Touhou Meijinka One Year Later

Tomorrow will mark one year since the release of Touhou Meijinka ~ Song of Divine Tempest. This game marked the beginning of a new era for the Drillimation Danmaku Universe, being developed specifically to test the engine for future Drillimation Danmaku Universe shooter games.

The concept for this game came during the latter half of the development of Touhou Kourinden ~ Mythos of Phantasmagoria in early 2023. At the time, Studio Emiko was planning to create a VTuber project under the codename of Puritas, which never materialized. It had no activity throughout the year with the exception of this game. What inspired the game’s plot may have come from Hosokawa’s real-world affairs – she was an unofficial member of a Catholic youth club, and the lore she had conceptualized during the period of inactivity.

The soundtrack was written by the game’s lead programmer Susumu Takajima in two weeks, sometimes composing two songs a day. E. Enthusiasm would provide the majority of the graphics while Takajima did the rest. The game’s development began in the summer of 2023 after a trip to the UK and Ireland for graphics research and lasted four months and one week.

The game was said to look graphically better than the Touhou Project NES Demakes and Chuhou Joutai trilogy which released before, but ended up dividing critics and players at launch. Hosokawa remarked:

At first, I thought it was some genius idea to work on a game based on my stories, but the way I am looking at it right now, it sounds like the most stupid thing I have ever done. Thankfully all the hidden details to my later fan lore embedded in the Extra Stage are pretty much what would balance out the corniness of the game’s main plot, I think.

Drillimation’s next danmaku project, Touhou Chouhatsuyou ~ Burgeoning Tresses of Longevity, will aim to fix the flaws the previous game had while making the danmaku experience better.