Windows

Microsoft Windows (Windows for short) is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft. It is used on personal computers across the world and it seems to be the most popular operating system in the world.

There has been many versions of Windows, such as Windows 98 (not to be confused with the PC-98), Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows Vista. Windows 7 is their latest edition with Windows 8 in development and will be released in two years.

Embodiment of Scarlet Devil was the first Touhou game developed for this platform, which was able to play on the 98, SE, ME, 2000 and the XP. Shuusou Gyoku was technically the first game for this platform, but it wasn't directly created by ZUN. All the games from Embodiment of Scarlet Devil (Touhou 6) all the way to Ten Desires (Touhou 13) was made entirely for this platform. They are distinguished from "the PC-98 games" (from Touhou 1 to 5) for Team Shanghai Alice having been branched off from Amusement Makers.

Games for this Platform

Official Touhou Games

• TH06 東方紅魔郷　～ the Embodiment of Scarlet Devil (Team Shanghai Alice 2002)
• TH07 東方妖々夢　～ Perfect Cherry Blossom (Team Shanghai Alice 2003)
• TH07.5 東方萃夢想　～ Immaterial and Missing Power (Team Shanghai Alice/Twilight Frontier 2004)
• TH08 東方永夜抄　～ Imperishable Night (Team Shanghai Alice 2004)
• TH09 東方花映塚　～ Phantasmagoria of Flower View (Team Shanghai Alice 2005)
• TH09.5 東方文花帖　～ Shoot the Bullet (Team Shanghai Alice 2005)
• TH10 東方風神録　～ Mountain of Faith (Team Shanghai Alice 2007)
• TH10.5 東方緋想天　～ Scarlet Weather Rhapsody (Team Shanghai Alice/Twilight Frontier 2007)
• TH11 東方地霊殿　～ Subterranean Animism (Team Shanghai Alice 2008)
• TH12 東方星蓮船　～ Undefined Fantastic Object (Team Shanghai Alice 2009)
• TH12.3 東方非想天則　～ 超弩級ギニョルの謎を追え (Team Shanghai Alice/Twilight Frontier 2009)
• TH12.5 ダブルスポイラー　～ 東方文花帖 (Team Shanghai Alice 2010)
• TH12.8 妖精大戦争　～ 東方三月精 (Team Shanghai Alice 2010)
• TH13 東方神霊廟　～ Ten Desires (Team Shanghai Alice 2011)

Doujin Games

• 秋霜玉 (Shunsatsu sare do? 1998-2000)
• トルテ ル マジック (Pietoro 2001)
• 稀翁玉 (Shunsatsu sare do? 2001)
• 五月雨 (RebRank 2002-2005)
• 黄昏酒場～Uwabami Breakers～ (The Drinking Party 2007)
• 幡紫竜 (Shunsatsu sare do? 2008)
• And countless fangames...

Additional Information

Name and Concept

• "Microsoft Windows" in Japanese is マイクロソフト ウィンドウズ (ro. Maikurosofuto u~indouzu). Naturally, it is written in katakana.
• This platform was a fresh start for ZUN as he was no longer limited to 16-bit color graphics.

Trivia

• The last main series game to officially work on Windows 98 is Phantasmagoria of Flower View. Shoot the Bullet and Mountain of Faith will run as well, but show some oddities like missing BGM. From Subterranean Animism on, the games depend on a newer DirectX 9.0c build not supported on Windows 98.
• The Windows games are split into 2 generations, with Mountain of Faith being the dividing point. This is because Mountain of Faith introduced a new game engine that has been used in every Touhou shooting game since. Additionally, the plots of the Touhou games starting with Mountain of Faith have become more connected to each other.
• The first game built with Windows Vista in mind was Undefined Fantastic Object.
• The first game built with Windows 7 in mind was Double Spoiler.
• Only four characters from the PC-98 era have returned to the Windows games: Reimu Hakurei, Marisa Kirisame, Alice Margatroid, and Yuuka Kazami.
  • The rest of the PC-98 characters do not appear in ZUN's works from Embodiment of Scarlet Devil onwards. However, Mima did make an appearance on Akyu's Untouched Score vol.4's cover and the bakebake may have made a possible cameo appearance in Oriental Sacred Place.
• All the games from Embodiment of Scarlet Devil to Phantasmagoria of Flower View are able to play on Windows Vista/7, but in some cases, the title screen won't display properly and not show the image of Reimu. Enabling Windows Aero may help.
  • Embodiment of Scarlet Devil will sometimes stop working when launched. This sometimes only happens without Aero.
• If using Vista or Windows 7, all the games from Double Spoiler onward will disable Aero and switch the theme to "Windows 7 Basic" or "Windows Vista Basic". Windows will switch back to Aero after exiting the game.

Fandom

• Among the fan community, the term "the Windows games" refers specifically to the games listed above.
• Windows characters are seen separate from the PC-98 characters by many fans (Excluding the ones that returned).
• An unofficial tool exists to convert the .wav music of all games with ZUN's involvement to .ogg and patch the games to read from those files in order to save disk space.