Touhou Project: Clearing Hard Mode Imperishable Night

Hello everyone! I know my last two posts have been anime reviews/rants, so to add some more variety I'm going to dedicate this post to the rage induced clearing of Touhou Eiyashou ~ Imperishable Night!

For those who aren't aware, I do like my shmups. Of these fairly niche games, the one series I really fall back on in Touhou Project, created by Shanghai Alice. These games started on PC-98 computers, which were becoming obsolete at the time, but as of the sixth installment they have been readily available on Windows.

Of all the Touhou titles available, I prefer Touhou Eiyashou~ Imperishable Night. It's a great starter game, as the addition of Last Spells and such make for very easy play.

Well, very easy for Easy or Normal Mode. These games are known for getting bat shit crazy at times.

40 minutes of rage later, I got a screencap and could continue this entry.

The image above, as mentioned in the caption, required me to spend about 40 minutes raging in order to take. This is the first time I've completed Hard Mode, and while it does feel like I've accomplished something, it was a frustrating experience - they weren't kidding when they said Hard Mode.

To complete this playthrough, as noted in the above screencap, I had to use two continues - after setting my life total at max. This means I blew a total of 26 lives, using a total of 57 bombs (I had three left - THANK GOD!) and only acquired 3 spellcard bonuses. I cleared Stage One with no deaths, but shit hit the fan as soon as I got to the Stage 2 boss.

As if Hard Mode wasn't crazy enough, there's always Lunatic or Extra!

Regardless of the rage, I now know I'm capable of clearing Hard Mode (at least for the FinalA route, I can't imagine attempting FinalB right now), so I can start practicing and improving. Ideally I'd like to be able to go clear some Last Word spellcards, but I have a long way to go before even considering such a venture.