BREAKING: Studio Emiko to Quit Game Development and Move to VTuber Industry

Studio Emiko made a shocking announcement that on Friday, August 19, 2022, she would be quitting game development for good, and Touhou Tenchiki would ultimately be canceled. Not a single game by the studio was released.

Tenchiki had a troubled development. It first began in September of last year as Touhou Tenkijou, before it became Muse Genkaroku, Tenrai Bakufu, and lastly Touhou Tenchiki. Although it is possible for a single person to produce a game, it can take years and the talent of many people including programmers, artists, composers, and designers to have at least one title produced. Since prodigy game developers require a lot of time to work during the pre-production, development, and post-production phases, they face so many interruptions with school and such.

Drillimation signed on as the project’s composer. Several songs, including PC-98 originals, FamiTracker originals, and even OPL2/AdLib originals, were composed. Even though Drillimation holds the copyright to the majority of these songs, they would be repurposed for other projects including Chuhou Joutai 3: Three Nights of Scarlet Abscess and the in-development Touhou RPG for Whitethorn Digital.

Studio Emiko is moving to the VTubing industry. In order to prepare for her debut, Drillimation composed one song that could easily have lyrics affixed to them. The same sound hardware that was used to compose for Touhou Tenchiki, was used for her debut song. It’s not clear if an intermission song would be composed, as most VTubers tend to use royalty-free music to fill in that gap.

Initially, the avatar would be a version of Touhou Project‘s Raiko Horikawa, the extra stage boss of Touhou 14: Double Dealing Character. In order to avoid having to pay large licensing costs to Team Shanghai Alice, an original character by the name of Emiko Hosokawa was created instead.