What the Fuck is a 2hu?

>What is Touhou Project?
Touhou Project (lit. "Eastern Project"), also known as Project Shrine Maiden, is primarily a series of doujin bullet hell (danmaku) STGs developed by Shanghai Alice Gengakudan (Shanghai Alice Fantasy Band, AKA "Team Shanghai Alice"), whose sole member is man called ZUN (powerword: Junya Ota). The series debuted with 1996's "Touhou Reiiden ~ the Highly Responsive to Prayers" for the NEC PC-9801 and has since then spawned countless sequels and what only be described as one of gaming's most prolific fanbases. Nearly every game follows the story of Reimu Hakurei, a shinto shrine maiden, and Marisa Kirisame, a western-styled magician, in the fantastic land of Gensokyo as they fight their way through various youkai and other supernatural entities in order to confront the villain-of-the-week and solve whatever incident-of-the-week they caused. Touhou Project boasts a huge female majority cast of unique characters, a library of over 20 official games and spinoffs, multiple print works, several offical music cds and what many believe to be among the greatest video game music periof. It also gave birth to a massive doujin (fan-made) culture with hundreds of thousands of pieces of fan art, fan manga, fan music albums and everything in between.

>Where do I start?
Image guide: TBA
Generally, there's no universally agreed upon method as to how to tackle the series' offical games. You could go chronologically and work your way up from the first game, or you could ignore the first five (given that they require PC-98 emulation and are generally considered unimportant to the series canon as a whole) and start from the sixth game up. If you don't mind playing out of order, then the easiest games to start with would be the 8th or 16th. People also recommend the 6th quite a bit, but that game does not have a visible hitbox so it might not be as friendly for newcomers. Remember, unless you're an avid bullet hell player or are familiar with STGs, do not attempt to play above normal mode as you're beginning. With enough practice and tears you'll be at lunatic mode level in no time (if you try)! Spin-offs (referred to as "decimal games") are divided into fighting games (which are always collaborations with the doujin circle Twilight Frontier) and gimmick danmaku games (the "photo games" and Great Fairy Wars).

>Where can I get these games?
Unfortunately, Touhou is still primarily a Japanese-only series and importing its games was unfeasible without having to pay high markups for shipping up until the 2010s. This resulted in pirating being one of the only ways to play the games in the Western community. So here it is!
Torrent: https://nyaa.si/view/979648 (up until 16)
Individual links: https://pastebin.com/hPmDczz6 (up until 16.5)
MoriyaShrine: https://moriyashrine.org (has a database of every offical game and updates soon after new ones are released)
Keep in mind that the first two options give you untranslated games (the nyaa torrent has thpatch but isn't set up), to patch them see the section on translation patches below. MoriyaShrine offers translated static patches from 6-13.5 and the rest after are Japanese only. Static patches have really bad transitions, however. When a new game is about to come out just lurk /jp/ threads about it, a MEGA link always comes up within the day.

>Purchasing Games
Want to support ZUN and buy his games officially? Please check Touhou Wiki's excellent purchasing guide:
https://en.touhouwiki.net/wiki/Purchasing_Guide
In 2015, ZUN acknowledged the growing demand for an official Touhou in the west and launched (an untranslated) Double Dealing Character (TH14) on Playism:
https://playism.com/product/touhou-kishinjo
In 2017, ZUN made his splash onto Steam and released (an untranslated) Hidden Star in Four Seasons (TH16) through the platform and, in 2018, an officially (poorly) translated version of Antinomy of Common Flowers (TH15.5) along with an (untranslated) Violet Detector (TH16.5): https://store.steampowered.com/search/?developer=上海アリス幻樂団
https://store.steampowered.com/app/716710/_Antinomy_of_Common_Flowers/
By the way, physical copies of the PC-98 games are extremely rare and can't be purchased officially anymore. They rarely crop up on Japanese auction sites but when they do, they always go for thousands of dollars in bid wars. Unless you're rich and patient then getting physical copies of the PC-98 games is just a pipe dream and nothing more.

>How do I play?
Most Touhou games have an in-game guide. There's also each game's article on the Touhou Wiki, which has a dedicated "gameplay" section that dives deep into each game's mechanics and controls. A helpful MoriyaShrine guide is included as well.
Touhou Wiki: https://en.touhouwiki.net
MoriyaShrine Guide: https://moriyashrine.org/shrine-articles/introduction-to-touhou-r1

>Quick Overview of Every Game's Gameplay
PC-98
TH1 - Strange Arkanoid/Breakout clone but with bullet hell elements and bosses
TH2 - First top down STG but primitive to the core with hard-to-see bullets, strange patterns and a slightly off-center invisible hitbox
TH3 - Twinkle Star Sprites (look it up) clone with complex mechanics and local multiplayer vs. mode; generally considered one of the hardest (if not the hardest) Touhou games on lunatic difficulty
TH4&TH5 - Top down STGs that can be considered the first "modern" Touhou games in that they introduce the general formula for the series as a whole (visible hitboxes didn't become a thing until Touhou 7, however)
Windows
TH6-TH8 - Top down STGs; canonical trilogy and what many consider to be the "classic" games (unsurprisingly, they're the most popular games in the series)
TH9 - Another Twinkle Star Sprites clone, although not as hard as the previous one (an online multiplayer fanpatch is available)
TH10-TH17 - Top Down STGs; basically the rest of the mainline series (11, 12, and 15 are considered the hardest Windows games)
TH7.5/TH10.5/TH12.3 - Traditional fighting games; 7.5 has an awkward control scheme while 12.3 is basically an improved version of 10.5 (there used to be a sizable competitive scene for 12.3 but it has since dwindled down to near obscurity)
TH9.5/TH12.5/TH14.3/TH16.5 - "Photo games" that involve utilizing a camera mechanic (or other item in the case of 14.5) to clear large swaths of otherwise (mostly) impossible danmaku patterns; 9.5 and 12.5 are direct sequels of each other, 14.3 focuses on items other than a camera while allowing you to shoot bullets and 16.5 attempts to combine the previous games' mechanics all in one, resulting in a controversial end product
TH13.5/TH14.5/TH15.5 - "Floaty" fighting games; while the production quality vastly improves from the older fighting games, these games differ in that players are not grounded (they're always flying) and in that the gameplay is more focused on projectiles, resulting in a trio of games with next to no competitive scene (they're still fun though) (14.5 has a special updated version on the PS4 with a new story scenes and an exclusive character)
TH12.8 - Great Fairy Wars; basically a normal mainline game but the gimmick here is that everything is harder and in order to stand a chance you need to clear the screen by freezing bullets

>Help, I can't read Japanese!
There's two options. Static patches exist for TH6-13.5 and can be found on MoriyaShrine or on Touhou Wiki pages for those games. thpatch supports every Windows game. Static patches offer horrible translations, thpatchs offers less horrible (although still sketchy) translations. So unless you have a personal vendetta against thpatch or don't mind playing in Japanese then thpatch is the way to go. How do you install it? Check their page on that (btw the nyaa torent has thcrap on it):
https://www.thpatch.net/wiki/Touhou_Patch_Center:Download
"thpatch is a botnet!" - this is a /jp/ meme. No, thpatch is not using your computer to farm bitcoins. It connects to the internet to update translations. People have looked into the botnet conspiracy and have found no such evidence to support a claim like that. If you're still skeptical then you can just block it from connecting to the internet.
PC-98 Games
Currently, only static patches exist for them. They're thankfully way above the quality of the Windows static patches though. They can be found on MoriyaShrine or here:
http://www.mediafire.com/file/yxcg7mvg1lj1i6g/
Oh, and in order to play TH1-TH5 you need to emulate the PC-98. Check this link for a guide on that:
https://www.shrinemaiden.org/forum/index.php/topic,11117.0.html
Warning: Recently it's been reported that some Moriya Shrine downloads do not work with thpatch.

>Other Modifications
Vpatch (this patch is completely necessary if you want to play TH6 at all and it reduces input delay for all other games)
https://en.touhouwiki.net/wiki/Game_Tools_and_Modifications#Vsync_Patches
TH9 Online Multiplayer
https://anonfile.com/gfJap9eab4/
Miscellaneous
http://eientei.boards.net/thread/1105/touhou-patches-compilation
https://maribelhearn.github.io/tools
https://www.shrinemaiden.org/forum/index.php/topic,21105.0.html
https://en.touhouwiki.net/wiki/Game_Tools_and_Modifications
Perhaps you'd find these useful.

>Other Game-Related Links
PoFV/Hisoutensoku Netplay Guide
https://imgur.com/a/ZCGuE
1cc Charts
https://imgur.com/a/Mkl4Q
Replay Guide
https://en.touhouwiki.net/wiki/Replays
Scoring Guide
https://en.touhouwiki.net/wiki/Getting_Started_With_Scoring

>Fangames
There's a lot of Touhou fangames out there and quite a few of them are actually good.
Main Pastebin
https://pastebin.com/Jc2e0wLm
Eroge Pastebin
https://pastebin.com/6CULQcKd
STG-only Fangames
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1fM-goZFQCg3cZyCbHMipD7xWgHme2tOQCENflIoe6YI/
http://www.bulletforge.org/

>Other Touhou Stuff
Official Media Pastebin
https://pastebin.com/JDuiQ3NE
Image Hoarding Guide
https://pastebin.com/hgvtD7SL