#Touhou 4: Lotus Land Story

[sleepingterrors]

PC-98 yuuka i love you touhou 4

[asanasterisk]

Orange you glad

[flowersandcandy06]

I made some good ol' Gengetsu fanart yesterday or so lol

(+ Alternate versions under the cut)

I'm surprised I haven't made that much Touhou fanart considering my obsession with it but. Yea 👍

[tkinoiitalian]

Elly!

[its-to-the-death]

Villain Song Showdown Preliminary Round #4

The top two will make it into the bracket

Mod comment: I overlooked the fact that the Betty Loop cartoon is 3 different songs in the same short so I guess we're counting the whole short together.

Songs below the cut

Solar Sect of Mystic Wisdom ~ Nuclear Fusion - Villain: Utsuho Reiuiji

Cute Devil ~ Innocence - Villain: Gengetsu

U.N. Owen Was Her? - Villain: Flandre Scarlet

Beloved Tomboyish Girl - Villain: Cirno

Pierrot of the Star-Spangled Banner - Villain: Clownpiece

Legendary Illusion ~ Infinite Beong - Villain: Shinki

Be More Chill Part 1 - Villain: The Squip

The Play - Villain: The Squip

Here Comes a Savior - Villain: Agent Rainbow

The Old Man of the Mountain/You Gotta Ho-De-Ho/The Scat Song Medley - Villain: The Old Man of the Mountain

[xensergal]

low tier kirisame

[sneakyscarab]

hello! it's been a while since ive written out my thoughts about touhou! part of the reason why is that i've been working on a website of my own, which now hosts all my grimoire of nina entries with enhanced bonus features! plus a lot of other things on other pages but this is the relevant part to this post. i'm not sure whether i want to continue making tumblr versions of the posts now that i've set this up, but for now im gonna do both a tumblr edition and a neocities edition. with that out of the way lets get started on...

Touhou 1-5 PC98 Extravaganza!

after finishing the main series (and taking a probably needed break from bullet hells for a bit) I went back to the beginning and checked out the first wave of Touhou, the 5 PC98 games!

putting this up front, while i absolutely respect what these games did to kick off the series and get things going, i cant say i was very fond of them, so the overall tone of this writing is on the neutral to negative side. just something i feel i should note. with that said, let’s get started.

Touhou 1 - Highly Responsive to Prayers

Highly Responsive to Prayers is a weird game. contrary to what one would expect, the First Touhou Game is not a vertical scrolling shooter like others. HRtP is instead a sort of breakout/arkanoid type game, where you control a miko-shaped paddle named Reimu running back and forth bouncing a giant yin-yang orb that clears up tiles, beating a stage once you’ve cleared the screen. it does actually have whispers of the series’ future though, with turrets in levels that shoot bullets towards you, Reimu having a amulet-shooting ability (influence the orb's movement), screen-clearing bombs, and menacing boss fights.

you heard me right, this breakout clone has boss fights, and theyre kinda wild. every 5th stage is a boss, which have big hitboxes and shoot out tons of bullets and other attacks which you have to simultaneously avoid while also manipulating your orb in order to hit the boss (because only the orb does damage). After beating the first boss youre given a branching path between Makai or Hell, and either choice gives you 15 more stages for a total of 20.

overall HRtP is a very bizarre and not particularly great game, but its uniqueness makes it really stand out, and if you're in the market to play a weird breakout/bullet hell game for whatever reason you should try it out.

Touhou 2 - Story of Eastern Wonderland

now This is a Touhou game! released alongside HRtP at Comiket 52, Story of Eastern Wonderland is what i would say is the true first Touhou game, being a vertical scrolling shooter with 6 stages, fancy boss fights, and ridiculous characters.

right out of the gate SoEW shows off how wacky the PC98 era lore is, with the first stage containing not one but two military tanks as boss fights. the third stage's boss as well is a weird metallic wall with 5 "eyes" and innumerable laser cannons. its wild. as for gameplay, it's pretty much what you would consider Standard Touhou, although with some features missing that havent been invented yet, notably the movement-slowing Focus mechanic.

one interesting thing about this game is the colour choice: likely due to palette restrictions pretty much the entire game is a combo of red+purple, with the occasional blue+green sprites. even marisa is not immune, having bright red hair only in this game alongside a purple robe+hat.

its very surprising how close SoEW already is to the modern gameplay loop, although i guess it shouldnt be Too surprising considering scrolling shooters are like one of the first game genres ever made. its a pretty fun time, but also pretty rough around the edges.

Touhou 3 - Phantasmagoria of Dim. Dream

if you thought we would stablize into the regular style now that we've seen SoEW, you'd be off the mark. Phantasmagoria of Dim Dream is actually a VS game in the same style as the later PoFV and UDoALG titles! it was really surprising to me seeing just how much experimentation was going on with the series this early in its lifespan, but I suppose that happened a lot back then.

in terms of gameplay PoDD plays surprisingly similar to PoFV, with the same enemy combos, sending spells at each other through a charge meter, and summoning yourself as a boss fight on the other guy's screen as an ultimate move. it even has the same insane boss summon rebound mechanic and the same cheating bastard final boss ai!

one funny difference is that, since faeries hadnt yet been established as go-to mooks, the enemies during duels are a variety of random things. besides ghosts you just have star, moon, or heart shapes with ' ' and ^^ faces. theyre so abstract I kinda love it lol.

like SoEW its surprisingly functional for its age, although also like that game it still lacks features like focus, leaving it being unpolished in comparison to newer variations of this formula. unless youre a PC98 enthusiast id recommend playing PoFV or UDoALG instead, especially since the multiplayer on this one is local-only.

Touhou 4 - Lotus Land Story

now things are starting to standardize. Lotus Land Story is another vertical scrolling shooter and adds in a bunch of features not in SoEW that would go on to be series mainstays: focus, boss phases, boss item drops, and most notably having Marisa as a deuteragonist! if SoEW was a standard touhou missing some features, LLS is taking steps to a full on touhou game, missing just a few mechanics from EoSD, notably the spell card system and point-of-collection line.

LLS is also notable for a few other reasons, one being the character Yuuka who is one of the few PC98 characters to get remade in the windows games, and the other being the origin of the iconic song Bad Apple!! which got remixed by nomico and memed half to death.

Its pretty good, albeit still rough around the edges and missing the sort of spark thats found in later entries.

Touhou 5 - Mystic Square

Mystic Square is where we settle in, playing identical to LLS, which means theres not much to talk about. there are 2 more playable characters than LLS, with both Mima and Yuuka. Mystic Square also includes the 4th and final PC98 character to get remade later in the Windows canon, Alice Margatroid. besides the name and the blonde hair though theres pretty much nothing connecting the two Alices together. if you liked Lotus Land Story you'll probably like this too, i dunno.

alrighty with all those games out of the way its time to talk about the characters of note. and of course if theres one name thats synonymous with PC98 its...

Mima! appearing in four of the five games of this era, Mima is the most consistent character besides Reimu and Marisa, and yet she has never been seen since Mystic Square. this may be a hot take, but i think Mima is emblematic of a lot of the qualities of this era that make it hard to get into from a story perspective. for starters, Mima is incredibly inconsistent. She shows up 4 times and is basically a different character each time; being a random Hell boss in HRtP, a vengeful spirit bent on destroying all humanity (except Marisa i guess?) in SoEW, a woman of few words and a short temper in PoDD, and a snarky bully who tells blatant lies just to see how people react in MS. she also has a weird conceptual design and wack power scaling, being a ghost who was never alive, always been a ghost, who also for some reason has like dragon wings but only when she gets angry (Marisa also has these in PoDD which is really bizarre) and shes able to simply escape being magically sealed away as if she was cracking the seal on a pickle jar and casually beats up everyone in Mystic Square without even blinking. While i do like elements of her character (her lying bastard personality from MS is pretty funny and I see why people would want that back) i think its for the best that she stays in the PC98 era, the one seal she cannot break free of. If she were to come back, so much would have to be rewritten either of the world around her or Mima herself that she would basically be a different character entirely, which i think would cause way more drama than her return is worth.

moving on, lets talk about Genjii! this old fart is basically Reimu's grandpa who is also a magical flying turtle. since Reimu doesnt know how to fly in these games, her pops Genjii gives her a ride whenever she needs to go solve an incident. He also acts as a straight-man to Reimu's comedy in her storylines, often questioning the bizarre things that she says or weird noises she makes. he's just a funny turtle grandpa and i'm here for it. while Genjii has never officially appeared in a game in the Windows era, ZUN has stated that the reason is that he's just enjoying his retirement. Reimu can fly on her own now, so he's just resting in the pond out behind the shrine, doing whatever it is grandpa turtles do in their free time. good for him :>

the last character spotlight is for Meira! she's a cool samurai lady from stage 2 of SoEW who was also Reimu's gay awakening :P (for context, Meira and Reimu's pre-battle conversation is a bit where Meira claims to seek the Hakurei Maiden [for her power] but Reimu assumes that Meira's hitting on her. After clarifying that Meira wants to fight Reimu and take her power after winning, Reimu counter-offers by implying that she'll take Meira as her girlfriend if she wins.) this was almost certainly just intended as a joke, but considering that Touhou Project is basically a yuri wonderland its very funny to see gay implications in literally the second spoken conversation in the entire series. besides that, Meira also has cool attacks utilizing her sword where she makes huge slashes in the air that explode into bullets after a second, which were probably inspiration for Youmu's sick swordplay five games later.

and thats the PC98 era! with these games under my belt ive now played each whole-numbered entry in the series, woo~! so having played them all, what are my thoughts on the origins of Touhou?

i'll start by clarifying that i am generally not a 'Retro Gamer'. while i acknowledge the importance of early entries into series, they are very frequently rough, unpolished, or just straight up unfun because the devs are still working out the kinks on how they want the series to go. this is doubly so for games from this pre-2000s era, where game design in general was still a new concept and most games were working off arcade standards of high difficulty to steal quarters. early Touhou is not exempt from this, these games are missing a lot of features added later that make the games more fun, and the difficulty is much higher with a lot more 'bullshit' design like bullets that spawn on your character or a lack of proper resources given on respawn leading to a cycle of death.

all said, i cant say i really enjoyed my time with the PC98 titles. you may have noticed that i didn't mention 1cc runs so far in this article, and the reason for that is i couldnt find the motivation to keep trying for more runs like i did with the future games. mix that in with the bizarre, nonsensical, and often self-contradictory writing and you have a recipe for mediocrity. PoDD in particular is an absolute dearth of writing and worldbuilding. most character interactoins are like one sentence long, and the plot involves two scientists on a "Probability Space Hypervessel" who somehow invited in the characters from Gensokyo to the real world so that they could capture them and steal their magic for clout. In Marisa's route after she beats them up they give her a weapon as a reward which is a ICBM with a smiley face that Marisa names Mimi-chan and rides around instead of her broom. like its all so ridiculous you can just tell that these were like student projects done by a dude in his free time and not a serious attempt at making a world or story.

overall i just really have trouble finding passion for these titles compared to the later entries, to the point that i had to shove all 5 of these games into a single article and its about as much writing as Subterranean Animism alone. im sorry if youre a big PC98 and/or Mima enjoyer but theyre not for me, and i have to say im glad that Touhou moved on and evolved past this point.

thank you for reading, and i'll see you next time, whenever that is!

[leaslichoma]

I've been troubleshooting Touhou Project 4 Lotus Land story to figure out why I'm freezing at Yuuka Kazami. I've been running the game with Neko Project 21. The default settings for the game cause a lot of lag for me, so I have to change them. I've been changing the memory to 640kb rather than default 1.6mb to and found reduced lag and have also lowered the cpu cycles and maxxed the soundrate. While this greatly reduces lag, with these settings I'm freezing at Yuuka.

Just ran through the game with 1.6mb RAM with moderately reduced CPU cycles and 55k sound rate and this has let me fight Yuuka at the cost of lag. 640kb should already have been over the requirements, so I don't know why it causes freezing. The game's review thing said I wasn't experiences slowdown.

[doyoulikethis-videogame-song]

Song: Bad Apple!! Artist: ZUN From: Touhou Gensoukyou ~ Lotus Land Story (aka Touhou 4)

Listen on Youtube:

[officerkotohime]

All Touhou games ranked based on how much their names make sense as game names in English:

Category 1: Perfect sense, no questions Legacy of Lunatic Kingdom Story of Eastern Wonderland Lotus Land Story Shoot the Bullet

Category 2: Makes sense but I might've guessed it was a book or something Urban Legend in Limbo Great Fairy Wars Mountain of Faith Sunken Fossil World Ten Desires Mystic Square

Category 3: These are just like... statements Perfect Cherry Blossom 100th Black Market Impossible Spell Card Hopeless Masquerade Highly Responsive to Prayers

Category 4: What Violet Detector Double Dealing Character Double Spoiler Imperishable Night Embodiment of Scarlet Devil Wily Beast and Weakest Creature Immaterial and Missing Power Undefined Fantastic Object

Category 5: 𝓦𝓱𝓪𝓽 Unconnected Marketeers Antinomy of Common Flowers Phantasmagoria of Flower View Subterranean Animism Scarlet Weather Rhapsody Unfinished Dream of All Living Ghost Phantasmagoria of Dim.Dream Hidden Star in Four Seasons

Excluded for not being in English: Touhou Hisoutensoku

[raish-ryeson-robinson-i]

You ever wanted to turn Terraria into Touhou?

If so, Here's a list of Mods/Resource Packs from the collection of mine to help you fulfill that.

(Put the cut because it's a long list.)

Mods (TModLoader):

Gensokyo - A medium sized content mod that brings in 21 Bosses (Split into 7 Tiers), a Miniboss, a Town NPC, 22 new enemies, 22 new music tracks, 47 vanity sets, and 180+ items. This mod has a wiki.

Kourindou - A mod that adds in several Fumos into the game. Fully compatible with Gensokyo so that the bosses drop their respective Fumos.

Touhou Little Friends ~ Adventure with Cute Partners - Adds in several characters as pets and Light Pets. Bosses have a 30% chance to drop them (I got 4 at once from a single boss), certain enemies can drop them at a 5% chance, some can be crafted. Additionally, You can buy them from the Mysterious Gap for 2 Gold Coins a piece.

Touhou NPC - Brings in several characters as NPC's.

Junko and Friends - Adds some Touhou stuff, but not just Touhou stuff.

Resource packs (Vanilla/TModLoader, though I wouldn't recommend using a ton on TModLoader)

Yukari Yakumo as Lunatic Cultist - Replaces The Lunatic Cultist to be Yukari Yakumo. Other Lunatic Cultist attacks are also resprited to be Yukari themed.

TOUHOU WEAPONS: Reimu's Fantasy Heaven! - Replaces the Bat Scepter to the paper talismans that Reimu uses.

【Touhou】 Cirno - Replaces the Flickerwick Light Pet with Cirno.

Power and Point Pickups - Replaces Heart pickups as Power Boxes and Mana Stars as Point Boxes (Doesn't replace the Halloween or Christmas variants).

Yukkuri Reimu - Replaces the Vampire Frog to a Yukkuri Reimu.

Bunny with the Suit - Makes all the normal rabbits have suits.

Bunny with the Suit (Golden Variant) - Makes all Gold Rabbits have suits.

Bunny with the Suit (Pet Version) - Makes the Rabbit Pet have a suit.

【Touhou】 Moriya Suwako - Replaces the Little Plantero with Suwako Moriya.

Touhou music replacement - Replaces Terraria music with Touhou music. There are more out there, but this is the one I use.

Cirno Smokin' a Fat Blunt - Replaces the Baby Snowman to Cirno smoking a fat blunt.

Touhou Death Sound - Replaces the normal death sound with the Touhou one.

Mini-Hakkero [Touhou] - Replaces the Last Prism to the Mini-Hakkero,

Tsukasa Kudamaki from Touhou 18 - Replacesthe Spiffo Plush to Tsukasa Kudamaki.

Wakasagihime Pet (Project Touhou) - Replaces the baby Shark pet to Wakasagihime.

Yuuka Kazami replaces Dryad - Replaces the Dryad to Yuuka, and the Shimmered version as the Lotus Land Story version.

Cuter Giant Bow - Not exactly Touhou related, but it makes the Giant Bow more pleasing to look at.

Mokou cosplay - Replaces the Santa set with Fujiwara no Mokou's outfit.

Touhou Wings - Replaces Solar Wings with Flandre's Wings and Frozen Wings with Cirno's Wings.

[TOUHOU] Brain of Cthulhu to Flandre Scarlet - Replaces the Brain of Cthulhu with Flandre Scarlet.

【Touhou】 Izayoi Sakuya - Replaces the Tiny Deerclops with Sakuya Izayoi.

【東方】 TouHou Flandre Scarlet HD NPC - Replaces the Demolitionist with Flandre Scarlet.

Terraria Touhou Resource Pack (alpha) - Replaces various things as some Touhou Characters.

Hakurei Staff - Replaces the Mushroom Spear with Reimu's Gohei.

Mourningwood Mokou - Replaces the Mounringwood Miniboss with Fujiwara no Mokou.

Golem Kaguya Houraisan Head - Replaces Golem's head with Kaguya's head.

Touhou - Marisa Kirisame Hats - Replaces the Wizard Hat with Marisa's Hisoutensoku hat, the Wizard's Hat with the Windows games hat, and the Rune Hat with the PC-98 Hat.

Touhou Fumos replace Slime Pets - Replaces the Slime Prince with a Cirno Fumo and the Slime Princess with a Reimu Fumo.

Touhou HP and MP UI (and Nier?) - Changes the Look of the HP and Mana on Classic and elegant Style. Classic looks like the PC-98 games, Elegant looks like Post Touhou 13, Changes as well the Heart and Star items that recover Mana/HP. The air bar is changed for the blue stars and the Lava resistance bar is changed to the Red stars.

Patchouli Knowledge Set from Touhou Project - Changes Cenx's Dev Set to Patchouli Knowledge's clothing.

Touhou Luna nights max mana sound - Just replaces the max Mana sound to a sound from Luna Nights (I have not played Luna Nights, so I don't know what sound it is exactly.

Menacing Blizzard in a Bottle (Bottled Cirno) - Replaces Blizzard in a Bottle with Bottled Cirno.

Project Terra-Hou - Changes various things to be Touhou things.

TOUHOU WEAPONS: Yuyuko's Resurrection Butterfly! - Replaces the Sky Fracture into Yuyuko Saigyouji's fan.

Boss Health Bar - Based on the Touhou HP and MP UI pack, but for the Boss Health bar.

Better Wings - Makes some of the wings look better, references Cirno in the Frozen Wings and Flandre in the Festive Wings.

Touhou Weapons - Replaces a few Melee weapons with some of Remilia's attacks from Scarlet Weather Rhapsody and Hisoutensoku.

[doyouknowthischaracter]

The STATS SPREADSHEET is up-to-date!

Following the link above, you can find an overall top of all the polls that have ended so far, as well as a breakdown by categories, each sorted by percentages and number of votes separately. Enjoy and please let me know if you spot any mistakes or typos! (But please be kind about it, this was a lot of work 😭)

Below is a quick summary!

MOST WELL-KNOWN CHARACTERS

by percentage — Cinderella (Disney's Cinderella), Batman (DC Comics), Dracula (Dracula by Bram Stoker)

by number of votes — Grantaire (Les Misérables), Hawkeye Pierce (M*A*S*H), Dracula (Dracula by Bram Stoker)

LEAST WELL-KNOWN CHARACTERS

by percentage — Richard Karinsky (Caroline in the City) tied with Full-Tilt (Beast Wars: Uprising), Beverly Switzler (Marvel Comics), SAM LINNFER (Waywalkers & Timekeepers by Catherine Webb)

by number of votes — Full-Tilt (Beast Wars: Uprising), Beverly Switzler (Marvel Comics), Sam Linnefer (Waywalkers & Timekeepers by Catherine Webb)

MOST HEARD OF CHARACTER

by percentage — Howard the Duck (Marvel Comics)

by number of votes — Hawkeye Pierce (M*A*S*H)

LEAST HEARD OF CHARACTER

by percentage — Sam Linnefer (Waywalkers & Timekeepers by Catherine Webb)

by number of votes — Sam Linnefer (Waywalkers & Timekeepers by Catherine Webb)

MOST NUMBER OF VOTES — Grantaire (Les Misérables)

LEAST NUMBER OF VOTES — Kurumi (Touhou 4: Lotus Land Story)

[noctiilio]

Little doodles of my two turbo-hyperfixations together...

blorbo baby twins from touhou 4: Lotus Land Story meet blorbo baby twins from final fantasy XIV.... and become best friends

it's just that shrimple

[yolomichaelz95]

Drew these two 'w' From Touhou 4: Lotus Land Story~

[angrysunflower222]

I had a dream where, like, the world was going to end and me and my mom were gonna do 2 different things...one of them was making a crown fsr, and then my mom made me do the crown making because I walked the right side of the stairs like I'm supposed to. Anyways, I cried the whole time I was in the room and then I left. Then I started talking about Touhou 4 (lotus land story) to her to try to get me out of crown making? I don't remember much else.