Soku History

 /FREUDIA
/-------------

since demo era was like 2006~2007 or so; SWR had a lot of demos leading up to its release
They did have netplay built in, so people were trying to play it
one of the early builds did have mauve code rollback netplay for it iirc
mauve being the guy who's responsible for IaMP's rollcaster
which is directly responsible for why we have sokuroll, EFZ Revival, and cccaster
like what happened back then was mauve made functional netplay, tasofro changed the netcode,
mauve decided he didn't even like the game and didn't continue working on it

I've talked about it a lot but SWR was polarized by a lot of characters somehow feeling good to play combo-wise, Aya being the destroyer of worlds and Alice
having godlike spirit damage, and of course my personal favorite, the 'wrongblock to escape pressure' disaster
But yeah, demo SWR was originally Reimu, Marisa, and Aya
Aya is legit a character that throughout SWR demo to SWR launch builds to soku
has
pretty much not gotten any buffs at all
just nerfed constantly
And she's /still/ high tier
but yeah, SWR had a lot of goony shit
iirc you could spellcancel your DPs
I would need to go ask like Chef or something for clarification on that
but I recall that being a thing; there was also things like Marisa 6c being an actual laser and not a b1 density bullet or some shit
So that thing would just snipe you from across the room
and if she hit you at all
she'd just triple laser you off it
because back then narrow spark was also a laser and was faster to come out, so she'd just 6c 236 master spark you from across the room
There was also shit on launch like Tenshi not having her current 5b
her current 6b was just on her 5b
yeah, they added her current 5b later
as like a 'nerf' to it
it just very slightly raised the execution requirement on her lol
Tenshi drills still did the dumb shit that they do now and require you to BE them
yeah, that didn't change
There was also the
Iku j2a debacle
you can very easily just boot SWR up to see this if you wanted to look at it yourself, but Iku didn't get the wind particle on her j6a and j2a and I guess her j5a
too until soku
so you'd just have these /giant invisible hitboxes/
this particular instance is notorious because /Japan complained about this/
like Japan literally bugged tasofro about it
like 'yo what the fuck is this hitbox on this this isn't correct at all, fix this'
and tasofro literally 'fixed' it
by adding wind particles
instead of nerfing the fucking box
lol
oh
1.04 SWR
Was a hilarious moment in time
that lasted about two days or something short
wonder if there's a patch history
but anyways 1.04 SWR was categorized by Patchouli 5c
So Patch 5c always had kinda whatever homing, its homing that it currently has isn't like super threatening
and it's always kinda had that
1.04 SWR Patchouli though
had
THE GODLIEST HOMING 5C BULLETS
KNOWN TO MAN
these are the bullets that would fucking be fired, you'd graze forward, they'd wrap around and then hit you from behind
ridiculous homing
absolutely /ridiculous/
Also 1.04 lasted about two weeks or so it seems judging by the included readme, not two days
whops
I like how this is literally the first line for Patch changes in 1.05 though
?????????1.02????????
'Strong shooting returned to 1.02 values'
strong shooting referring to 5c
as b is referred to weak shot and c is referred to as heavy/strong shot
I think by this point I had dropped SWR in favor of playing iamp still
SWR was basically 'done' by 1.06 yeah
No other patches happened after that
well
not until soku
soku happened a year and a half after SWR 1.00 did
I didn't really return to SWR/soku until 1.10 but I did play soku story mode on launch
Most of what I remember was Cirno d22 being a literal ice version of Suika lavaball
it had these little iceballs that bounced up when the bullet hit the ground
and it was a lot better than the current version of the skill
oh
moving back to SWR for a moment
SWR did actually have enough of a backlash against weather that a no-weather patch did get made
and people did play it as a standard
SWR weather fucking sucked
Spring Haze locked out your A button entirely
Which was fucking awful
in a literal sense, by the way
as in if you rpessed A, you got nothing
The only weather I think got worse in the transition from SWR to soku was river mist
SWR river mist was better than soku river mist
it tried to keep an equal distance between the fighters instead of doing the dumb move backa nd forth shit
conveniently this distance was around the distance Komachi wanted to keep people at, and since it was her weather it made sense
like
SWR river mist at least benefit one character
soku river mist doesn't even do that lol
players were as a general rule of thumb worse than they are now
like you know how a lot of people come into the game and are overwhelmed and have phases of being terrible at the game
I didn't have that phase when I got into the game
I just
skipped that 'is bad at the game' phase
Mind you this was pre-roll so a lot of shit you could get away with
People were also like really bad at coping with any sort of real aggression
so I just like
picked Marisa
and jumped at people immediately on round start
and people would just fold
round two? instant master spark, worked every time
A lot of shit you could do in those days just wouldn't work now
so a lot of people struggle with the whole 'being new at the game' thing
game's a lot more solved now
The game's always had the metagame, but the meta was very slow back then
very 'defensive'
except people sucked at defense back then because 4 delay was the minimum and 8 delay was somewhat of a standard
It took a few years and people like me and some people better than me playing into like
a more aggressive flow
and I guess Chinese influence
There was a period where it was literally just auric muii and magister doing shit though and I know magister played defensive methodical for the entire time though
but Magister swears Koma can't be played as anything but that
yeah games were long and somewhat laggy
US East to US West was 8 delay standard
it was awful
lol
Like I remember playing kei in 8 delay slugfests
(Fireseal) December 2012
it was actually in internal testing before then, you could ask people like PhoenixM about that since I know he was involved in it
(Tournaments) There were monthlies for a bit, people got tired of them and burnt out
probably because the game standard was fucking terrible back then
laggy games are awful to play in tournaments
Lag pretty much was killing the game to begin with
like people got fed up with lag in general, their inputs not working as well as it should have and so on
so by the time late 2012 rolled around you could go for hours without getting games
I do have memories of hosting on Saturdays and having to wait for like two or three hours before I got a game
but yeah sokuroll happened, game got a lot of life put back into it, and as a result of people being able to tighten up their gameplay and get better things like how I
used to play became notably less effective for most players
times were good
people got to play videogames
sometime in I want to say 2013 or maybe 2014 there was danisen league, which was a pet project visualized by muii and coded up by spike
but then auric killed interest in it by doing that thing he does where he plays every character in the game and beats people riding purely on fundamentals alone
auric was like the first person I can name that played everyone in the game to some relative degree
just between you and me most of his characters kinda didn't display any actual understanding of the character and just rode fundamentals though
like his suika was ass
Sometime in 2014 and 2015 the meta started becoming really aggro-heavy, lots of mashing and fast games
we somewhat referred to this as a Chinese meta, mostly because Chinese players were really aggro
like you had people like BBQ who would insist being defensive was better, but BBQ is Chinese only in name; she is European
sorta
I know somewhere in there was /v/ soku era but I don't think I need to go much into that
I don't know that side of things as well as someone else would anyways
We joked a lot about you guys calling us bullies and shit
that's kinda where the bully meme came from
and we kinda ran with it
but aside from that not really
like people would post the thread in IRC and those of us interested in playing would just post as normal
most of the IRC folk who played in /v/ threads kinda just
tried to be normal about it
since like you guys we were more just interested in getting games



 /SYLIAN
/-------------------

all I can say is that during summer 2009 we made the switch from #swr@mizuumi.net to #hisouten@mizuumi.net
not sure exactly when and my oldest #hisouten@mizuumi.net logs are from august 15th 2009
Bellreisa never was a fan of the game or of us and if I remember correctly he closed #swr because he was done with it but he then decided to reopen a different channel
and on october 17th 2009 bellreisa decided to kick us all off
he didn't like the game nor the community and giantree was taunting him a lot that night
and he decided to kick us out
so we moved to Rizon
#hisouten@rizon.net already was a thing before we moved but no one would hang around before we all moved there
bellreisa took down soku from mizuumi's wiki and at some point Remi hosted her own wiki
we went from #swr@mizuumi.net to #hisouten@mizuumi.net to #hisouten@rizon.net
well
bellreisa owns mizuumi
he first decided to close down #swr which had been there since sometime during swr
then he opened #hisouten@mizuumi.net
but bellreisa never liked
the game
or us
he would hate on us a lot
and on october 17th 2009 as he was getting sick of it
while giantree was also taunting him
he decided to kick us all out from mizuumi
and we went to rizon
most of us went to rizon
I mean we didn't have a place
on mizuumi anymore
obviously it took longer for some people
like IIRC hazelyn
didn't know about it for some time
btw
another person you could ask could be Remi
but um
one difference between back then and now is that back then there were a lot of yukari players
now there's like no one
however when it comes to sanae she was still rarely played
suika was feared in lag and we would have a lot of high delay or laggy matches
there was a big difference in skill back then. Most people didn't know how to play but we really had a ton of players

ZomB and Magister were really old players that were regarded as one of the strongests, ZomB always was a youmu player even back in swr.
I'm not sure when duckator started playing the game but he was from /jp/
Back then there were a lot of soku threads on /jp/ and there were players that only played there
he was one of the best players from /jp/
actually
before he joined
we didn't have any good sakuya players
I was the best sakuya player in #hisouten and I was bad
then he joined and he got a lot better than I and I would learn a lot playing vs him
I'm not sure why there weren't any good sakuya players
people would talk about him a lot before he even joined #hisouten
and fight him on /jp/
for some reason sakuya was kind of unpopular back then, not sure why
looks like duckator joined #hisouten back in march 26th 2011 but people would play him on /jp/ before then
from what I remember there used to be a lot of suika, remilia, an army of low level youmu
the problem is that back then the community was kind of split since it was hard to play vs people who lived in other continents
like
NA East could play vs some EU West but
it was hard
and I have no idea about how australia was
but Magister, ZomB and Shy were regarded as one of the best players back then
and before I left duckator had become one of the best players
I heard that chicky got a lot stronger after I left
before I left he wasn't as strong but he was good
Shy was a patchouli player
ZomB a youmu player
and Magister a komachi player
I'm not sure when he quit though
ZomB is older history though
it was a really long time ago so it's a bit hard to talk about dates but in 2012 magister and duckator were considered to be amongst the best players
however
I don't know anything about SEA
they were apparently scary but I don't know much
at the time the best utsuho player was definitely bob51
it was
kinda weird
he would do a lot of weird things like bolai
I wasn't playing much vs /jp/ unlike some other people but
duckator would be a better person to ask considering
that's where he was playing
before he joined #hisouten
but we were IRC bullies too
to /jp/
well to everyone really
like when we bullied scarlet union
SU was the silliest thing though
I'm not sure how we found out about it but a lot of us joined their forums when we saw their silly rules and how they didn't know anything about what they were talking about
I think the person who was the most bothered by them
was Remi
she would bully them a lot via text on their forums
the rules were real and there were actual tournaments using these rules
it wasn't a joke
tournaments that they would organize in their community
thing is
I think they made the corner assault rule because they didn't know BE was a thing
we had to teach them
about BE
apparently Scarlet Union were a bunch of old brawl players
looks like it was beats who found out about SU
he posted the link to their website and people were talking about how we should troll that tourney
yes we were bullies





 /YAFFY
/--------------------------

Oh yeah yeah, I remember lots about how people played in the past
I'm not the oldest person ever though
It doesn't matter at all now
But back when I joined the community it was like, several years old at the time
Like, maybe 3 I think?
So I can't tell you about the REAL early days
As in like, SWR days
Well, first off
EVERYONE was way worse
Like, if you go and search for footage of matches of really old players, they're unrecognizable
Like it's hilarious
The players who were regarded the best at the time?
We would consider them to be low tier
Which just shows how much the game has evolved since then, which is great
The western community didn't really have a good idea on what pressure was like (I believe the Japanese did at the time, but it was still weak in comparison to what we
expect today)
If you're talking about like, the really old days, pressure was basically non-existant, you didn't need to know BE basically
People did try to do stuff like oki but they couldn't really follow up into anything interesting
So pressure was basically like dial A or 5aa 5b 5c skill end
When I started playing, pressure started to kinda form with people
Like people knew how to do blockstrings that required you to BE at the time (And they would very happily abuse it non-stop against people who didn't know how to BE)
But pressure was basically just that
Do a block string that requires BE, try to catch the BE attempt with a melee skill or TK melee or something
People didn't know how to use high/low pressure yet
Like taking advantage of moves being plus on wrong block
The only people who really noticed were people like Remi players who noticed 3a was horrendously safe on wrong block
Otherwise nothing interesting
And guard crushing with high/lows wasn't a thing unless if it was charged melee (Although even then we knew they were bad)
Movement was a lot worse too, but that's a bit harder to describe
Like, people didn't take advantage of downwards or upwards flight for movement/spacing unless if they were just hugging the top of the screen (As in were bad)
So approaching people was really really predictable
At the time, Magister and bob51 were basically farming people for free
By just catching jump ins with 3a all the time
That lasted for like a year and a half even, just to show you how simple people's movement was
Then I would like to claim credit by figuring out that you could bait 3a's by flying up and then flying down with j.5a to punish the 3a
And that put a stop to it pretty quickly after people saw me do it in tournaments
(I'm sure the Japanese were already doing it way ahead anyways, but I think it's a little thing I can be proud of)
People at that time were actually trying out fly up/fly down stuff anyways
But they didn't know how to use it
They were just trying to mimic Japanese players and it looked cool
Even though it was basically worthless and just a waste of time
Basically think of like, someone just jumping/flying up just to fly right down into the ground again
Without even doing anything
That's how helpful it was
Yeah, they were simplier times
Back when I joined I'd say the best players were maybe like, what we would call "Ok"
After 2 years though people got quite a bit better
And the best players at that time were probably what we would call mid high to high tier, although not as good as the best today
In those two years people figured out how to mix up their pressure a lot more
Like, the idea of NOT cancelling your attacks during a pressure string so you could do stuff like 5a -> 5a for example was something people didn't even try
Until maybe like 1 year or so after I joined
Hmm, I should probably give you a year or time frame...
We're talking like
4-5 years ago
Oh, maybe it's been even longer than I remembered then!
Gosh, let me check how old my soku folder is
Hmmm
My oldest replay is from May 2013
Let me watch it
Wait shit
These folders are empty
Uhhhh
I remember I didn't even save replays for a while
And even when I did it wasn't formatted or anything, just junky lose files, not in folders
Let's pull out my ultra ancient lap top
I'm sure I copied the game to it
Oh man
I played that in middle school
...That was a long time ago
Ok well
Middle school is at the latest.... 2011 or 2010 I think
My first venture to online play was on soku lobby
Ah here we are
Created December 24, 2011
And that's the copied over folder, not even the original!
But eh, close enough right
I believe I actually started on either april or march
If my memory serves me correctly
So yeah, that sounds about right now
After two years you joined
Which is when the players got quite a bit better
I'd say after that the growth hasn't been nearly as significant
But that's probably to be expected
But yeah
As for stuff like no soku roll
Back in my days we had to deal with delay
But hmmm
The best connection you could get with a player was 4 delay basically
I mean, every once in a while you'd hear about some mystical bullshit about like, TWO delay or something
But 99% of the time? 4 delay
But 4 delay was optimal though for sure
Playing between east coast to west coast could easily be unplayable
Not even because of high delay, which was like 6 usually, sometimes 7 or 8
But because when there was a lot of distance between players the game would constantly freeze
Like honestly decreasing delay isn't the best thing sokuroll did
Making the game not freeze every 5 seconds was the best thing it did
Like, some people could play on delay 8 and be A-ok with it because that was the worst of it
But when the game keeps pausing over and over, then that's what made things unplayable
Thankfully from where I am on the east coast that was mostly just a problem with West coast people and it didn't come up too often
But EU to SA games were HORRENDOUSLY bad and pretty much never playable
As well as west coast to EU
Another variant that happened too was simply the frame rate slowing down
Like the game wouldn't freeze, but the game would clearly be playing in slow motion (Or is that just a lot of little freezes?)
It seems so strange thinking about it now, since I don't think slow down ever happens with soku roll, even if the connection is really awful, I think
But back then it wasn't uncommon to have a game between me and someone from SA simply be twice as slow
That was also unplayable status, although the funny thing is that if you met an SA player or something a lot of the time they would be ok with playing in that speed just
because they were used to it
People were definitely more used to lag around 5-8 delay back then
But soku roll's best contribution was definitely allowing what used to be absolutely unplayable to become playable
Even if it didn't reduce delay below say 6 it would have been amazing just for that alone
Most people would be fine playing games with heavy delay as long as there were no freezes/slowdown
Although there were a few "Tryhards" that would refuce to play in delay that went above 6
Yeah, sounds silly today I know
Also there was a lot of randomness in how playable games were too
Like sometimes I would connect with someone from west coast and our game would be just fine
But then I'd connect with them the next day and it's unplayable
That probably has more to do with old internet infastructure than soku or soku roll though
"Old internet" hah
Well I mean
Old internet would be the old dial up
Which would make 2011 internet look like it's flawless
But anyways...
To be honest, I can't REALLY say that players legitimately played differently due to their being delay
Like honestly back then people just weren't very good so delay didn't really affect them
Or perhaps you could say the delay prevented people from getting better?
The only people who would really abuse lag would be really bad players who did stuff like Remi 22 spam
Which I guess would be slightly better at the time
I guess the higher delay also probably helped bob51 at the time since he played Okuu and he LOVED his charged melee
He didn't have any real pressure, it was basically just "Is he going to 6[a] or not"
People at the time complained that I was taking advantage of lagtics too
Because back then people were really REALLY upset at Atlas
But soku roll proved that it was because no one was friggin baiting the thing in the first place so lag didn't even matter
It was just because people would get caught by Atlas while in the middle of a move and blame lag as why they couldn't jump away or block
Not because they were mid animation
At the time Auric was probably the only really cool high level player
He used to be pretty mediocre, as in what people would call "Ok" at THAT time (Which means bad today)
But then he left for Japan
And he got really good
Then he left for Japan again
And came back stupidly good to the point where people could barely take games off of him
But the whole time I remember he was very humble about it
He preferred to stay silent mostly but he was happy to give advice if asked (Although his advice was usually very brief)
By far the best "Old god" and he deserves the most recognition for it
He was the nicest "Best" player and he was actually the best too
Maybe leaving for Japan disqualified him though because at that point he counts as part of jp though, hah
But yeah, if you ask any older player about Auric
They will certainly remember him
The new players probably don't know who he is or at best maybe saw a video on youtube of him playing maybe
All the youtube videos on my channel with him if you're wondering are only when he was "Good"
Not "Good good"
At that point he was 9-1'ing people at worst so it wouldn't really be too interesting to see anyways
He ended up leaving to.... go get good at rhythm games???????
That's the last we heard of him anyways
There were also RUMORS that Auric was a grill too
Because Auric refused to talk, ever
And when Auric did rhythm game streams he showed his hands on the keys and he had very pretty hands
But those are just rumors of course
Hmmmmmmmm wellllllll
For one thing, information about the game online was actually really really lacking
Like there were no tutorial videos for one
At best you had combo videos (Some EXTREMELY bad combos videos too) and random matches which were just two random people mashing buttons
So it was really hard for beginners to see what "Good" players were supposed to be like
Was a big inspiration for my own channel!
Also the wiki was there, but it was really REALLY bad
Like, not only was it lacking a lot of information, but a lot of stuff on it was flat out WRONG
Like I remember trying to tell a beginner to stop mashing j.5a on air tech and he informed me the wiki told him airteching would make you auto block
It was a pretty awful tool
Not only that but it had some really bad "opinions" on some character moves/skills/spell cards
Like declaring that a spell that we think today is bad was "The best"
Or stressing that certain skills were "Required" or "Mandatory" even though they weren't actually good skills
Most likely some very out dated opinions
Also I know it's probably not very important for me to bring up
But something I found really funny was that the wiki description for Suika's spirit bomb was that it was really good specifically because you could use it after 66c
Really goes to show you what the game was like back then.
Actually it might have been default 623
Hmmm, one or the other
I don't THINK there was any incorrect frame data
Just bizzare facts that were untrue
Back then I don't even think frame data was really a thing anyways
As in on the wiki
There was a frame viewer at the time
Hmmm
As for tournaments, tournaments did exist back then
They aren't really too well recorded for the most part though
Sites like challonge didn't exist so there aren't any records of really old tournaments
The BIG tournament at the time I was playing was the end of the year tournament
Which actually had its own website to handle registration and stuff
Pretty neat
Let's see if it's still up

[http://eoy2012.weebly.com/]

Oh man
"Sponsored and streamed by"
Pfffft
Man, what an artifact
Oh this tournament did have challonge
This was definitely the very VERY early days of challonge though 100% for sure
Man there was another set of tournaments at the time
Which was more "For fun"
Like it was still serious but there weren't any rewards
And every once in a while it would get mixed up and be like a 3v3 tournament or something
I remember the 3v3 tournament had like 15 teams and I think it lasted like 9 hours and most of the teams dropped out
Good times
Man, I don't remember the name...
You might have to ask some other really old player
Or wait let's see
Ah yeah here we are
There was "Dracula cradle" and "Perfect maid"
Courtesy of this page: [https://hisouten.koumakan.jp/wiki/Tournaments]
The tournaments were well
Pretty much the same as they are now I guess, hah
In terms of format and stuff
Different players though
Oh I guess a really really big difference though
Was that each region had to have its own tournament
Because of lag
People actually didn't really know how the best players in one region would stack up to the best players from another region all the time
Which was pretty interesting
Now you still hear about the EU vs SA complaints even today
But back then any game like that was unimaginable
So it was impossible to know if the best SA player was better than the best EU player
Although you could of course, spectate and get an idea
Honestly back then in pre-soku roll, I think SA players were definitely held back a lot by delay
Almost every SA player played either Suika, Yuyuko or Okuu
I mean, it was to be expected, since they couldn't even properly play a lot of people
They got a LOT better after the introduction of soku roll
And also SA players in general were pretty much always held in low regards too
Blantant delay-ism
Back then were simple times
I mean I don't even know if you're looking for it
But the Hamachi players are like a whole other mess
They could be from anywhere, but they were basically the same as the SA players
In that they were shaped, MOLDED by the lag
And always really really really bad
Literally never met a single good hamachi player ever
Although fun fact: Blaze came from Hamachi
Like ummmm
There were two main communities at the time
Soku lobby and #hisouten
Basically #hisouten were where the good players were and Soku lobby was newbie land
Although you definitely had some #hisouten people who were also on soku lobby at the same time
New players would join soku lobby because I think it would come up first in a google search for "Hisoutensoku netplay" or stuff like that
Since that's how I found it, I think.
Hamachi was a whole other beast
If #hisouten and Soku Lobby were like two different nations
Hamachians are like the savage tribes of the land
There were dozens and dozens of Hamachi communities of all sizes, ranging from 5 to 20 or so
And for the most part they each knew very very little of the communities outside of their own
And all of their technology was primitive
Aka. They sucked at soku.
I was an early archaeologist you see
And would travel from Hamachi community to Hamachi community, interacting with the tribes or studying what was left of dead, inactive communities
I journied to understand and learn of these remote tribes
My predecessor, Dango, visited them so he could bully everyone by doing 5k Suwako combos and "Infinites" until everyone hated him
Not quite the same but he did the same thing nonetheless
In anycase, to summarize my studies
1. Hamachi players have even worse lag than normal players
2. Their game plans consistantly focused on taking advantage of lag in some way, such as spamming grazing attacks
3. Remi and Yuyuko were ridiculously popular, the first for 22 and 236, the second for 2b 2c
4. EVERYONE WAS AWFUL
Like when I say they were bad, I mean bad
And I even mean bad for the time too, not just bad for us now
Hamachi players were such an amazing breed in that they somehow had the amazing ability to play worse than someone who literally smashes their face against the keyboard
non-stop
And that fascinated me as someone who likes to study how people play
The best players by far were those that used tactics like the aformentioned Remi 236 or 22 spam, or the Yuyuko bullet spam
As they at the very least had some semblance of strategy, and would easily be able to beat the AI (Which isn't saying much)
But some players were just so amazingly bad it almost sounds mythical, like a legend of a player so awful he must have been cursed by a god
You had players who would simply stand there, spend something like five to seconds planning out an attack, and then use it, as if playing some form of turn based RPG
Never before in my life have I observed something as amazing as a player who casually stood there, taking so much effort to plan out his next, carefully forumlated attack,
that he would not even bother to attempt to stop a player from running up to him and simply attacking, or to move out of the way of a slow bullet
Usually when we welcome a new player, we need to teach them to stop mashing, to stop chaotically pressing buttons in a blind attempt to get a hit in, and to think about their
actions so that they can understand when, or why to do something
But these players are the opposite, they refuse to press a button until they are absolutely certain they want to do it, as if every orb is a precious resource that must not
be expended unless if absolutely necessary
It's hard to describe a player as amazing as these, for one would think a player so bad could not exist, but it is true
I have played games against them, and attacked them like a normal game just for me to have won without taking a single point of damage
Not because I countered their attacks, or grazed through their bullets, but because they were never able to decide which attack to use
Even if I allowed them to come up with a plan, a perfect strategy for what action they should take, these players do not know how to move and attack at the same time, or even
how to use skills properly, so rarely does it result in more than a 6c or f.5a
It feels less like playing an actual player, and more like fighting a training dummy that is set to do an action after a large time of inactivity so you can practice
or counter moves


 /GOINGUP
/----------------------------

First I need to talk how I found touhou in the first place, this tidbit is an important part on how the mindset goes on someone who doesn't know anything about touhou or
fighters.
on how they firstly found the game
when there was 0 information on it
I found about touhou in 2007 in an IRC channel about anime, it was a moe contest about voting for your anime waifu. Kind of like a beauty contest but for 2d waifus,
it was so stupid now that I remember about it. I remember all the shitstorm about people fighting on who's waifu is superior, it makes me laugh. Anyway in 2007 I
remember someone talking about this weird fad about shmuup and there's so much fanart about it... it was insane. I asked about it and they said it was called touhou.
Now back in 2007 the biggest trend in most anime forums and chatrooms was stepmania or ddr.
I remember how much I loved to play stepmania, mostly because of the music and how everyone wanted to play their favorite anime songs and all that jazz.
Stepmania had a lot of shows, games and anime music. And you guessed it was FILLED with this thing called touhou which I heard about it.
I played the stepmania touhou songs and BAM instantly hooked, the music was the most amazing thing for me back in 2007, I remember all the OSTs, the remixes, the midis.
I was so mesmerized I was like I HAVE TO TRY TOUHOU.
Searching for the games I came across a forum called doujinstyle.com
I remember the forum was mostly about stepmania and anime which eventually made its transition in being just an anime and touhou forum, but that happened somewhere
in 2008-2009.
Doujinstyle was the cesspool where everyone would download the pirated copies of every touhou games, doujins and music albums.
Naturally the high traffic in that website made it number 1 link on the google for downloading touhou, you could just type 'touhou download' and bam you got doujinstyle.
That website was huge in 2007.
Like I said doujinstyle was a stepmania forum turninng into a touhou one. I remember getting all the games and music and just enjoying it how I could. It was mostly the
music cause the games were too hard for me, even today I can't beat 1cc any of the shmuups on 1cc.
We reach year 2008 and this website I got in love with, suddenly turned more touhou.
I remember seeing this new subforum called Scarlet Weather Rhapsody which was about this new touhou fighter and people would gather to talk and find matches.
It was october 2008 when someone in my friend list who was also into touhou gave me a link about this combo video from the called SWR. The combo video combined with the
music and all was so mesmerizing to me that I had to download and try the game for myself. Too bad I can't find the link to that combo video anymore it probably got purged
from all copyright policies youtube has been through over the years.
I downloaded the game, got hooked, I remember my first chars that I tried was komachi, marisa and suika.
I was so hyped for the game that I wanted to find some people online to fight.
In 2008 the doujinstyle community around soku was pretty where everyone went to, since it was the first thing google would show you if you typed it.
Today it is just actually known as the hamachi community, but very people remember the doujinstyle roots, and how that forum was a big reason why a community formed.
However it wasn't the only community sorrounding it, there was also an IRC channel in mizuumi, which nowadays we just called it the mizuumi community.
We are still in 2008
Hamachi was a very powerful tool which allowed people without portforwarding abilities to find matches. Pretty much everyone and their mother used this software. There
rooms on top of rooms where people would play swr, mostly from doujinstyle, very few from mizuumi.
Back then hamachi had a lot of functions, you could host 16 room server for free, and you could even glitch it to host a 100+ room which was paid.. for free.
Hamachi right now is just a bleak shadow of it's former self. Running like a slug and just allowing you 4 room per host, people who use hamachi now never knew about
the glorious 2008-2009 hamachi.
Anyway back in 2008, I discover these hamachi rooms that were posted in doujinstyle. I remember I started maining suika and fought a lot of people. It was very laggy,
hamachi adds to the delay and there weren't a lot of european players, many months I was almost the only sole hamachi EU player.
I was pretty sad how I never found someone with good connection to me since everyone was either from NA or Asia, this went for a lot of time until year 2009.
In that year we would see the release of soku somewhere during summer.
I remember I made some interesting friends along the way, the one who survived the longest was Muii. He is the oldest player I know that didn't quit.
Our long history is why me and him get along so well, we've seen a lot.
Anyway Muii somewhere in 2009 told me how he always loses to the good players in a community that uses IRC. He was talking about mizuumi.
I remember even today 'Man I can't beat magister with my remilia'. Of course I didn't know who magister was but I heard stories.
And I asked Muii to give me details about this hidden irc channel, because hamachi was getting a bit dead, doujinstyle started also being more dead, and frankly I'm bored
of always fighting people from asia and NA and getting 8+ lag. I was pretty much how Australia players are today, always the reason to be blamed for lag.
I joined the mizuumi channel somewhere in 2009 like 2 months before it got destroyed by the server admin bellreisa.
'Damn, I just got here, and the channel is getting shut down?'
There was a big shit storm and bellreisa deleted the swr channel
All the sudden everyone didn't have a place to gather. Both hamachi and doujinstyle was inactive. Soku just came out and suddenly we can't even play it, because the
communities were scattered all over the place.
Eventually there was a discussion on doujinstyle about the mizuumi channel shutdown and someone popped out and said that there is a new IRC channel in rizon dedicated
just for soku. I think it was freudia's doujinstyle account.
This new IRC channel was made by guuchan, and everyone from hamachi, doujinstyle and mizuumi started regathering.
This was in 2009 and suddenly soku was very VERYY much alive.
Not only that, my dream to always find people to connect with and not lag came true, as there were a ton of eu players new and bad just like me.
2009 was a great year for the new fresh soku, the community was alive and hype.
It's interesting how many forget about doujinstyle's implication on this, many just say about mizuumi and hamachi, but they forget about the forum which everyone started with.
Doujinstyle is worth mentioning, even if the forum at the very present doesn't mean anything anymore.
Anyway 2010 is arriving and I remember how everyone was involved on learning the game, the matchup the characters, we even got a dedicated wiki with a dedicated server which
was payed by remi, who became a moderator by guuchan.
We discovered how fun the game was but also the unfun flaws that some people even complain about today. Lots of people quit soku in 2010 because it wasn't IaMP, we started
losing a bit of players here and there, but the game was still alive.
Now here's a tidbit, soku had big periods of death with gigantic inactivity and people doomsaying that 'The game is dead'.
The mizuumi blowout in 2009 was the first death soku experienced, which lead to a few months on inactivity since people didn't know where to go.
2010 we started experiencing a lot of weird stuff of months of huge activity and months of almost no games at all.
The cause was simple, we simply didn't have enough players. Playing the same people over and over again, everyone isolated on continents, EU vs EU, NA vs NA, Asia vs Asia,
SA didn't even exist on irc back then, australian players and SEA players suffered the most, since their playerbase was pretty much just 2 or 3 people.
Back in 2010 there was a lot of talk about how the game needed a rollcaster so we could allow continents to play eachother, a few people tried, namely DarkMageEli and DotMaiku.
DarkMageEli's caster first prototype was ok but filled with so many glitches and bugs, eventually the creator decided the project is too much for him and he dropped it and
vanished from IRC.
Eventually a very curious bloke showed up by the name DotMaiku.
He had a blog and a promise, to bring a rollcaster to the community and to revive it.
However his idea wasn't very well put together. His style was through relaying connections through a server, his server, which made things very problematic.
Relayed connection is only good if you have servers throughout the globe and not just a place in NA.
Sure the connection was good between NA and west of EU, but anything else was out of the question.
Plus again this type of caster was full of bugs, glitches and problems.
The server itself became pretty popular since google kept showing it on the search function, and it was easier to get into than IRC.
Thus the sokulobby community was borned. We started having 2 communities now.
Sokulobby attracted a ton of new players, and I mean wow, that's a lot of people. If anything that dotmaiku was good at, it wasn't his server or his caster, it was his
goddamn ability to advertise it. He surely was overhyping his promises which eventually fell flat later.(modificato)
Eventually a communication was formed between communities. Us old players from IRC loved playing the new faces, it was like a breath of fresh air, while the new players
enjoyed our experience in the game.
However there was a problem, again it came to the same issue, we would only be able to play in the same continent. The new lobby players just like us IRC players, got
bored of fighting the same people over the months by.
At point we started asking dotmaiku if he ever going to finish his caster project. Some people who are good at networking and programming knew that his plan was flawed from
the beginning and that the project was doomed to failure.
It came true, dotmaiku never finished his project, there was a lot of shitstorm concerning that, since himself had a pretty arrogant atitude, making big promises and
insulting or denying anyone who criticized his approach.
Eventually the lobby players grew tired of him and slowly started going into IRC, while maiku just kept the server for the sake of people wanting to hang out. At the end on
2010 and somewhere in 2011, we wouldn't see maiku anymore, he would support the server, but he would vanish from talking to anyone.
We can't go into 2011 just yet, IRC just had a huge revamp into its moderation policy. 2010 was also a big moment politically (ewwww) for IRC rizon, where I got elected as
the channel admin along with Trey15, Remilia-Scarlet, and few mods like remi, chef and some others who really did nothing.
2010-2011 were also the years the biggest troublemaker showed in IRC, which was Deep, but that's a long story.(modificato)
Anyway somewhere in 2011, both the communities sokulobby and IRC were at its most inactive times. People were bored with the game and fighting the same few people over and
over again.
The overhyped caster by dotmaiku that never got delivered and the fail of DarkMageEli's prototype made us pessimistic that we will ever get a caster and that the game was
going to die again.
Eventually a very curious alice player by the name Fireseal who was also the beta tester for dotmaiku's caster showed up.
I was a beta tester too at the time, and I knew this player. She was one the testers that criticized and knew exactly how maiku's caster worked and HOW it didn't work.
Eventually she took the matters into her own hand and she started working secretly on a caster for the community. She didn't overhype anything, she worked in secret.
And when the alpha version was done she published the caster to both IRC and lobby. Damn it was better than both Eli's prototype and Maiku's relay caster.
I remember alpha testing fireseal's rollcaster and I was so amazed by the ability to play 4 delay with someone from NA. It was a dream come true.
Fireseal is probably the most important person in any soku community in all times. She single handedly provided with what we wanted the most from the game, made soku alive
again and brought the activity back into the communities.
When fireseal's caster was published, it was so good that even the communities from asia starting finding out about it. This was the biggest soku revival that has ever
happened.
When fireseal was happy with the state of the caster, she then vanished and only returned to publish a caster for another fighter game. What a legend, she left and kept
her promises, I wonder if she knows that it's becaues of her the soku community lives on and thrives. If you want to make a research on soku history, mention fireseal any
opportunity you get. Nobody would be here without her.
I think we are still in 2011, or maybe 2012? My memory is fuzzy, but I remember how happy we were and how hyped we were being able to play people from other continents.
It was like discovering soku for the very first time again. No more dark times of playing on 6+ delay EU vs EU and EU vs NA 8+ delay of suffering.
I remember chinese and japanese players joined to play us, I remember there was an invasion of players back then, we had to make a special irc channel just for them, it
reached to 100 asian players in just mere weeks. They stayed with us for a few months then eventually they vanished. I blame China for this, they took the players and the
caster for themselves, so they can play CN vs JP and etc. They didn;t really care that much about the western community, well some remained, that's good I guess.
2011-2012 were really good years for soku, it brought a lot of activity and many old players returned.
I'm not sure when /v/ community started showing out, was it 2013 or 2014? I think you need to help me on this information when you are able to read this.
Anyway year 2013 and 2014 was kind of meh, the activity was great, we eventually got exhausted from all the soku, since it came back to playing the same old same old,
although much better state than pre-roll. But still we got into the same feeling of playing the same faces all over again.
Not much to say about 2013, while 2014 we started getting hyped about the new faces that started appearing in 4chan.
However 2014 there were some dangerous signs about the game dying, and this wasn't about inactivity. This time it was different.
Well let's just say we did get jaded a bit about the game, but the emergence of the /v/ playerbase kept us going for awhile.
The problems were political, as in the rizon channel became too much about moderation and politics, rather than playing the game.
soku lobby was still there, but it was pretty dead most of the time, most of the active players there migrated to irc rizon.
IRC rizon became too of a stiff community, it was hard to moderate and there was quite a lot of drama.
We would had a lot more players if we weren't the way we were, we were a great community but we had a lot of bad eggs that were hard to remove, like remi, karina, R-S and
such
the biggest problem with rizon was how guuchan was never there
and we couldn't change anything without him, we would pm him for help and he would answer a few months later from the urgent problem. This went about for a lot of time,
mainly between 2013-2015
eventually in 2015 we started electing new moderators which made the game even more dead
because the channel became more about politics and people were sick and tired of that
many did quit strictly cause of that
I was one of them
The biggest tipping point was ruinan ding, many people defended him and many accused him, he was the tipping point which caused the moderaters to change
In 2015 I quit both the game and moderation because I was fed up to do all my moderation hard work again after the ban resets. Plus there were things happening in my life at
that time that needed much more urgent action which I won't go into detail.
I vanished without trace
To return in 2017 out of nowhere because I was in the mood for some soku due to nostalgia
I learned that zaton made a discord group and all the players regathered, in fact this community was MUCH MUCH better than irc ever was, it had everyone here, hamachi players,
/v/ players, lobby players, irc players. I remember how I dreamed that one day IRC would become 200+ members, it was a dumb dream, however discord got to 400+ which is
amazing, all this in my absence.
A small tidbit was that we also had a skype community between 2014-2016, which was like a mini discord at the time, nothing big, but I think the skype community was the idea
for the discord in 2016-2017
discord was the 2nd strongest soku awakening since the invention of sokuroll
that's how strong it was
so we could say the second most influential person was Zaton? after fireseal
both are eu nice
tessiro helped a ton too among others
aristo and spike with the technical stuff



 /FEARNAGAE
/-----------------------

Back in the days, I (and I believe most people) started netplay soku with people around them
people from their country, friends, etc
I believe that is how most people started their soku journey
At one point, they start aiming higher
and thus, back in the days, there were Hamachi servers
we used to have premium hamachi servers which contains hundreds of people
of course, netcode was trash, but people still play anyway; and a little slow down doesn't really make people back off
at that point there were already irc
irc is known to be a more elitist place to hang around
which is, unfortunately, correct; as I entered IRC I quickly got turned off by the elitism
I might have mixed my timeline up somewhere,but there's remi and etc who were playing the elitism
but of course, it's very minimum; majority of the member are good people
I played against magister as well, which was terrible net-wise
but he's pretty chill
going back to hamachi, of course there are smaller hamachi servers, and more regional ones; I have servers with other SEA members, and I also have server with dango and
xenomic and some other familiar people in it
soku proceeds pretty normally from there; there was lots of cool stuff, and I visit IRC every now and then
IRC is a very cool place and a lot of cool stuff happen there
However as I'm not exactly an IRC member at that point, I can't really describe much
but some people like Magister, Zomb, etc were very interesting
theres also xxxsazn who insists on uploading the koryuusen thing
and theorysoku was super interesting back in the days
because most people still suck and don't know the solution to things (including me and everyone else)
also I believe a lot of discussion took place in Doujinstyle forum
which is interesting and forgotten
until at one point it's killed
I don't really know why, but the fighting game subforum was killed
so that is the end for that one
hamachi lasted quite long actually, although slowly withering, and more people gather into irc
I don't really have any amazing story to go from here, but time changes
The tops were at one point Magister, dimglow, zomb, shy, and the gang
then it shifts into Kuraperunat and Remilia404 or whoever they are
I don't know who these guys are
but nameless and mui and all was still big names
and then somewhere before roll came out
the old masters returns, Magister and Auric standing at the top
with adepht and the gang following in
zlayer is a late newcomer, but he quickly rise to the top (thanks to youmu bullshit)
he's improving very quickly by playing with top players
as for me
I visited a few times during the 2011 period, before roll came in
there was stuf flike gapcaster, lobby, etc
they were being developed
gapcaster was quite interesting
that allowed me to play people I couldn't play without slowdown
which in turn gives me literally delay 20 without slowdown at all
... it was interesting
lobby was developed, but I wasn't really a lobby person either, so I don't visit there much
when roll was done, I visited the IRC again
we got #HisoutenJP
and it was quite crowded
I played some players like auric and magister in a playable condition for the first time
to be honest, auric was not difficult to me; he was simple, and straightforward
I had a lot of problem with magister however; he has good reads, he can easily grab my habits and abuse it with his character
so I get to play them a bit there
it was pretty fun
but again I didn't stay on IRC for long
I returned for an EoTY 2012
there was supposed to be a final face off for winner of each region (SEA , SA , NA , EU)
but it didn't end up happening
so I just won EOTY of my region and that's it
and chicky won EU
if that matters
from that point onward, the scene continues a bit more until like 2013 where it starts shrinking and the old players starts quitting
those were the dark days
and oh
I started hanging around there
somewhere prior to the dark days
because blaze visited my chat room, and he made me more interested in hanging around IRC
so I end up staying in IRC thanks to blaze
it was interesting how blaze visits a chat room in the middle of nowhere FOR SEA players
that makes no fucking sense whatsoever
but I bullied him, and he keeps returning
that was interesting
he was very weak
but he has the determination
I can at least tell there's something off when someone visits a chatroom for players so far away
in a way, I felt that it was like me when I visited IRC; I was so far away, and SEA players don't really visit IRC
I was there because Im interested
so that's the story behind me starting to stay on IRC
it was DARK DAYS
until suddenly discord comes in
things gets a lot brighter
and we get more players and discussions than we could think of
it was a miracle
from that point onward
I think you know the rest
previously discord and skype was a thing
not meant to be for everyone
but discord ended up continuing the legacy of irc
and now IRC is completely dead
but we salvaged ourself a new home
a better home
back in the days everyone have very little knowledge over what's actually going on
in the game
people got carried by knowledge of their character
matchup specific knowledge are very rare
so people play every matchup like every other matchup
minimal adaptation, minimal knowledge
j3d j5a wins everything
people move around a lot
less bullets
at one point people got smart and using more of their moveset
the top players plays safely
like magister and auric
are very safe
they are also pretty patient
well I guess I'm suddenly jumping from 2009 into 2011 meta but it cant be helped
from that point onward
magister and auric quits
it's the meta of monkeys now
everyone focuses on landing hit
I'm not very sure what caused it
but everyone plays like a gorilla on rabies
they focus on dealing damage and not many thoughts about not taking damage
pretty much majority of the mid-top players are being gorilla at that stage
during magister and auric reign, chicky, and GUP
they're all very safe players which considers consistency important
after they left, we get irock, pre-OP blaze, snowwolf, etc
they were gorillas
not saying it's BAD
but they're extremely aggressive and not consistent
but still if you compare the old players and the 2012 ones
it's very apparent
next thing though
blaze evolves
he's playing very safely and focuses on consistency because I kept nagging him about it
as a result we now have a guy who knows how to be very aggressive and yet knows when to stop doing it
that is blaze
he's consistent now, and the shift from being a gorilla to consistent safe style is interesting
as for now
I tihnk the meta still revolves on aggressive high risk playstyle
however there's a few people at the top who plays consistently now
so the meta currently is quite balanced
and people know how to make use of their move to beat another
back in the days, defense is about moving and blocking
these days people make use of their attacks to stop the opponent
"Stuffing"
that is very rare back in the days
but that is all
it's basically just me describing a little part of the meta
it's not big
mostly about aggression and knowledge




 /ZATON
/------------------------

Mind you I only joined in like 2012.

IRC was basically two channels, hisouten and hisouden, the latter being an unmoderated version of the first one (still following rizon global rules of course), where banned
people were exiled to (it eventually got shared hosts with the main channel).
I know that before I joined there was some sort of blog going on, but I know very little of it and how active it was.
Then there's of course the pre-roll era which I partially witnessed, where EU was confined to play Eu, NA to play NA, and so on. Obviously, IRC wasn't as active as Discord
is now, even in its prime time.
There wasn't much drama or anything
As far as people went, they were okay. It was less shitposty, less spammy than now. The community was smaller, so also more tightly knit. The top players at the time were
Auric, Magister, Goingup, Adepht uuuuh
Fbf too I think
can't remember them all
Duckator too
The community was different. it's more.... lax these days, in a way
basically, we're less tourneyfags now. Mind you, we were hardly tourneyfags back then, but people are more laid back
uuh
maybe I used the wrong words
but people are less... stuck up?
the atmosphere is less hectic
moderation is less antifun too
yeah I guess the stricter moderation led to a different atmosphere
obviously that has both downsides and upsides

a much much smaller scrub playerbase
the gap between powerlevels was quite big
well it was irc. Who the fuck goes to irc :v So there was less word of the game having an active community
so less players

Well, /v/ players weren't exactly considered strong. It wasn't out of some sort of feeling of superiority or whatever, just a matter of stating facts. They were a fresh playerbase with less experience. We often joked about irc being soku olympus and shit. Then there were people like Owl who went and spread rumors of bullies and such, for the hell of it
But I don't think there was ever any true animosity towards /v/ on our side
it was cool to see people play the game
well the irc was being shilled around a bit on /v/
I'm not quite sure how people began to join



 /MAGISTER
/-------------------------

The community was pretty active but splintered because well, sokuroll didn't exist
EU only played with EU and it was impossible to play with US without over 8 delay
US only played with US, etc
the meta was...nobody really knew how to graze or move except for the upper bracket
they just got hit by random stuff all the time
bad neutrals, only the top players REALLY knew what they were doing
now it seems like a lot of players understand neutral pretty well
the wiki was very incomplete with like no matchup info
it had move properties and damages, but that was about it
only way to get matchup info was to play the matchup
yeah like i said regions only played with themselves
even WC to EC was kinda rough
when sokuroll happened the community exploded with activity, all the japanese and chinese players came over, wanting to fight us once they heard about it
it was just me and auric
we were the only players who were really Phantasm level
fear was too but he was SEA and nobody had really gotten to fight him much yet
i wouldn't say it was a bad impression but
there was still a language barrier and i was the ONLY person who really spoke japanese
and i couldn't be around all the time
Uhhh I guess people were able to actually play other matchups they didn't really get normally
like Mian was the first truly good Tenshi a lot of people got to fight

everybody's stronger
Fear and Blaze are stronger than auric and I ever were
even guys like Ran33 feel stronger than we were, but it's hard to say because i'm rusty and have only played like 5 sets

(Skills and "meems") the same as always haha
I dunno, some stuff will always be dumb
like okuu online is stupid, period

(Tourneys) i guess tourneys still happened, if a little less frequently
you guys seem to make them very regular now
even if it's usually the same people entering
yeah, definitely
i think the variety might have been a little higher in the past
the game was still more fresh
the people who remain now are those who are faithful to the game
because it certiainly isn't because it's a new game that is attracting new people all the time

(Jap People) I haven't played any recently so I don't know but
at the time when sokuroll was released and they came by to fight us
their higher players were like 2400~2500 tenco
they estimated me to be about 2100 and auric around 2200
very strong but certainly not as strong as their strongest

(Future of Soku) oh
well, soku is soku
i think people will still stay faithful
i dunno though
well, i don't see people leaving the game, cause the recent fighters suck
who knows, maybe they'll even check out soku because of it



 /THANURIS & ZLAYER
/----------------------

[ZLAYER]
Thanuris and I met on 2012 I think
or late 2011
so all of this will be new stuff
I can tell you about sokuroll beta too
Okay I'll just start
the first place I was in regarding Touhou was Touhou no Fanclub
a subforum of Mcanime
that was like, 2010 I think
I started playing soku around one week after than on a hamachi network of a guy called Danny
they were like 9 people or so, but most of them came from a forum called Bumbumnaru.org
that was the bigest soku meetpoint I knew of back in the days(modificato)
err, after that I meet Aggelandro and there was a time where stuff was pretty quiet
no new hamachi rooms or anything
until I decided to make my own so I could invite people from other places to play too
I went on by McAnime and Bunbunmaru to gather people and the room got full pretty quick
that old times where free hamachi rooms had 16 slots lol
so, I made a couple more
and basically that's how Youyoumu Team Soku came to existence
there were like, 2 or 3 rooms for 16 people each
but suddenly, something weird happened and I suddenly could make rooms for 256 users
I noticed because new people were joining the old ones
when I checked it in fact said like, 20/256
and it started to grow fairly quick
Once I made my name a little more popular, I started hosting tournetys and stuff for SA people on the rooms
and got more users to join by advertising them mainly on bunbunmaru
and well, then I meet that asshole
Thanuris
he came from a forum called Border of Gensokyo

[THANURIS]
and now I gotta tell you how I found that forum
I found touhou because I liked flandre's song, and I heard it on the RAN RAN RU video
so I saw the related videos and there was a gameplay of flandre's stage
anyway, after that I joined the IRC of a blog named "Touhou No Sekai", they were pretty much the spanish equivalent of Moriya Shrine mixed with DoujinStyle but only for
Touhou stuff (albums, games, official games, etc)
I hanged around there and eventually I downloaded all the games... at first I focused on the danmaku ones, but then eventually I reached 12.3 and I liked it a lot
so I played against them, but their community was very small and eventually all of them dropped the game
eventually I went to this forum named "Border Of Gensokyo" because I still played the danmaku games and they were the only ones that had active scoreboards besides bunbunmaru.
org
(bunbunmaru was basically the biggest hispanic touhou related forum, border of gensokyo was more oriented towards spaniards and they had a small but very active community)
anyway, the border of gensokyo guys decided to host a soku tournament, so I signed up for it
that's where zlayer and I met

[ZLAYER]
Yeah I joined their tournament and kinda rekt them all
then I saw thanuris was from Argentina
and I was like omg man, I can save you from this
come with me
COME TO HAMACHI

[THANURIS]
oh yeah, at this point in time the best SA player and
I believe one of the few that played in IRC was KRAD420

[ZLAYER]
what about Fanki?

[THANURIS]
since the touhou no sekai IRC channel was in rizon too, I joined #hisouten to see if I could get to play some games there, sadly I lagged too much and I think Remi called
me a retard (the first person I played against was Oddness and I was an Okuu "main" at the time haha)

[ZLAYER]
Okuu and Suika "cause they do a lot of damange"
I still remember
there were a LOT of "characters" back in the day
we like to separate each doomage as sagas

[THANURIS]
and at the peak userbase of the hamachi nets, we actually had a lot of players
you could get games rather quickly

[ZLAYER]
almost 1000 users
if not more

[THANURIS]
but we pretty much behaved like the brazilians do now
we stayed in the hamachi nets because if the other players were far away it was just unplayable
some spaniards and mexicans did go to #hisouten to play, like Krad420 and Battousai_saito (mexican and spaniard, respectively)
maybe other ones too but these are the ones I remember right now

[ZLAYER]
Well, first glance of any hope was ganed when Maiku managed to make a netcode "improvement"
at soku lobby
we could actually play people
would you belive it?
I even joined a tournament
I was a plain tryhard back then
And I got pretty hard
I think I lost against Ducator
on semis
And that was pre-netcode improvement
I also joined a #hisouten one where 2 leaders were chosen and made 10-members teams
I was the secret lag weapon
but failed against lyuri and got killed pretty fast
Yeah
Muii was the mind behind it
honestly, that was the first time someone actually saw that I was decent
cause I managed to pull off some combos
despite the lag
not too awesome for today's standar
but pretty fancy still
well, then not long after that I got invited to test soku roll beta
and I had the opportunity to play against Tewi@
best Youmu in the world of the time
and I GOT A GAME
#zLayerthebest2017
2013 actually

[THANURIS]
after the soku roll release, we actually got to play vs #hisouten players
and other people from the lobby

[ZLAYER]
Honestly, the hard part about soku lobby
was to make people use it
cause they were like AWW NO LONG LIVE REGULAR NETPLAY
IT'S BETTER
THIS IS VIRUS
U FGT

[THANURIS]
IRC didn't welcome SA players either
it was the same as it is now with EU players

[ZLAYER]
but worse

[THANURIS]
constant whining about delay, using it as an excuse when you lost, etc etc
and the moderation was HARSH

[ZLAYER]
Yeah they banned chickychan
can you belive that?
CHICKY?
OF ALL PEOPLE?

[THANURIS]
so it was very hard to tell other SA players to go play there
zlayer and I didn't mind it but other players sure did
for example aggelandro

[ZLAYER]
Aggelandro had a TERRIBLE net back then
we pinged 300

[THANURIS]
he just sniped hosts with a fake profile so they wouldn't bitch at him for playing okuu with lag

[ZLAYER]
and he's basically next to me
oh yeah
right before that
there was a "misconception" about what's a "disrespectful" player
people would call you out for being "disrespectful" if you actually tried to escape their blockstrings
they used to watch a lot of JP replays

[THANURIS]
yeah, the NA and EU meta was very block-heavy

[ZLAYER]
and instead of trying to undestand
they were like

[THANURIS]
no one did aggressive BE
they blocked forever

[ZLAYER]
OMG JP DOESN'T DO ANYTHING HERE, SO I WILL JUST STAND STILL
AND IF YOU DON'T DO THE SAME YOU'RE A BAD PLAYER
Literally, they complained about you beating their blockstrings
and called you a bad player for that


[THANURIS]
the fact that there was no info in the wiki didn't help either
you just had to wing it with your main

[ZLAYER]
"if you were not such a direspectful player I would totally beat you"

[THANURIS]
eventually phoenixM released the replay pack
and then you actually had a way to learn from reps

[ZLAYER]
I think I had a bit of influence at fixting that attitude
cause I was like
nono, you wanna be a masher? come here and mash
see what happens
my antimash stuff was pretty sharp
and nobody would get away with it
I actually adviced peopleto mash
so they could undestand
why it's wrong
and what exactly happens if you do it against someone who knows how to respond

[THANURIS]
anyway, eventually the old players got used to the new delay so it was decided that everyone could play in tourneys together
after a lot of whining from me and zlayer haha

[ZLAYER]
they were so close on their metagame that when we came into the spotlight everything changed
now you see people with a lot of different styles
back them, everyone was super slow and dull
"respecting" other people's stuff
so they don't get called scrubs

[THANURIS]
anyway, at this time in SA what was happening was... the death of the hamachi nets
and the sanaefroggy fiasco
but zlayer can tell you about that

[ZLAYER]
oh yeah, the sanaefroggy saga
how could I forget about that
She and Johan, another one of the "evil doers" of SA
what basically happened is that Johan made a torumanet and I got to finals vs this Sanaefroggy girl
She came from losers so I had, obviously, a windup if I lost
and I did
that was like, the laggies finals I've ever played
(pre-roll)
so, to avoid someone having an advantage
we agreed to host one game each so it would be fair
I got sanae'd
and was like okay, now I can just win on the bracket reset
but seems like there was no bracket reset
sanae was unresponsive
or more like
she delayed a lot her answers
and finally, the host of the tourney, johan, stoped being "afk" and called Sanae had won
I obviously complained
so, after like, an hour of arguing, the host decided to make Sanae host all the games, and she also could use the same character all the times she wanted
(which went against the rules of the tournament)
in response, I said "okay, I forfeit."
Then, hours later, Johan uploaded the last game we had as if it was the great finals
I was so mad I made a post on bunbunmaru talking about it
I was not gonna do anything
but that was just too much for me
Now people knew about what happened from mi side
but it was even worse
2 days or so later, a friend PM me
and after all, that time she was delaying her answers to me, was just her flirting with Johan to give her the win
yes, I was not allowed to play the bracket reset
and after an our they decided to do that to me
it was all rigged
for her to win
and yeah, Sanaefroggy and Johan were both from Mexico
and lived fairly close
so Sanae used that
It didn't go well for Johan
that guy had a pretty terrible reputation already
That guy was know to be overly egocentric to the point to throw shit to the people he was playing in their face
and for tracing drawings and claiming they were from him
Johan disappeared for some years after than
Sanae made a Soku Facebook group but it was quicky replaced by ISC
and unpoppular since the beginning

[THANURIS]
that group became the main hub for hispanic soku after the hamachi nets died

[ZLAYER]
so yeah, basically, people won't stop trying to screw me
ever
he means ISC btw
not Sanae's

[THANURIS]
but eventually it died because sanae got bored/banned from facebook?
and then they went to ISC
most of the current SA players that play in #hisouten came from that group

[ZLAYER]
(About Sanaefroggy) Too bad, because she was pretty decent

[THANURIS]
for example mabel/merraz, snowwolf, native, one

[ZLAYER]
she could've been a great player
if it wasn't for her terrible attitude
In her last moments she seemed to have improved on her attitude tho

[THANURIS]
sadly the members of it eventually lost interest in Soku

[ZLAYER]
but shortly after that, she went missing

[THANURIS]
and the ones who still cared came to #es
so to be brief, #hisouten moderation killed the SA community there, internal disputes fragmented the facebook groups and that killed them too, so now the main hub
is #hisouten I guess
to be fair I should not totally blame the moderation, the language barrier was detrimental too

[ZLAYER]
there was another SA discord too, but it was terribly moderated and the ower suddenly decided to take it down

[THANURIS]
yeah, it was the ISC discord where Iron hosted weeklies
kind of like sokusat
but since #hisouten started to host friday tourneys too he got bored and stopped doing them
and that's pretty much it

late 2010: zlayer creats the hamachi nets
     2013:  hamachi nets die
     2013?: Touhou Hisoutensoku Players is created
     2014: ISC is created and everyones moves there from Touhou Hisoutensoku Players