The Compendium

So. I’m a little bit of a geek to Touhou. Which is underselling it. But one of the massive things I do think is that getting into specific parts of the community can be a little hard. Mainly because everything can be a little old and finding good things can be a little bit of a nightmare. So the idea of this entire project has been to really help newer (and honestly some older fans) to get into some good things within the community that might be over looked. Mainly stuff that I have actually tried and can comment on, trying to give a good eye if it’ll be a good fit for newer fans.

But first:

What is a “Touhou”?

The Touhou Project or simply just Touhou is a series of games which started on the PC-98 and has continued on until this very day. The series has been helmed primarily by a single man, that being Jun'ya Ōta or best known under his pen name of ZUN. The original PC-98 games were done under the ZUN Soft branding, with them being done alongside the student group there known as the “Amusement Makers”, with these being made of fellow members of the Tokyo Denki University.

Later games would be done under the Team Shanghai Alice company name. Whilst the majority of work has been done by ZUN himself, a few things have been done in collaboration, such as the Twilight Frontier spin-offs and a few additional artists, primarily providing assistance for things like sprites and card art.

The series itself are primarily Bullet Hell style of games, which as a sub-genre of the Shoot-Em-Up type of games. Categorised by one major thing and one thing alone, the amount of bullets on screen is absolutely astronomical. But a few of the spin-offs, which are done by Twilight Frontier, differ from this. While they do keep an element of the Bullet Hell style, often in their story modes, they are Fighting games, alongside one Boss Rush Beat’em Up.

Alongside all of this, the series itself also has a large amount of official manga works and musical works that are not related to the stories told within the games. Which does give a bit of a boon to those... Less experienced in those genres or just wishing to get into the series.

How do I get started?

Honestly? I’m rather... very shit at that. Enjoy some of the original works honestly. If you’re pretty good at Shoot-em Ups, try out the “mainline” Windows era games. The majority of them are on Steam these days and each of them does provide a different experience as often the games do have different bosses with a changed set of moves. Alongside each game having a mechanic for it to make it unique. Same goes for the ZUN handled spin-offs, which are often much more experimental.
But if you’re not good at them (Such as myself). The Twilight Frontier spin-offs are also on Steam... Well around half are. Which are the more modern ones and aren’t the ones considered “competitive” these days but are still fun in their own rights.

I’ve made a quick list of every game on Steam that can be found linked here, which includes links to them, translated names, their numbers and a link over to the Wiki. I’ve also thrown a link over to the Touhou Community Reliant Automatic Patcher at the top. As the majority of Touhou games do not come with an English translation and the few that do are often on the... Less accurate side for some of the stuff. Alongside missing a few items.

But not a fan of any of those games? Legitimately, I honestly recommend reading the official mangas. They’re all really quite good. While you might require a bit of Wiki checking for understanding characters, it’s rather fine. I personally recommend Wild and Horned Hermit alongside the currently ongoing Foul Detective Satori and Lotus Eaters. All three are much different in how they show Gensokyo but are just great as it showcases just how... Honestly wild it can get.

So what is there by fans?

Really, this is the point of this "compenium". While it is pretty easy to find a lot of fanworks. Things like Bad Apple!! by the Alstromeria Records is effectively an internet staple at this point. But I don't think people really understand a few things about it. Like how it was originally a fan made music video for the song itself and only became the official one after a few years, with a full HD release on the Alstromeria Youtube channel in 2020. A lot of older fan works alongside smaller projects are often forgotten about or just looked over.

And really, that's more why I made this. To really help showcase works that are both good and could be somewhat good for fans, newer and even older ones can enjoy. So a few lists of stuff.