Bad Apple!!
| "Bad Apple!!" | |
|---|---|
| Song by ZUN | |
| Released | 14 August 1998 | 
| Genre | |
| Length | 1:22 | 
| Label | ZUN Soft | 
| Composer(s) | ZUN | 
"Bad Apple!!" is the sixth track in the soundtrack of the 1998 shoot 'em up 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. The Lotus Land Story version that has more than 1.4 million views on YouTube 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 known for leading to a much later cover by Alstroemeria Records and a subsequent accompanying black-and-white shadow play 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) as a graphical test. As of January 2025, it has achieved more than 100 million views on YouTube.