The Lost Touhou 6 Demo

Touhou Embodiment of Scarlet Devil Unfinished Demo

(This is fictional if you can't tell that then you're dumb and you should be ashamed)

It was early 2002, ZUN was starting to Develop EoSD and completed 1 stage of it but had many concepts for what he wanted to make the game exactly, He ended up messing around with some stuff and it turned out very different from what we know today. Now that we have that out of the way, that brings me to about the year 2005 and I decided to try and get some cheap stuff from some Japanese Online store that I forgot the name of and well noticed a Copy of EoSD that looked interesting, it had the normal EoSD box cover but with "Special Demo!" written on the Box in Japanese but I decided to buy it for about 112 yen which at the time was $1 so it was pretty cheap considering how rare it is and important it was. So then I had it delivered to me and I inserted it into my shitty very blocky Windows XP computer and then the game just cut straight to the title screen and there was hyper realistic blood- just kidding no. It just had a weird image of a Drawn Window on the title screen instead of Reimu Sitting like normal with the Midi version of the normal theme playing and I only had 3 options to start, to Start the game, Music Room which was greyed out and to Quit the game. I chose to play the game and didn't get to choose my difficulty but I got 3 options for characters to play as, Reimu Hakurei (She had purple hair and her old outfit), Marisa Kirisame (only slightly different with her outfit) and finally Rin Satsuki who had Blond Hair and had a similar clothing color scheme to Reimu but was more Nurse like. I obviously chose Rin Satsuki because she didn't make the final cut and I wanted to see how she played and I didn't get to choose a Shot Type at all as it sent me straight to Stage 1.

As I entered Stage 1, Rin Satsuki it seemed couldn't shoot Bullets at all and didn't have a bomb and nothing appeared on Screen and everything just froze, I tried to exit the menu but the exit button instead Crashed my game so I had to Restart EoSD and try again. After I restarted EoSD I tried using Rin Satsuki again but the same thing happened. I kept trying over and over again before realizing nothing is going to change and then I picked Reimu. Reimu had 2 shot types but one of them was unfinished and didn't shoot Bullets and well... Crashed my game and the other one was completely finished and I played through EoSD only noticing minor differences with the fairies bullet patterns being a bit easier and then got to Rumia who basically said the exact same thing she said in the final version of the game but Reimu got pissed at her and said something along the lines of "You're the Stage 1 boss just leave already" and Rumia got mad at Reimu and the fight started with Rumia's Bullet Patterns being INSANELY hard to where only a drunk man could beat them but my middle name is drunk so I beat this Man Eating Child back to Makai and when defeated Rumia said "Oh By the Way, this is where the development ended but there are still more stages that were drafted and are theoretically playable, do you want to continue?" I was then given a menu choice similar to the Save A Replay thing in the final game asking if I wanted to continue and I did to see what else the game had. I ended up being given the choice to Switch characters again this time and well Rin Satsuki was Greyed out for this point it seemed now but Marisa wasn't so I chose her. Stage 2 started with text overhead at the top of the screen saying "This Stage Isn't Finished!" and there was no music playing but there was a background and only like 5 fairies appeared before Funny Ice Fairy appeared with her final design and said nothing.

Then All of the Sudden the battle had... ended? and I was given the choice to switch characters and Rin Satsuki was no longer greyed out but Reimu and Marisa were so I used Rin Satsuki and well then Stage 3 was just a Black Background. Then Meiling appeared as just a Sketch Drawing and said "Girls are now Praying...." then the battle ended. At this point I just wondered if every battle would be like this and just continued playing because I mean I was bored and might as well just have kept playing just to see if there was anything else hidden. Then I got sent to Stage 4 and didn't get the option to Switch characters and well my lives increased for no apparent reason and so did my bombs which now that I thought about it, I hadn't really used so I tried using it on stage 4 to see what would happen but nothing did and instead it crashed my game and I had to go all the way back to Stage 4. I'll spare you the details of me having to restart but now I got back to stage 4 and yeah there was a vague doodle that resembled Patchy but she didn't even have a name and was just some vague Magic Librarian and this time she shot 10 bullets and then I went to the next stage which was Stage 5. At this point I'm questioning even more why I'm continuing to play through the rest of this game as clearly there is nothing but I still continued anyways. Same stuff blah blah blah tho until I reach Sakuya's concept design sketch which looked more like... Mugetsu which was strange but she was just called "Time Stopping Maid" and that was it. Other then that, she did a Time Stop effect for a moment and threw several knives but they all had grazed me and then I got sent to Stage 6.

I wasn't expecting much to be honest from Stage 6 but Stage 6 actually looked rather more finished then a black screen and there were more fairies and it seemed to take a more hellish take on the red mist then the final game. then I basically got to the end of Stage 6 and Remilia had some placeholder name that related to her being a Vampire sister but a finished sketch of her from the final game.... She said exactly this "Well congratulations if anyone got their hands on this DEMO, you wasted your time there is nothing here really, now go play the full game if it's out when this leaks." Then the game cut to an ending for Satsuki Rin and it just showed her waving animated like the PC-98 endings saying how she hopes to see me in the full game and Reimu was drunk in the background with Marisa trying to steal from her and that was that. I then got sent back to the title screen and that was it. I threw the game out because I was just pissed I wasted a lot of time on that but it was really my fault tbh I know that and yeah but it's forever lost now because that was basically the only copy and it's been 18 years since I played that Demo and I forgot about it mostly until now. So uh yeah I guess sorry for throwing out potential important media.....

So uh moral of the story: If you for some reason get your hand on an important demo don't throw it out, it's good to preserve media even if you think it's stupid...