Something Unreal

On a train in the Netherlands late one night, we got bored. We were worried about how the conductor would react, at first, but he turned out to be a fun old man after all. Even some of the other passengers got interested! It’s hard enough to even keep your balance while playing as the train’s moving, let alone actually play well, so we hope that the simple act of us playing DDR on a train is enough to make this video entertaining. Because it sure was for us. Now if only I could’ve got my soundcase through airport security…

[Watch in HD]

The simfiles we played were “Doll Judgement” and “Love-Coloured Master Spark” (simfiles made by Gpop), from a pack named “Touhou Pad Pack”. Thanks to Dnstje for filming and taking his dance mat with him, and to MasterPJ55 for motivating us to actually do something so win.

I didn’t notice at the time that the bag being held at 06:17 appropriately looks just like a power item from the Touhou games.

Here’s a much-needed compilation video using some of the many videos I recorded at London MCM Expo (May 2009). It mainly focuses around cute things because this video was originally going to be for the Touhou cosplayers, and… well, you know, I didn’t think soldier or Alien cosplays would fit in very well. I wonder if you can call a Dalek cute though.

[Watch in HD]

The sudden song change is because Cirno’s Perfect Maths Class had so many different parts that it was too hard for me to be lazy while editing the video. I tried to at least change the song when it reached an appropriate place.

MCM Expo in London was held last Saturday and Sunday, and, quite awesomely, there was a group of people cosplaying as characters from Touhou Project! Here’s a bunch of pictures I took (some are screencaps from videos I recorded, so they generally don’t look as good). Please click an image to see a larger version of it.

In particular, the Suwako one is bad because that’s from the only video I ever got of her, from a distance while waiting in the ticket queue.

After seeing a box of doujinshi dedicated to the game series last October, but then not seeing a single piece of Touhou merchandise this May, I was disappointed, but these people more than made up for that. The group consisted of 3 guys cosplaying as Eirin, Yuyuko and Marisa, and 2 girls cosplaying as Sakuya and Iku (one of them was being Reimu on Saturday). There were also 2 other girls doing Suwako and Marisa, but they didn’t appear to be part of the group.

I may well upload some HD videos to YouTube, since videos just seem more realistic to me than photos, and I mentioned doing so on the Touhou Group thread on the MCM forum and no-one seems to be objecting to me doing so. However, that involves me not being lazy (at least cutting and joining the video files), so it will take me a while to do.

Oh, there were some cute Mikus too, which was cool to me, given that I’m pretty fond of her too.

Lights flashing to the notes in StepMania files. They’re controlled by a program which I made which reads SM files and plays through the notes (it’s the same program which controlled the servos in my previous video where the servos pressed the arrow keys for StepMania).

Some people who saw my previous video may know that I (accidentally) killed the microcontroller on the same day that I made the video. My brother’s kindly letting me use his in the meantime. I ordered a new one two weeks ago today, and it still hasn’t arrived. Aaaah, SSC-taaan! >_<

Technical rubbish:
The main microcontroller is an SSC-32.
The bulbs are each 2-Watt 21-LED 12-Volt bulbs, producing the same amount of light as a 25-Watt halogen bulb.

I intend to make a guide on how to make this, some time.

EDIT: Oh, YouTube’s messed up the sync again.

Well, I hate to bang on about something which is not a lot of Touhou fans’ cup of tea, but I’ve updated the guide. I mean… a lot, this time. Now you can easily find the character which you want, and can easily see the date on which each mod was last updated. I updated and added several new ones – here’s the list:

Added: Shikieiki, Lunasa, Kaguya, and a new “tank-head” Reimu.

Updated to latest version: Sakuya, Hong (“China”), Patchouli, Reisen (“Udonge”), Suika, Chen, and both versions of Marisa, ze.

My usual bleeper fanatics will return very shortly, with the MIDI Input support as promised. =D

I felt I was playing too much NON-Touhou music lately, so I hope this little Touhou medley of mine makes up for it (it had better do, the hours I spent practising >_<).
Inspired by the great music from Touhou 08: Imperishable Night.

The keyboard is plugged into my soundcard INPUT, and my headphones are plugged into my soundcard OUTPUT. That way, you get as close to perfect audio as possible (no hiss from a microphone), and I can hear what I’m playing as I play it, without disturbing other people in the house.

I know Mystia’s part was short, but I was having so much trouble with it that I decided to just stick to what I was happy with playing.

Keyboard is a Yamaha PSR-E313.

I’m also providing an MP3 of this – should anyone want it – at 320 kbps.
Download link
(7.33 MB, 3 mins 18 secs)