Touhou Project Games Ranked: Top 7 Shooters, the Origin of Yukkuri Commentary, and a Score for Embodiment of Scarlet Devil: New Classic

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If you’ve ever watched a “Yukkuri commentary” video on YouTube, you know those two round-faced heads. What you may not know is that they are Reimu Hakurei and Marisa Kirisame, the lead characters of Touhou Project. Characters from a doujin shooting game series quietly turned into the face of Japanese internet video culture itself, and that is exactly how strange Touhou’s position is.

Then, on September 10, 2026, the series hit a real milestone. Embodiment of Scarlet Devil: New Classic, a remake of the series’ signature title, launched on Nintendo Switch 2, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5 and Steam. It is the first time an official Touhou Project shooter has ever appeared on consoles.

In other words, Touhou has gone from “a game you buy at a doujin shop” to “a game you buy on your console.” The barrier to entry just collapsed. I’m in my mid-forties, and I watched the Yukkuri boom flood Niconico in real time, so honestly I never expected this day to come.

In this article I’ve ranked seven mainline Touhou danmaku shooters, scoring each one out of 100 across four axes: Accessibility, Graphics, Brutality and Replay Value. Along the way I’ll also lay out where the Yukkuri characters actually came from, sticking strictly to what can be confirmed. All information is current as of September 2026.

Note that this ranking covers only the mainline danmaku shooters developed by Team Shanghai Alice. Fan-made games and the fighting-game spin-offs are out of scope.

*Prices in this article are converted from Japanese yen at ¥153 = US$1 (September 2026 rate).

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All 7 Touhou Project Games Scored and Compared

Every game is scored out of 100 on four separate axes. A higher “Brutality” score means a harder game, so newcomers should start with a low number there. Don’t just read the totals: pick the axis you personally care about.

Two things jump out of that table. First, the highest Accessibility score belongs to the newest remake, New Classic (96), and the added unlimited-lives mode is why. Second, Subterranean Animism towers over everything on Brutality at 96. If you rate your own reflexes, that’s the mountain you’re eventually climbing.

The Yukkuri Commentary Characters Started Right Here

Before the ranking proper, let’s settle this article’s other question. Those Yukkuri heads are based on the two lead characters of Touhou Project.

The Yukkuri heads are Reimu and Marisa

“Yukkuri shite itte ne!!!” spread as ASCII art modeled on the heads of Reimu Hakurei and Marisa Kirisame. Both are playable characters in Touhou Project: Reimu has been there since the first game, Highly Responsive to Prayers (completed in November 1996), and Marisa since the second, Story of Eastern Wonderland (the finished version was distributed at Comic Market 52 in August 1997).

Here’s the part people get wrong, though. The phrase “Yukkuri shite itte ne!!!” never appears anywhere in Touhou Project itself. It’s context that the internet bolted on afterward. Worth filing away.

2008: it exploded on 2channel

Those disembodied heads started moving in 2008, on 2channel. They weren’t welcomed at first; users treated them as a new breed of troll post. The turn came when illustrators from the “2ch Yaru ASCII Art Illustration Project” started drawing them, and from there the trend went nuclear.

That same year it took the bronze prize at the Internet Buzzword Awards 2008, run by Future Search Brazil. Going from “this is spam” to an award in roughly six months is an absurd pace, even looking back now.

At the time I was working at a manga cafe in Kabukicho. Late at night I’d walk past customers’ monitors and see them plastered with those steamed-bun faces. I’ll admit I was firmly in the “what on earth is this” camp. Now it’s the default format for explainer videos on the entire Japanese internet. You never can tell.

Where did that voice come from?

You can’t talk about Yukkuri commentary without the distinctive synthesized voice. The accepted origin story is that around February 2008, a “Yukkuri” character built for the fighting-game engine M.U.G.E.N used SofTalk’s voice output, and that’s what locked the sound in.

The speech synthesis engine AquesTalk was first released on May 25, 2006. SofTalk’s voice, built on top of it, became “the Yukkuri voice” and embedded itself in video culture from there.

So the structure is two-tiered: the characters come from Touhou Project, the voice comes from a completely unrelated line of speech synthesis software. The two streams merged in 2008, and that merger is the prototype of every Yukkuri commentary video you see today.

And now the games at the source of all that culture are finally playable on a console. Let’s get to the main event.

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No. 7: Unfinished Dream of All Living Ghost – The Odd One Out, a Versus Brawl for Entry No. 19

The 19th entry in the series, and a competitive head-to-head shooter from Team Shanghai Alice. It debuted at Comic Market 102, and the Steam version went live on August 13, 2023.

A normal Touhou game is a solo affair: dodge the curtain of bullets coming down at you and kill the boss. This one splits the screen and has you trading fire with an opponent instead. Within the series, it is unmistakably the odd one out.

That said, compared with Phantasmagoria of Flower View, the earlier versus entry, it’s been described as faster and much closer to “regular Touhou” in feel. Competitive structure aside, the danmaku shooting still handles the way it should.

No. 6: Mountain of Faith – The Hard Reset That Rebuilt the Systems

The 10th entry, developed by Team Shanghai Alice. The Steam version was published by Mediascape on June 6, 2020, the same day Subterranean Animism and Undefined Fantastic Object also hit Steam.

Its defining trait is that it tore up the series’ systems and rebuilt them. How bombs work, how you earn extra lives, the load-bearing stuff, all of it changed, which means longtime players are the ones who stumble first.

Flip that around and it means prior knowledge isn’t an advantage here. Even in a series where “start anywhere” is the norm, this is the cleanest hard reset. That’s what the Accessibility score of 86 is rewarding.

For what it’s worth, this is the game that pulled me back into Touhou via Steam. Not having to trek out to a doujin shop made the whole thing so effortless that it felt anticlimactic.

No. 5: Subterranean Animism – Brutality 96, One of the Hardest Games in the Series

The 11th entry, and another one whose Steam version arrived on June 6, 2020. Development by Team Shanghai Alice, with Mediascape publishing on Steam.

And this game is hard. Brutally hard. It has spent years being talked about as one of the toughest things in the entire series, and the Brutality score of 96 is simply that reputation written down.

It’s set underground, and there are stretches where the darkness of the screen and the visibility of the bullets work against each other. You think you’re dodging; you are not dodging. That’s why Accessibility drops all the way to 62.

But hard is not the same as bad. The whole pleasure of danmaku shooting lives in that moment when a pattern you swore was impossible suddenly resolves into something readable. If you’re willing to pour hours into that, this is the best classroom in the series.

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No. 4: Perfect Cherry Blossom – The 7th Entry That Locked In the Series Formula

The 7th entry in the series. The trial CD-ROM went out at Comic Market 63 on December 30, 2002, and the full version at Comic Market 64 on August 17, 2003. Developed, of course, by Team Shanghai Alice.

Arriving a year after Embodiment of Scarlet Devil, this is the game that nailed down the series’ basic shape. The spring-and-cherry-blossom art direction still looks classy today.

The difficulty climbs a step above Embodiment of Scarlet Devil. A Brutality score of 84 reflects my read that it’s a slightly punishing pick as your second Touhou game, though the payoff when you finally weave through a pattern is proportionally huge.

One catch: there is no Steam version. Getting a copy generally means going through doujin shops like Melonbooks or Toranoana. Know that before you go shopping.

No. 3: Imperishable Night – Replay Value 94, a Monster of Collectibles

The 8th entry, distributed at Comic Market 66 on August 15, 2004. Developed by Team Shanghai Alice.

Its signature is the two-character tag structure. You pair a human with a youkai and swap between their capabilities as the situation demands, which gives the game a texture nothing else in the series quite matches.

The Replay Value score of 94 comes down to the sheer volume of collectibles. Hunting down the enormous roster of spell cards is where the game really begins, after the credits roll. The amount of play left over after your first clear is borderline unreasonable.

The difficulty is on the friendlier side too, which is why people have recommended this as a first Touhou for decades. A total of 326 feels right to me.

Once again, though, there’s no Steam version. Same situation as Perfect Cherry Blossom: doujin shops are the way in.

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No. 2: Fossilized Wonders – The Milestone 20th Entry That Goes Back to Basics

This is the 20th Touhou Project game, the newest mainline entry. Team Shanghai Alice developed it, Mediascape Co., Ltd. publishes the Steam version, and it launched on Steam on August 16, 2025 for $12.

The biggest talking point is the playable roster. ZUN explained that “since this is the milestone 20th entry, we’re going back to the start with Reimu and Marisa as the leads,” so the only characters you control are Reimu Hakurei and Marisa Kirisame.

Which means the two figures who spawned the Yukkuri phenomenon are back in the lead roles for entry number 20. In the context of this article, the timing could not be better.

Building loadouts from eight Incident Stones

The new mechanic is the Incident Stone. You take eight types of Incident Stone and slot them into four positions: main stone, spread stone, focus stone and support stone, then head into the game with that build.

It works, too. The same stage demands a different plan depending on your combination. That’s what the Replay Value score of 90 is pointing at. It preaches a return to basics while quietly widening what you can do.

Players agree. Steam reviews sit at 91% positive all-time (as of 827 reviews), a genuinely strong number for a recent release.

One disclosure: the Steam store page states that “some background textures include AI-generated content.” If that matters to you, factor it in before buying.

No. 1: Embodiment of Scarlet Devil: New Classic – The Definitive Version, 24 Years Later on Consoles

The top spot goes to Embodiment of Scarlet Devil: New Classic (Touhou Koumakyou: New Classic – the Embodiment of Scarlet Devil), released on September 10, 2026. Team Shanghai Alice developed it, Alliance Arts published it, and it’s available on Nintendo Switch 2, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5 and PC (Steam).

The reason it’s No. 1 is simple: this is the first official Touhou Project shooter ever released on consoles. The original Embodiment of Scarlet Devil was distributed at Comic Market on August 11, 2002 as a Windows-only release supporting Windows 98/SE/ME/2000/XP. For over two decades, it was a game you simply could not play without a PC.

Now, 24 years on, you can play it on Switch and on PS5. That one fact completely changes how wide the door into Touhou is.

Price and editions

What’s actually new in New Classic

The original creator ZUN led the effort to rebuild the 2002 game for modern hardware. The headline changes are these.

• Higher-resolution graphics
• Every music track rearranged by ZUN
• A new Spell Practice mode
• A new unlimited-lives mode

The unlimited-lives mode is the big one. The tallest wall in danmaku shooting has always been “it’s too hard, so I never see the rest of the game.” This removes that wall by design, which makes an Accessibility score of 96 the obvious call.

Spell Practice pulls its weight as well. Being able to drill only the spell cards that keep killing you turns improvement into a clear path. There’s something here for beginners and veterans alike.

The 2002 version is included too

Don’t overlook this part: a “Classic” version that recreates the 2002 game as faithfully as possible is also included. It ships as a separate app, and buying Embodiment of Scarlet Devil: New Classic gets you it for free.

Remakes so often erase the original; this one solves that head-on by shipping both. That decision deserves real credit. For someone from my generation who was there at the time, that chunky old pixel art is pure memory. …Although let’s be honest, the version I’ll actually play is the one with infinite lives.

Verdict: If You’re New to Touhou, It’s Embodiment of Scarlet Devil: New Classic

Let’s put the placements and total scores in one place one more time.

Here’s how it breaks down by player type.

• Starting Touhou from scratch: Embodiment of Scarlet Devil: New Classic (from $13). It has the unlimited-lives mode, and it runs on consoles
• Chasing the newest release: Fossilized Wonders (Steam, $12). The 20th entry, with Reimu and Marisa as your only two pilots
• Wanting to grind something to the bone: Imperishable Night. Just know you’ll need a doujin shop to buy it
• Hunting extreme difficulty: Subterranean Animism (Steam). Brutality 96

And let’s not lose the thread we started with. Those two Yukkuri commentary heads are Reimu Hakurei and Marisa Kirisame. The ASCII art spread on 2channel in 2008, and the catchphrase itself never appears anywhere in Touhou. The voice locked in around February 2008, when a “Yukkuri” character for M.U.G.E.N used SofTalk’s speech output. That’s the full extent of what can actually be confirmed.

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