Shanghai Alice Reprise recently shared new information on Touhou Koumakyou: Classic – The Embodiment of Scarlet Devil – a faithful recreation of the original game which launched in tandem with a modern remake today. Surprisingly, the game lets players transfer save data and replays from the original Touhou Koumakyou, which released 23 years ago. It also adds features such as faster replay playback and the ability to assign a “confirm” button in the key configuration.
First released in 2002, Touhou Koumakyou is the sixth mainline Touhou Project title and the first to be released for Windows. While the game itself can still run on modern PCs, playing it comes with some issues. It tends to run at an abnormally high frame rate, causing events such as boss battles to begin almost instantly, with the entire game zooming by much faster than intended. Although fan-made patches are available, the original Touhou Koumakyou is essentially no longer readily playable on modern PC environments without such modifications.
Against this backdrop, Touhou Koumakyou: New Classic – The Embodiment of Scarlet Devil (hereafter Touhou Koumakyou: New Classic) was launched as a modern remake of Touhou Koumakyou, rebuilt to support 1080p resolution with rearranged music by original creator ZUN. The remake also introduces changes such as a new Challenge Mode with unlimited lives and an option to display the protagonist’s hitbox. It’s also officially localized into English for the first time in the title’s history, alongside support for 11 other languages.
Bundled together with this game is the aforementioned Touhou Koumakyou: Classic, which recreates the 2002 game as closely as possible, including the original UI, character sprites, etc. Although it’s released as a separate application on Steam, it cannot be purchased separately and is unlocked for free to owners of the remake.
According to a post by Shanghai Alice Reprise representative JUNYA, all replays and save data from the original Touhou Koumakyou Ver. 1.02h can be transferred to Touhou Koumakyou: Classic. Since Touhou Koumakyou: Classic is a separate title that recreates the original rather than a re-release of the original game itself, save data would normally not be compatible between the two. Nevertheless, the developers have apparently put in the extra work to make it possible.
Touhou Koumakyou: New Classic and Touhou Koumakyou: Classic are available for PC (Steam), PS5 and Nintendo Switch systems.
