From the East come many games, incredibly rich JRPGs like the Pokémon, the Persona series, and Rance, influential platformers like Super Mario series and Sonic games, popular gacha games like Fate/Grand Order and Umamusume, the well-renowned horror games, Silent Hill and Resident Evil. An all-encompassing game landscape. However most of these are made by AAA studios. But what about the indie games originating from Japan? There is a significant number, and to see the world there let us dive into a bit of history, starting 1975.

In 1975, the first Comiket was held. Comiket is short for Comic Market, a convention for self-published (doujinshi) works. These works include both original creations and fan-made material. The event operates as a non-profit convention that supports creators across multiple forms of media, including comics, games, and music. Creators joined together in groups termed “Circles” to produce these works.

Of course during creation and for the first few years the amount of participants was relatively modest, but it was sufficient to display the interest and affection people held for an event of this kind, with 11,000 guests participating in 1979. In the following years it steadily grew with Comiket 37 (1989) witnessing 120,000 attendees. here have been challenges along the way, many relocations for the event venue, or copyright issues with IPs, but it persevered through.

Comiket 50, 1996, Tokyo Big Sight, an iconic sight any otaku would recognize, was now the official venue for the event. 2000s on was an incredible sight for this event,many influential works emerged during this period.

• Type-Moon, the creator of Fate/Stay Night, published its first work in Tsukihime, at Comiket 59 (2000).
• 07th Expansion, led by Ryukishi07 and known for the When They Cry series, writer for Silent Hill F, released various chapters of Higurashi no Naku Koro ni starting from Comiket 62 (2002).

In addition, music groups such as Sound Horizon appeared here first, who went on to become professional in the field of music, working with many big games or anime. Revo, the composer, started a new project called Linked Horizon which has contributed to several well-known anime soundtracks, including Attack on Titan.

The event remains highly successful, with only minor disruptions during the pandemic period. Comiket 107 (2025) saw 300,000 people visiting the convention.

While there have been many works and artists who were popularized here and in turn carried the popularity of the event in the later years, However, none have matched the sustained influence of the Touhou Project.. Created by ZUN, under the Circle ZUN Soft (now Team Shanghai Alice), with Highly Responsive to Prayers released as its first game at Comiket 52 (1997) for PC-98 systems.

This was a Danmaku game, a Bullet Hell game, with ZUN’s primary motivation for creating the series was to compose music. Unfortunately due to ZUN being enrolled at a university and lacking funds to make enough discs for the games, resulting in low sales and limited popularity. ZUN went on to publish 4 more PC-98 games which saw a similar reception.

The turning point for the series came at Comiket 62 (2002), when the series was revamped and rebooted, with Touhou 6 marking a narrative reset and a transition to more advanced systems. Touhou 6: Embodiment of the Scarlet Devil boasted a difficulty system accessible to a wide range of players, from an easy mode to the iconic Lunatic mode. In addition, the reception of the soundtrack was incredible. U.N.Owen Was Her (U.N.オーエンは彼女なのか？) is a soundtrack that not a lot of people know by name, but if you have spent enough time you would have stumbled on a cover or arrange of it.

This popularity kept ramping up following releases of the next few games, but it wasn’t just the games’ quality that provided it. The way doujin culture works is a Circle creates a work, then other Circles use that as a basis and make creations of their own, promoting it all further. Circles like IOSYS and Cool&Create were some of the first musical Circles to make arranges from the game music and became incredibly popular.

ZUN has defined a very free fan content creation guideline which allows others to make almost any creative content without worrying, which is what has allowed doujin culture and Touhou to thrive as much as it does.

All that said, the maximum difficulty that the game provides is challenging. It takes people hundreds of hours to master bosses and go for challenges, and the line between fun and hard drawn by the ZUN’s team is widely regarded as good. To someone new, the gameplay may look visually complex, but it is a fairly novel mechanism to grasp control of and gain progress.

Team Shanghai Alice are still working on new games, with over 20 mainline titles, with 13 more side games in addition to those, all with their own unique music composed by ZUN for the main games and collaborating with U2 Akiyama for the side games to display amazing passion. All of the games at their release have physical copies sold at Comiket, along with any music CDs.

Touhou Project has always been a front running franchises in terms of participating circles producing related works since around Comiket 74, always maintaining 1000+ Circles that publish a Touhou related work, only now falling a little under that as some Circles focus more on other series that bring in a similar environment, Kancolle, Blue Archive or VTuber related works. But through all these almost 30 years, Touhou works have been in circulation. At this point, Reimu Hakurei, the lead character, is one of the best known characters in this sphere and a massive icon.

The game’s original music by ZUN has a very unique and distinct style that doesn’t fall under a genre, it has inspired many artists to remix other pieces as “Touhou arrange style”. But the fan content makes sure there is no lack of variety in arranges that are offered here, there’s:

• Akatsuki Records (alternative rock)
• Demetori (heavy metal)
• SOUND HOLIC (eurobeat)
• Yuuhei Satellite (trance and pop)
• Unlucky Morpheus (metal and jazz)

and so much more providing a very expansive range to music with new artists producing more along with all the ones that have been here, carrying this culture for over 25 years now with over 24,000 recorded albums that have been released digitally or archived along with many more that are only available as physical discs.

Touhou music has gotten to a point where there are separate conventions just for music, like Touhou Fest, with multiple artists, some who even worked on the game music, like Beat Mario, taking the stage for concerts. Touhou music has some pieces that started out as jokes, especially those on Nico Nico Douga, a Japanese streaming and video sharing service, that got extremely popular and became cornerstones of that culture.

But the one piece that trumps it all, which appears across numerous online platforms, has spread widely across different media with many being unaware of its origins, is Bad Apple by Μμ feat. nomico on vocals and Anira (あにら) on the animation. This animation has been recreated on every possible thing by people, games, low spec hardware devices, bird’s eye view of a crowd, you name it. This is the single most iconic thing that originated from Touhou Project that has managed to enter the eyes of bystanders, remixed to the form of the sphere they’re in, unbeknownst to them where it comes from.

Fan works aren’t just limited to music of course, fan games exist as well. Being a danmaku game it has quite a few danmaku fangames, adding their own creative touch to it. However, if you have had enough of this style, there’s many other forms of games.

With RPGs being the most common due to freedom of mechanics and story, there’s many different types of RPGs here, Labyrinth of Touhou being one of the most popular dungeon crawler, Genso Wanderer covering the roguelike side, Genius of Sappheiros being one of the best turn based RPGs.

Not only these but many other different types of RPGs, all drawing inspiration from other popular game styles and transforming them into something new and unique and integrating the incredible mechanics with the amazing characters and world built by Team Shanghai Alice.

Since the original series had titles come out in the early 2000s, there have been a lot of fangames taking inspiration from games that were considered classics before that. There are platformers that take inspiration from Mega Man, or Super Mario Bros. Solomon’s Key inspired puzzle games, rhythm games, even a hybrid rhythm-danmaku game called Touhou Danmaku Kagura!

For players seeking a less action-oriented experience, they can relax by playing Mystia’s Izakaya, a calming restaurant simulator. The creativity that is displayed by fans when approaching works is incredibly diverse and very impressive to the point that someone who isn’t very familiar with the original games or characters would find themselves enjoying the various fangames.

Not only software but there’s loads of figurines and plushies, particularly the “Fumo” variety being pretty rare and very sought after. The fumos themselves have managed to birth a lot of memes and internet culture, especially with the iconic face. ᗜˬᗜ.

Over the past 30 years and counting, the work that Team Shanghai Alice have done, along with all the community have built up, countless music albums and games, masterpieces of fangames, comics, novels, and Touhou Project has built up a significant cultural legacy. It has left its mark of creativity in so many regions it is widely recognizable within its sphere. It perfectly displays creative potential of doujin culture. What started with one person’s passion for music has built something that not only millions enjoy, but also help create.