Bad Apple!!

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"Bad Apple!!"
Cover art of Lotus Land Story
Song by ZUN
Released	14 August 1998 (1998-08-14)
Genre	Electronic chiptune
Length	1:22
Label	ZUN Soft
Composer(s)	ZUN

"Bad Apple!!" is the sixth track in the soundtrack of the 1998 bullet hell video game Lotus Land Story, the fourth entry in the Touhou Project series created by Team Shanghai Alice. The instrumental theme was originally designed to be played during the third stage of the game, as chiptune on the Japanese NEC PC-9800 computer platform, at 161 beats per minute using a frequency modulation synthesis chip.^[1] The Lotus Land Story version that has more than 1.4 million views on YouTube^[2] is a remake of the song from an official Touhou album named Akyu's Untouched Score Volume 1 and was released on 21 May 2006.

It is notable for leading to a much later cover by Alstroemeria Records and a subsequent accompanying black-and-white shadow puppet-video – commonly called Shadow-art. The video became a Japanese internet meme in the late 2000s, correlating with the peak of Touhou's popularity, and experienced a resurgence in the mid-2010s when the black-and-white video was ported to esoteric media such as obsolete hardware, displays created within sandbox video games (e.g. Minecraft), and other unusual media (such as a mechanical television)^[3] as a graphical test. As of August 2024, it has achieved more than 90 million views on YouTube.^[4]

Since then, Alstroemeria Records' version has been licensed to various other video game companies that acquired a Touhou licence, and has been guest featured in many rhythm games such as Dance Dance Revolution, Groove Coaster, Muse Dash, maimai and Hatsune Miku: Colorful Stage!. It has even been used in officially licensed spin-offs such as Touhou Spell Bubble as the game's tutorial track and free play song.