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AM

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AM (b. 1986 in Korea), also known as Alice Margatroid and こなたん (Japanese: Konatan), is a competitive Touhou player, active since November 2003, who specializes in Imperishable Night, Subterranean Animism, and Undefined Fantastic Object. In December 2008, AM held world records in both the Lunatic and Extra modes of Subterranean Animism. However, as of May 2009, his Lunatic record was topped by yukarin.

In 2009, his Touhou scorerunning activity decreased due to school work and time spent playing other games such as the Korean RPG Dungeon & Fighter (Korean: 던전엔파이터; known as Dungeon Fighter Online in America). Throughout the year, he mainly released challenge replays, such as no-vertical run of Mountain of Faith's Extra. In April, 2010, AM retired from the Touhou scorerunning.

AM is notable for extremely aggressive, perfectionist play style that generally aims to achieve high results through brute force and exhausting the score potential of known strategies before (and sometimes instead of) looking for less conservative or more cost-effective solutions. He considers GIL to be his teacher in regards to playing Touhou games, and treats him with utmost respect.

Perfect Cherry Blossom

AM currently holds the third highest overall score in Perfect Cherry Blossom with 2.968 billion points. He initially wanted to break 3 billion points, but admitted to have failed that goal, blaming lack of patience. However, he had expected to revisit the challenge despite stiff competition from HS参謀, who held world records under every difficulty and character type at the time. Unfortunately, there is no replay available for the 2.96 billion run, although there is a stage 6 practice replay that employs many aggressive tactics to graze through spells and earns 551 million points by the end.

Imperishable Night

For a long time, AM was the most dominant player in Imperishable Night's Extra mode, holding the highest known score with every character, including the popular 3.01 billion Youmu replay. This score attack maintains an extremely high quality of play, as AM grazes through nearly every spell card with no visible mistakes and accumulates over 100,000 time orbs in the process. In summer of 2009, most of his records were methodically beaten by ASL, who now holds the overall Extra record with 3.1 billion, also set with Youmu.

AM has also aimed to dominate the Easy mode in a similar way, currently holding 9 world records out of 12 possible on the B-route. The highest among them, set with Marisa, attains a score of 3.104 billion.

His current best Lunatic score of 5.213 billion, set with Sakuya & Remilia in 2008, ranks within top-10 in the category.

Subterranean Animism

Since the debut of Subterranean Animism, the Lunatic and Extra categories had consistently been dominated by UnKnown and たろー, respectively. On October 30, 2008, AM broke UnKnown's Lunatic record with a score of 3.645 billion points, and since then had improved it multiple times. Originally having set a target of 3.9 billion, AM exceeded his own expectations by breaking 4 billion, using new scoring strategies such as bombing Orin's "Needle Mountain" spellcard for 2000+ graze. On October 26, AM bested たろー's Extra record with a score of 1.091 billion, and since then has improved it to 1.101 billion. He believes that the theoretical maximum is 1.11 billion. As of January, 2010, the record is set by IBUKI at 1.103 billion.

In September, 2009, he reviewed then-current state of knowledge on Lunatic mode scoring in his blog, and concluded that no significant new strategies emerged during the time of his inactivity. However, he then outlined a plan for a potential 4.3 billion Reimu-A run. Since then Reimu-A scores had been pushed further to 4.44 billion by UKT, which convinced AM that even higher scores were achievable. In early 2010 he showcased practice replays of stages 4 and 5 to Royalflare uploader, annotated as 4.5 billion run tests.

Undefined Fantastic Object

Along with へかて, AM was one of the first high-profile players to challenge Hard and Lunatic modes of UFO. Throughout late 2009 he gradually raised his Lunatic scores made with Sanae-B from 2.02 to 2.75 billion, adopting new strategic discoveries and more aggressive grazing approaches, all the while discarding the necessity of receiving additional extends from red UFOs. As such, AM has been the first to reach 2.4 and 2.9 billion with Sanae-B on Hard and Lunatic modes respectively, as well as the first player to get over 40000 graze points in a single scorerun.

As of July, 2010, AM's Lunatic record still stands. His latest effort of 2.96 billion, set on 2010/03/27, successfully goes through the Byakuren fight with zero spare lives and bombs, achieving over 44k graze by the end. At the time of its publication it was stipulated that 3.15 billion could theoretically be achieved using a variation of this strategy.

Personal

AM has maintained a journal about his Touhou achievements and other things, mainly in his native Korean (and sometimes Japanese, with the help of an automated translator). After releasing his groundbreaking UFO Lunatic replays in October and November of 2009 AM was confronted with accusations of tool-assistance, which eventually had him close his blog and instead maintain a smaller journal on his homepage together with a Twitter account.

Upon failing to meet a self-imposed deadline of achieving 3 billion in Undefined Fantastic Object before the 1st of April, 2010, AM had realized that Touhou scorerunning had become an addiction that prevented him from experiencing more important aspects of life. He promptly severed all ties with both its community and the games themselves, which was explained in one of the posts on his homepage journal. Although the entry was posted on the 1st of April, it turned out not to be a joke. [1]

Notable player records

Game Mode Character Score Date Notes
Perfect Cherry Blossom Lunatic Sakuya-B 2,968,759,830 (#3) 2008/09/27 Unreleased (score spotted from a screenshot).
Imperishable Night Easy Marisa 3,104,212,600 (WR) 2008/08/04 Accumulated point item value is 762,730.
Extra Youmu 3,010,565,950 (#2) 2007/10/31 No-miss, full-spellcard. Accumulated point item value is 823,780.
Mountain of Faith Extra Reimu-B 242,941,620 2009/09/16 No vertical movement. Spellcards #98, #101, #106, #107, #109 captured, #110 nearly timed out. Cleared with 2 remaining lives.
Subterranean Animism Lunatic Reimu-A 4,005,225,500 (#5) 2008/11/08 82,810 graze. Cleared with 5 lives. Failed Satori's Butterfly Reawakening.
Extra Reimu-A 1,101,675,500 (#2) 2008/11/23 27,021 graze. No-miss, full-spellcard.
Undefined Fantastic Object Hard Sanae-B 2,402,751,780
Lunatic Sanae-B 2,961,619,580 (WR) 2010/03/27
Extra Sanae-B 304,597,110 2009/09/09 No-miss, no-bomb, no-UFO, full-spellcard run.
Legacy of Lunatic Kingdom Extra Sanae 1,008,302,770 (WR) 2015/09/19 97,397 graze; no miss; all spellcards captured.

See also: Imperishable Night world records.

External links