Ah, okay. So there's a big piracy community playing them over here, lol! Not really my style, but I can't afford an import either. Guess I'm just doomed to remain in the dark on this one.

There are a ton of fan made Touhou games, a few of which are actually zero cost. For example, you could try checking out Marine Benefit, for example.

Oh, that's cool. I'll add that one to the list. :)

Playism actually officially released digital versions of TH14 and a couple other spinoffs for the west recently.

dunno if 15 (which was released about a week ago) is available there though since I haven't checked yet.

I don't understand why they can't release the rest as well. There is no big corporation to negotiate with and no business decisions to make... The only explanation is that ZUN doesn't give a shit about dirty gaijins.

Anyway, I have stumbled on some of the games (physical disks that is) in various Japanese stores in the US, I found almost the entire collection at a random store in San Francisco Japantown last year... But yeah, good luck hunting down legal copies otherwise.

Nobody mentioned it yet, so I will.

When I was a kid, I played this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3F3l-SiN78

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfBDur-l6nQ

I enjoyed it.

eh I always had the impression it was because it was a doujin series that pretty much belonged to the doujin community, with very little set in stone in terms of canon, and if it was licensed out for a western release then whoever got the license would probably have to defend the license from copyright violation which would cut into the grey market of comiket.

But now with the rise of digital distribution and the series seems like it's past its prime and probably starting to decline in popularity it's not as big an issue thus opening it up to digital distribution in the west, letting the games come to the ps4/vita (well, fan games anyway), etc.

Axelay was awesome! Glad someone else remembers it.

Good point. If a separate publisher or middle-man was involved in the distribution of something like Touhou, with the fan-made content several orders of magnitude larger than the original IP owner's, I bet things would get nasty fast. But of course there are easy ways around that (like using DLsite that explicitly doesn't demand copyright assignment from the owners), and many doujin circles do use them.

I never played any SNES shmups, as a kid I always had SEGA consoles. This one looks tasty, please let me know if there are any other good ones.

1. Axelay
2. Phalanx
3. R-Type 3
4. Gradius 3
5. D-Force
6. Super E.D.F.
7. U.N. Squadron

Thanks! Some of these I've never heard of, will check them out. I remember playing UN Squadron at the local arcade as a kid. Of course I never knew the name.

For a moment I confused D-force with the doujin series with the same name, but thankfully they appear to be unrelated.

UNS for SNES is a bit diffierent. Harder if I remember correctly. Still alo of fun. Gradius 3 may be my favorite of the bunch. I think that era was a veritable golden age of shmups.

The parodius games were always fun.
I'm also reminded of Ikaruga. The dual shot aspect made it extra challenging.

I haven't played a good shmup in a while. I'll have to go back through my collection and see what I have.

Space Megaforce/Super Aleste

Cho Aniki of you guys want a good kusoge.