If you have spent any time adjacent to anime fan communities, you have probably brushed up against Touhou Project without fully realizing it. The series has been running for decades, spans more than 20 mainline entries not counting spinoffs, and supports one of the most active fan communities in modern gaming. Yet for all that, it somehow remains invisible to mainstream gaming audiences. Now, the franchise is making its most accessible move yet with the release of Touhou Koumakyou: New Classic – the Embodiment of Scarlet Devil
A 2002 Classic Gets a Modern Second Life
The original Touhou Koumakyou: The Embodiment of Scarlet Devil launched back in 2002 and sits at the foundation of what Touhou Project would eventually become. The remake, titled Touhou Koumakyou: New Classic, is a collaborative effort between the series’ original solo developer ZUN, who contributed a remastered soundtrack, and a team of developers who previously worked on some of the franchise’s most well-regarded fan games.
The core premise returns intact. Players choose between a shrine maiden or a kleptomaniac witch and set out to stop a troublesome vampire who has been blocking out the sun. The gameplay itself is classic Touhou bullet hell: wave after wave of screen-filling projectile patterns arranged in arrangements that somehow manage to look beautiful even as they destroy you. Catchy keyboard and trumpet compositions back every encounter, which is very much part of the series’ distinct identity.
What’s New in the Remake
Beyond the remastered soundtrack from ZUN, the New Classic version adds a brand new stage and upd ated character artwork. The visual style remains deliberately quirky rather than chasing photorealism, which will either charm you or confirm your suspicion that this series exists in its own dimension entirely separate from the rest of gaming.
The most significant additions for newcomers are practical ones. This marks the first time any version of Embodiment of Scarlet Devil has been available on Steam, and the remake includes a full English translation. Those two features alone make it far more approachable than the original release, which required some effort to even locate and run on modern hardware. For a series whose earlier 2000s entries were largely inaccessible to Western audiences without significant extra steps, this is a meaningful shift.
A Franchise Built on Folklore and Fan Creativity
Part of what makes Touhou Project genuinely interesting beyond the bullet patterns is where it pulls its characters from. Boss enemies across the series are drawn from creatures and figures in Asian and Western folklore alike, ranging from Embodiment’s vampires to Shinto deities and characters from the classic Japanese tale The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter. Spending time with the series ends up being a low-key crash course in mythology from multiple cultures.
The storytelling has also evolved considerably over the years. While earlier entries kept things simple with straightforward stop-the-villain plots, more recent Touhou games have used their narratives to touch on topics including fossil fuel reliance, cryptocurrency, and artificial intelligence. That trajectory is unusual for a shoot-em-up series and gives the franchise a dimension that goes well beyond genre expectations.
What truly sets Touhou apart from most franchises, though, is ZUN’s long-standing openness toward fan works. The series operates under a short list of official guidelines that permit fans to create and even commercially release their own Touhou-based projects. That policy has generated an enormous body of fan games, music, art, and other media over the years. It is also directly relevant here: some of the developers who worked on the New Classic remake previously contributed to Touhou: Luna Nights, an unofficial Metroidvania built within that fan creation framework and widely regarded as one of the best Touhou-adjacent games available.
Worth Playing Even If You’re New
Touhou Koumakyou: New Classic looks positioned as an entry point for anyone who has been curious about the franchise but put off by the barrier to entry. The Steam release, English translation, and the relatively contained scope of the original game’s structure all work in its favor for first-timers.
If the bullet hell format turns out to be too intense, Touhou: Luna Nights offers a gentler way into the world of Touhou through its Metroidvania gameplay. But for fans of the shoot-em-up genre who want to see where one of gaming’s most dedicated fan communities started, the New Classic remake of Touhou Koumakyou: The Embodiment of Scarlet Devil is available on Steam right now.