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Comment by Tade0 | Hacker News Reader

I always wondered why it was the sixth position in the series that gained mainstream appeal.

I haven't played the game, but it's hard to ignore the culture that grew around it - especially that just like every device will eventually be made to run DOOM, every display device will eventually be made to show "Bad Apple".

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While all of the music from every game of Touhou is pretty great, EoSD had some stand-out tracks:

Apparitions Stalk the Night: https://youtu.be/0GOA3kvP3Lg?t=270

Septette for the Dead Princess: https://youtu.be/0GOA3kvP3Lg?t=2210

And of course, the one and only U.N. Owen was Her?: https://youtu.be/0GOA3kvP3Lg?t=2757

Edit: For those curious about the gameplay, this is from Embodiment of Scarlet Devil (the 6th game): https://youtu.be/zZu2O_JQ4vs

And this is from Mountain of Faith (the 10th game), boss starts at 1:05: https://youtu.be/6S2dQ8A7fm4

I've never played Touhou because I don't really like bullet hells, but the music from Touhou is just so dang good. I usually listen to the OST or (instrumental) fan arrangements while I work. My current favorites are Kuroneko Lounge's house set arrangements:

House set of Subterranean Animism: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bycuWJH2sYw

House set of Phantasmagoria of Flower View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLgMmoiR5fA

I'll throw my recommendation behind them as well, they are a really cool (and large) set of albums Shame that the original artist doesn't sell many of them anymore

I'll add to that the credit music: https://youtu.be/0GOA3kvP3Lg?t=3107. It fits the end of the game really well.

Don't forget Beloved Tomboyish Girl (Cirno's theme): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0GOA3kvP3Lg&t=547s Or the classic remix and animation, Cirno's Perfect Math Class: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_bQNPG2OyE

Happy 9/9!

In addition to the factors mentioned by other replies, Embodiment of Scarlet Devil was a huge shift in design; the prior games felt a lot like a bullet hell aesthetic backported to an '80s platform/engine, whereas Embodiment of Scarlet Devil was much more directly influenced by contemporaneous arcade games like Guwange and Giga Wing.

All first five titles in the Touhou series can only run on PC98. The sixth title is the first one to run on windows.

There was also a large amount of revamp of the settings, backgrounds and characters. The first 5 titles have settings so different their stories are rarely considered canon now.

There is no accepted theory. There are indeed multiple defining differences between the 6th title and all others including earlier titles: the first Windows title, the inavailability of detailed backstory (thus a fertile ground for derivative works), the only title with obviously Western characters and so on, but none of them seems crucial for the eventual popularity. If you ask me, my guess is that it was just a pure luck.

I'd say the Windows compat was probably it, though.

Who here owned a bonafide NEC PC-98 at any point outside of those in Japan?

The popularity of Touhou series didn't reach the Western world for a few more years. The tipping point in Japan is thought to be the 8th title (Imperishable Night in 2004) and I believe it took another 3 or 4 years for Touhou to be reasonably popular outside of Japan; the earliest known "Touhou hijack" in 4chan was around 2008 for example, and as a South Korean, I myself learned of Touhou in c. 2006 via a doujin music. The 6th title then became popular among other titles in the series somehow.

I only know about it because I watched someone play it one time, it looks like an incredibly challenging thing to do well.

for me I got stuck on that one for awhile because the music caught me and the gameplay was just complicated enough to be fun.

the later mechanics added were tedious imo, and I never got into the music as much.

It was the first of the series that was a Windows game, was it not?

It was the first release for Windows and there was some hype around it as it was the first game Zun release in 4 years. Windows was mainstream worldwide. PC98 was not.

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