisenceSoft regarding distrbution or not. If he has, it actually makes this situation worse.
Why? Because it would mean that he asked them for permission, received it, proceeded to steal copyright, and distributed the altered program.
Incredibly scummy if that's the case, and still results in violation of the first clause.

The other games are very much suspicious regarding their TSRs too:







We can see the exact same pattern of huge whitespace gaps like in PoDD's ZUNSP.COM, though unfortunately there's no solid evidence of tampering yet
since we have no other binaries to compare to.

Another infamous example is in HRtP, where ZUN straight up committed copyright infringement in one of the stage backgrounds:





The game in question is Toshin Toshi 2 by AliceSoft which, may I remind you, has seen multiple re-releases since 1994. (thanks for the reminder /jp/ anon)
The company is still around, and I bet they would like to have a word with ZUN :^)

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Website last updated: 12th of April, 2022

 

 

Now for some some personal analysis. According to this post on shrinemaiden.org from 29th September 2013, one user managed to track down the original prices for each of the PC-98 games:

• Highly Responsive to Prayers: 300 Yen
• Story of Eastern Wonderland: 500 Yen
• Phantasmagoria of Dim. Dream: 500 Yen
• Lotus Land Story: 700 Yen
• Mystic Square: 800 Yen
• CD-R containing all of the games: 2000 Yen

The source used by the user is based on this result offered by Wayback Machine http://web.archive.org/web/20020603200944/http://www.kt.rim.or.jp/~aotaka/AM/index.htm

At the time of writing his post, the price for a copy of Mystic Square went for over 100000 Yen on Yahoo! Auctions, while the CD-R usually went for 90000 Yen. There have been some more updates made by the same user as they found further information, which I will insert here:

Quote

(posted 21st October, 2013)

Sorry about the late post, but this is the type of topic that takes a while to update :blush:.
This blog has a post showing the games for sale in a store window, all of which unfortunately have high prices:

http://seaside-tears.sblo.jp/category/683525-8.html

I have not yet been able to find any of the actual games for sale, not even on Yahoo! Auctions (which usually has them), but I have been able to find numerous auctions for the actual PC-9801 and PC-9821 computers:

• FM Soundcard: http://page5.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/e143892293
• PC-9801: http://page9.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/k161557796
• PC-9821: http://page5.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/e95020141

The computers used to play the original Touhou games apparently cost as much as the games themselves :o. Aside from the shipping, the worst part about buying a PC-9801 is locating the system install disks and the operating system (MS-DOS 6.2), as they are kind of rare and difficult to find.

Also, does anyone know if the trial/demo version of Mystic Square has any of the older music still available in the music room? I don't use emulators, so I haven't been able to find out for myself.

Expand  

 

In a more recent thread (dated 28th November 2018) posted on r/touhou by u/[deleted], apparently a store in in Akihabara has physical copies of the original PC-98 Touhou games. Price tag? ¥13,000,000. And we can only imagine the prices went up ever since due to inflation all the economic jazz of past few years. That translates, according to current exchange rate, to 95,904.25 USD or 444,093.06 Romanian Leu (RON). If I wanted to buy the PC-98 games legally, I would need the minimum wage for 16 years? At least based in the Romanian minimum wage, which was officially counted in 2020 at 466 Euro/2303 Lei a month.

Good luck with that one...

Yeah, I think this whole part of the discussion has been utterly ignored in favor of a needless tangent about inappropriate materials and their spread. We are literally talking about the fact that and ABANDONWARE PROGRAMME was deemed as DMCA violating content, and that we have pretty much lost a reliable source for playing the PC-98 games if anyone was interested in doing so. And again, good luck if actually want to be all goody-two-shoes and get everything legally, from acquiring a PC-98 computer to finding the original 5 Touhou games in physical copy and not have to sell your liver (and quite likely other organs too) just to have them.

[CountVonNumenor]

On 12/14/2022 at 1:17 AM, CountVonNumenor said:

 

Oh, sorry, I have accidentally posted the same comment twice. This is quite weird, as replies used to upload instantly and not have to click on the "post" button several times without seeing anything happen. Anyway, I will have to think of something else to write here. Until then, just ignore this reply.

[nitorii]

man I sure love not existing near reddit because I had no idea moriya shrine had this terrible of a reputation in the touhou community
can't lie, I got here because I was looking for some fun games to play, but I did stay because y'all seemed really chill. unfortunately it seems people take this place as purely piracy driven and nothing else, similar to thepiratebay and etc. I believe the general hatred is just people who've been in the community for long spreading the word that MS is this "dark, horrible and scaaaaaaary place you should never step into" to newer people, who then do the same after some time, going in an endless cycle
and it seems zun is also into some tomfuckery of his own, hmm? interesting.
all in all, from a quick read, I learned touhou fans are more toxic than I believed to (I knew they were, but I genuinely had a good experience overall in the community in those 3 years or so)

[CountVonNumenor]

41 minutes ago, yukayay said:

all in all, from a quick read, I learned Touhou fans are more toxic than I believed to (I knew they were, but I genuinely had a good experience overall in the community in those 3 years or so)

To be honest, for most of my experience of two years (as of yet) being part of this community, pretty much 95% of the time I did not have any real problems or encountered toxicity among fans. Things seems to have changed quite a bit for about half a year now though, as I am slowly starting to see more and more hidden, nastier sides of our fandom at large (at least as much as I can reach in the English side of the world; if I were to take the Japanese fandom itself, from which we are quite a separate entity it seems, that one would a whole different rabbit hole to jump in, filled with tons of things we most likely are not familiar with or not prepared for...)

[nitorii]

everyone I stumbled upon that happened to know touhou was genuinely really nice to me, so my experience in the fandom is pretty much the same as yours. unfortunately, nothing escapes the inevitable fate of "this one group in the community will hunt you down because you like X thing or did Y thing"
really wish world peace was real

[Gri]

39 minutes ago, yukayay said:

everyone I stumbled upon that happened to know touhou was genuinely really nice to me, so my experience in the fandom is pretty much the same as yours. unfortunately, nothing escapes the inevitable fate of "this one group in the community will hunt you down because you like X thing or did Y thing"
really wish world peace was real

This is something I have seen in many places: "veteran" fans looking down on others "novice" fans for not knowing as much as them, gatekeeping them rather than welcoming them to the community and encouraging them to see other stuff other than the "mainstream" stuff that only "noob" would like. To me, we all started somewhere, and that kind of behavior is just childish (can't people enjoy more than 1 thing in life? why must there always be a "winner" that's better than a "loser"? can't we all just relax ?). Unfortunately, we can't do much about those people, other than not doing the same thing as them. Sharing more obscure content to new fans is the way to go to prevent this "elitist" culture from settling into this forum.

So far, I think this place is rather decent. , even I don't write much though (I don't like writing big posts, and answering a big analysis post with just "I agree with X" isn't that pertinent ), from the post I have seen, I only saw "tension" once or twice. Don't get too down when conflicts happens. As they say "tomorrow is another day"

[CountVonNumenor]

40 minutes ago, Gri said:

This is something I have seen in many places: "veteran" fans looking down on others "novice" fans for not knowing as much as them, gatekeeping them rather than welcoming them to the community and encouraging them to see other stuff other than the "mainstream" stuff that only "noob" would like.

Oh boy, you are reminding me of the concept I have seen thrown around, and mentioned at least on the wiki of "newbie bait". The term refers to a set of very specific characters (Reimu, Marisa, Sakuya, Alice, Youmu, Reisen, Aya and possible a few more), even if I think it might also coincide with the fact these are "basic" characters, as in "the person that likes them is basic". I guess some just want to feel entitled, or just maintain their "greater than thou" feeling. Or just feel special...

[CountVonNumenor]

On 7/8/2022 at 1:05 AM, buskerdog said:

To close off this post, I have a video to share. Touhou would absolutely not be what it is today without piracy, and I think this video shares a good message about how supporting your favourite creator has more meanings than simply filling their coffers.

  Reveal hidden contents

Slight tangent from the Touhou theme of the thread. This reminds me a lot about my childhood. For a long time, I grew up with pirated version of Rome 1, Medieval 2 and other games of the Total War series. At the time, I did not have money to buy them, and digital copies were expensive even with the advent of Steam. However, after many years of playing  and enjoying them as such, when I finally got some money, I ended up buying both games. So in the end, I guess the thesis that both you and Isaac came up with is actually true.

And in order to bring it back to Touhou, I would say there is one more thing. I for sure was not expecting that after playing (and, to be fair, not finishing) two mainline Touhou games (PCB and PoFV), I would end up buying the entire FS manga series. Hope it balances out...?

[Gri]

3 hours ago, CountVonNumenor said:

And in order to bring it back to Touhou, I would say there is one more thing. I for sure was not expecting that after playing (and, to be fair, not finishing) two mainline Touhou games (PCB and PoFV), I would end up buying the entire FS manga series. Hope it balances out...?

That's up to you. How much do you think you should have paid for PCB and PoFV?

Keep in mind some of these game had free demo before being released, so if you only played a little on the full (but pirated) version, then I think it easily count as a "demo".

I did the same thing. I didn't know if I would like Shump games, so I downloaded EoSD as a "demo" and gave it a shoot (and I though these games all were inaccessible outside of Japan anyway). A year and a half later, I played all games and I almost bought every official Touhou games on steam (even those I didn't really like to compensate for the PC-98 era).

As long as you aren't abusing the "privileges" this site grants you, it's fine.

[CountVonNumenor]

43 minutes ago, Gri said:

That's up to you. How much do you think you should have paid for PCB and PoFV?

Keep in mind some of these game had free demo before being released, so if you only played a little on the full (but pirated) version, then I think it easily count as a "demo".

I did the same thing. I didn't know if I would like Shump games, so I downloaded EoSD as a "demo" and gave it a shoot (and I though these games all were inaccessible outside of Japan anyway). A year and a half later, I played all games and I almost bought every official Touhou games on steam (even those I didn't really like to compensate for the PC-98 era).

Everything I have said was more in the idea that trying out some of the pirated content from here actually made curious for buying official stuff, so now I can say that I hold legally a piece of official Touhou media. It is just how much the "trial" for PCB made me like the series, despite never having finished the game itself. 

[spagnips]

Stop paying attention to what the larger touhou community says, just a bunch of self-righteous tourists, this goes for any large community really, just do what you're gonna do and stop caring what a bunch of snobs think. Also, stop caring about how "sexualized" a drawing is, it's not real and it's not meant to be a mirror of reality either.