Sorry I'm a bit late to the party, but I couldn't let this video pass without a comment. I'd never actually played or known much about this original game until you invited me to collab on it and I'm glad you did. It really is excellent and integrates it's shmup elements so well. Now I'm looking forward to playing it more myself. And if I get to featuring it in some upcoming video of lesser known games, you can bet I'll give this video a shout out for anyone who wants a more in-depth look into the game. I'd never played Touhou until a couple years ago and the more of them I do, the more a fan of them I become. Well not "that" kind of Touhou fan haha, just of the games. Especially the music and how relaxing some are to play despite the bullet barrage.
Wow, glad to see you here SJ, and I’m also not 100% big fan of touhou either, but I enjoy playing these type of shmup games that you’re supporting them
Wow, glad to see you here SJ, and I’m also not 100% big fan of touhou either, but I enjoy playing these type of shmup games that you’re supporting them
I love how you've always got at least one perfectly fitting Simpsons clip every video. Also, with just this video alone, you've already played more 2hu games than the average 2hu fan lol
Fun fact for those who don't know, the famous Bad Apple!! song is a remix by Masayoshi Minoshima and sung by Nomico, it's part of the album Lovelight from the group AlstroemeriaRecords released on 20 May 2007. The original also called Bad Apple!! which is one of the OSTs from Touhou 4 Lotus Land Story
Big thanks, of course, to Shmup Junkie ( @ShmupJunkie ) for reading the ZUN quotes! If you're not already familiar with his channel, then go check it out right away! www.youtube.com/@ShmupJunkie
Hey, great video as always! Just wanted to clear something up. :) 07:36 That was a very old e-mail reply way back from 2003, I think. Even back then, ZUN did confirm the connection in the Q&A section on his website regarding Alice's comeback in Touhou 7 by saying that she's the same character from Touhou 5 (and even before that, in Touhou 6 manual, it was stated that "Chronologically this title is not too far from the previous title, thus her age stays the same as before." in Reimu's profile). Every time people asked ZUN about the PC-98 games after that, his replies were more in tone with 07:20 (iirc, this particular reply was from AWA 2013). I guess after Touhou 6 exploded in popularity, ZUN didn't want to bother the new fans and himself with obsolete hardware (though shortly before the release of Touhou 6, he did sell PC-98 collection CDs containing all five PC-98 Touhou games, and was okay with people playing on emulators), but since people showed interest and because of the nostalgia he had during the creation of the first Windows trilogy (Touhou 6-8), he became more comfortable with his earlier works. Plus, ZUN always preferred creating new characters, and that's why there's so little character comebacks throughout the series. Also, he didn't think about the story of his games seriously until Touhou 10, so there's really no good reason to ignore the PC-98 games. :p
The issue with Touhou canon is that Zun also borrowed some assets from other games for the PC-98, so I can imagine that he doesn't want to consider them in the current iteration of the series (plus Zun isn't the kind of guy that cares a lot with what is canon or not, I remember seeing he even got confused once when asked about it), but still it's interesting how different the foundation of the series was. You can see a lot of Shin Megami Tensei influences in it
It's nice to see any English coverage of the PC-98 era of Touhou, or PC-98 Doujinsoft in general to be perfectly honest, and I'm looking forward to seeing more in the future, especially if you're sourcing direct quotes from ZUN because while it's rare for him to talk about this general era of Touhou, it's always interesting.
@@BasementBrothers How is the lag with that adapter? I was looking at the PJ-01 controller that just plugs right into the keyboard port and emulates key presses, but I have read that it has very noticeable lag.
'Is there a god who's highly responsive to those who pray to him?' Man, it's been over two decades, and we still don't know that god's name, let alone what they're about (Other than dealing with unruly yokai as that's the shrine maiden's job as well as general peacekeeping). Not even Reimu herself knows. It's not until the windows games that the subtitles mean anything as far as I know.
The divining rods are called "harai-gushi," but I didn't know that there was another word for those. Cool to see Shmup Junkie appear in this video. His channel is great.
Doujin is a term for all types of fanmade creations created by one or more person, that means indie game equal doujin game. Meanwhile, doujinshi is a specific term for fanmade printworks like manga, light novels, magazines etc. People often mistaken doujin = adult manga
@@HyperVanilo Ah, thanks for the explanation. When he said Doujin I thought, "wait, like those weird bootleg hentai Dragon Ball Z(Or any other bootleg porn manga I guess)comics?" Lol. Crow T Robot: "I'm headed out to buy some violent porn comics". I love MST3K.
If you can find one at an affordable price, I highly recommend the SPITAL PJ-01 programmable controller. It's great for PC-98 games where a controller is ideal, but the game doesn't support it. Thanks for all you do in providing us with entertaining and comprehensive videos. This has quickly become my favorite channel.
Oh yeah I have seen those. Looks like it probably has even more customization options than my Elecom JC-AD2. Still, I am really satisfied with it to be honest. It more than gets the job done. Not having an easier way to launch bombs in this game is tolerable enough. It is also pretty hard to find and I'm really happy to own one!
I actually only know this series from its overabundance of memes so I had no idea that the very first game wasn't a shmup like the rest, it definitely looks a lot more experimental and genre-bending. Also quite impressive for a one-man project from the 90's, specially when taking into account that this was the first one, Zun's definitely a multi-talented guy.
Covering at least one Touhou PC-98 game was inevitable for this series given its fan following and continual new releases. The 19th mainline game's demo was released only a few months ago.
shout-out for shmup junkie! love his stuff and highly recommended for any shmup fan. never got to check out the touhou series the whole danmaku thing is just way too intimidating, lol. but shmup meets breakout sounds like a very interesting concept for sure. also wouldn't be a basement bros. video without the classic simpsons clips, haha. love watching these!
Awesome video! FYI, the name "Highly Responsive to Prayers" is based on the common english phrase "highly responsive to praise." Love you guys, see you all in Touhou 19!
Looking forward to seeing the other 2hu games on this channel! ^^ I totally forgot that the first game was a breakout like that has more in common with being a football player rather than just a goalie. lol
The fandom of this game is insane! I remember even like 15 years ago while getting back into the anime, how many other anime-watchers associated their interest with Touhou as well. Back then it was something of a combination of niche and grand, and it expanded even further
Interesting. I've never played any of the games in this series, but it reminded me that when my brother visited Japan in '99 he came home with a doujin Hokuto no Ken themed Breakout clone which had an impressive animated opening. I hope he still has this; I forgot all about it until just now.
Oh, my! I was caught by surprise when I recognized the ShmupJunkie voice in the middle of the video (no, I didn't read the full title)! 2 of my top 5 RU-vid creators together!
I like the historical aspects of your video. I'd love to see more of that in future videos. The Japanese video game industry of the 80s and 90s is fascinating.
Nice video! Regardling 5:51 and translation patches, don't underestimate how an English patch -- even in games that seem playable without Japanese skills -- can communicate to the player that they're not going to run into an unexpected roadblock. There are games in which, out of nowhere, you suddenly need to know Japanese or you won't know what's going on or or won't be able to progress. Think of a game like Wagyan Land on the Famicom, which seems like a standard 8-bit platformer with cute graphics until you hit those Godforsaken shiritori segments. It's also nice to know what the plot is, get hints in the dialogue, etc. But really the #1 thing is that, if there's a completed patch, then you know the game has been vetted as ready for English speakers (who don't speak Japanese). Even a patch that just puts the title screen in English is a way of confirming that there's no other Japanese in the game. (And people often get that wrong on lists of "English-friendly import titles" -- something that too often means "English-friendly import titles *when played with a walkthrough*" -- though now at least we have translation software on smart phones to help plug the gap.)
That's an interesting perspective and it's rare, to be honest, that I personally ever think much about English patches. It's awesome that there are some dedicated fans out there with the time and know-how who have patched some of these old 90's games for us! Back in the 90's, English patches were virtually not a thing, and if we wanted to experience a game that obviously wasn't ever going to get an official release in the West, we just imported it and struggled through in Japanese - even if it was an RPG. Finishing Ys IV and Emerald Dragon on the PCE while hardly understanding a word was one of those experiences that lead me to eventually learning Japanese and made me who I am today. So, I guess, though I understand most people are not going to learn Japanese (and I would never recommend learning it JUST to play games), and I also understand that every person has their own way of enjoying games - for many not understanding RPG text is a dealbreaker. Still, I feel it is also a bit of a shame when people pass up on experiencing great games just because there is no English patch. Sorry for the rant.
@@BasementBrothers Thank you for the thoughtful reply! I've actually made a few translation patches myself despite knowing very little Japanese -- all simple games with little text -- so I'm glad to have contributed in a tiny way. Would love to learn Japanese but don't have the bandwidth to get beyond the absolute basics. I find that playing games in a language I don't understand can feel hollow, so I'm usually happy to wait for the patch (though I've beaten a fair few imports in their original form). My main point was just that every game with any Japanese text (or Korean, Chinese, etc.) benefits from a translation patch, even action games with little dialogue, because it indicates that someone went through the whole thing and made sure there's no unlocalized text. That means a lot to the player, especially if you've been burned a few times; it's like a seal of approval (if the team is good) saying yes, you can get the full experience of this game. That said, the lack of a manual can be just as much of a problem. Often the issue isn't that I can't figure out how to play a game, but that the manual contains crucial revelations, hints, or codes you're meant to use. I'm very grateful for manual translations, and for scanned originals so that I can use a translator app and get the gist.
Yeah, YU-NO's soundtrack is amazing, but my personal favorites will always be Falcom: Legend of Heroes III and IV, and the Brandish games specifically. Personal favorites also include Farland Story: Daichi no Kizuna, and the strategy game "Metajo". "Flame Zapper Kotsujin" is awesome too, though it doesn't have that many tracks. Those are the first ones that come to mind anyway.
Amazing video! I am a massive Touhou fan and have played all the Touhou PC-98 games to death. I'm very interested in your PC-98 game series as I am curious what else is out there.
According to a person who reverse engineered the game's code, the way the drop items work are: 1. At the beginning of a 5 stage section, set random value to between 0 and 59. 2. Every time you hit a tile, increment it by 1. 3. Every multiple of 10, a point item will drop. 4. At 140, * if there is no active bomb *, a bomb item will drop; after running this step, value resets to 1.
Oh man. Knowing that about the bombs, it might be possible to try to time it so you can get a few extra bombs. You'd have to know when NOT to use one. I thought there must be some logic to when they drop (at first thinking they probably drop in certain stages, but when I tested that it wasn't the case). I'll have to try messing with that next time I play.
@@BasementBrothers Basically the reason why is rarely shows up it because the game skips it if you're in middle of using a bomb, and then it's back to 1. The weird out of place bomb items in SoEW are truly random though (unlike other items, which are either hardcoded as a drop, or for power and point, are dropped in a predictable sequence for every 4th enemy that doesn't have a fixed drop, with the game also randomly picking where in sequence you start at the beginning of each stage), where it's a 1/512 chance to replace a non-fixed drop. Enough things going on to give illusion of RNG, but only one thing actually uses RNG. If you want to read more, the website is called ReC98, though only HRtP has been fully explained right now.
This game was the first time i ever heard of japanese computer. In 2007 near the launch of Touhou 10 i discovered the whole series and was surprised to see that actually, Japanese didn't had IBM PC like us ! Of course it couldn't have been different but i never bothered myself with that question at the time. That game was so mysterious to me, on a unknown platform, with strange abstract background, stuff that i didn't knew if it was a graphical glitch due to the emulator or not... Then little by little, i tried to knew more about the platform, found what seemed like the cradle of Japanese RPGs and a lot of cool game. I found the original Corpse Party, played a lot of all those Ultima ports and of course a lot of Falcom game ( especially the firsts Ys / Dragon Slayers ) and a little of Farland Story... Because it was translated. I still think about Legend of Heroes II regularly so i think i liked the game way more than i originally thought. Azteka seems fascinating to me because that's the first game of Tomashi Miyazaki and his tandem programmer before they made Ys and then Quintet game. ( They LOVE their lost civilization) It seems very hard to play with actual verb to fill unfortunately though. Still, Touhou 1 feels like the one that started this fascination so it's really strange to see it there. For a moment i thought you had the original but no of course ah ah. Still, seeing that cute Yin Yan Orb ASCII Art in the installer is something. Thank for what you do.
The first Touhou is very cool. It's good that you covered this often overlooked classic. I am not a big fan of top-down shooters, so I do wish they had made more Break Out clones. At least the Touhou spinoffs vary up the game play style.
Oh! Interesting.. I've always seen Touhou figures and such. Didn't know it was a one-man-creation and that's impressive! Even Good Smile Company has made quality stuff from this franchise.
Zun at taito? This was news to me. Let me save you a trip to google, random people that read this, and paste a line about what worked on with them. "During his career at Taito, ZUN helped work on Greatest Striker, Magic Pengel: The Quest for Color, Bujingai, Graffiti Kingdom and Exit, as well as some other games that were ultimately cancelled."
Yeah. There wasn't anything particularly noteworthy, which is the reason I ended up not actually listing any of the games in the video. Thanks for the comment.
14:32 I've seen some Touhou sheet music and ZUN really likes to borrow notes and chords from scales outside the main one quite frequently. The rhytms are also very odd in a good way. Maybe that's part of the reason why it sounds that way
Wow, you have the ShmupJunkie! I follow him too, I mean I watch and enjoy his videos as well as yours, not like a stalker or anything like that, promise! 😇
@@BasementBrothers Yup! They sadly weren't able to get the rights back when M2 ported it to the Mega Drive in 2022, but at least they used OMY's pastiche song Ryzeen as a compromise.
10:52 You can actually get multiple bombs when you start the game, but you will need to hex edit the config file. Its an unused function but just to clarify.
Touhou is great, I especially love the music from the franchise. My favorite thing is all the fan covers in different styles of music. Demetori with metal versions of Touhou songs. Also all the great eurobeat versions on RU-vid. Such memorable melodies.
Huh, this is a surprise for sure, but a welcome one. Also you know what sucks about the soundtrack - is that on YT the TH5 Music Room version of it is more widely spread than the original. Every remix on this earth uses the MS structure instead of the original, which was superior for the most part. Why did i bring that up? Uhh... no reason. Absolutely no reason haha...
After binging a lot of your videos over the past week lol - xzr, xak, legend of heroes, YS, and a few Nihon falcom history vids and others- I'm convinced that you put up with the pain of playing with that controller and it's set up to make it function is a sign of pleasure for you lol or pain or a mix of both.
What the little MSX controller? I've heard people say it's unusable due to the small size, but I've never really minded the size. The dpad on that controller is actually fine. I like it. Nowadays I usually just use a Genesis 6-button pad instead, though, via an adapter. Thanks for watching all the videos!
Cool to see the collabs :D I'm not big into anime or waifus, but I sure do have like a billion 2hu games on Steam. It just creeps in there somehow I swear.
This was definitely a surprise to see in my subscription feed, but it was a pleasant one. Touhou 1 and a lot of the PC98 games in general don't get much attention in general by the Touhou fandom, so this was a fun watch, especially seeing it being played on original hardware. I hope you end up doing videos on the other Touhou PC98 games as well as more doujin games in general, since they tend to be overlooked a lot. (I also noticed you mentioned Pocky and Rocky when discussing Reimu's gohei, but you didn't mention that Reimu's original design was inspired by Sayo-chan (or Pocky) from the same series. )
@@BasementBrothers According to an interview in 2021 with Zun and Creative Train of Yostar, Zun mentioned he was a big fan of Kiki Kaikai and drew a lot of the general setting and character ideas from that series. Apart from Reimu's design, there was also the Bakebake enemies that appear in Touhou 2-5 being pulled directly from Kiki Kaikai. He also drew inspiration from The Legend of Kage by naming a song in Touhou 1 after that game. Apparently he also drew inspiration Megami Tensei, but I haven't played those games yet, so I can't confirm that.
Hey, can I request a game for a future episode? Two games actually... Thunder Force I and II. As a North American fan its hard to find any info or see any video about Thunder Force I especially, and I'd love for them to be covered by someone who also summarizes the story elements (I'm a weirdo who actually likes playing shmups for their story). And from what I know Thunder Force II on the Sharp X68000 apparently has material the Genesis version does not.
This is a rather pointless aside but I it struck me as interesting at least. The idea of these old Touhou floppies going for thousands of dollars is an interesting example of the subjective and somewhat ephemeral nature of collecting. For instance, while many collectible items are basically impossible to reproduce for various logistical reasons, a doujin game kind of isn't. Though I doubt the creator of Touhou would have any reason to do so, I assume he's quite well off financially, he could just boot up his old PC, with a stack of floppies from the 90's (which aren't that hard to come by. I might have a stack in the closet myself) and make more that would be indistinguishable from the ones currently being sold for high prices. The hardest bit to replicate would be the labels. Unless of course he still has the old printer he used back then in which case, again, indistinguishable. It'd be the same source code, written to disk on the same PC, with labels printed from the same printer, etc, etc. Now obviously that's a lot of "If's" needed. Not everyone is a pack rat, all these old things I'm talking about could easily be loooong gone and indeed then unreplaceable. But it's more of a thought experiment; What does it mean for the concept of value when something of such limited quantity could be reproduced? And not even reproduced, but using the same bog standard consumer level original equipment, simply produced in further quantity? For as unlikely as that is to happen, it is still supremely possible. What difference is there between a Touhou floppy from 1995 and a floppy from 1995 that only had Touhou written onto it in 2023? Hmmm.
The first Touhou certainly is different from the others. I wonder why Zun never bothered to go back to this style of game on Windows. I guess he figured the series was too well known as a shmup, but then again, there are the fighters that he had that other group do, so I dunno.
I find your controller use interesting, as the Touhou games made me associate keyboard controls with shumps. Also factoring in the fact that you collect and play NEC PC games I would figure that you wouldve broken down and use the keyboard for games already. Or is it a bit to show the hackery it takes to use the peripherals?
It's a bit... and I grew up a console gamer so have an aversion to playing action games with a keyboard. Overall, the keyboard emulator works great so I'm going to continue to use it! Zun also mentions in one video I found on youtube that he also had one for PC-98.
My friend got this years back and that was the first time I heard of Touhou. Fast forwards twenty or so years later; this is the first time I am told the game series isn't a Breakout anymore. It's a shooter now? When did that happen?
The way lives are handled in the game is very, very interesting and great game design, especially for the time. Unfortunately I don't like the genre, but I respect the Touhou games.
Wait, so Touhou is actually a specific game series made by one person? I always thought it was kind of shorthand for a Shmup. So is the Metroidvania Touhou Luna Nights part of this series? That's the only one I can ever recall playing. Does this Zun person let others make Touhou games as well? Or did he work on Touhou Luna Nights too?
So the prayer stick thing is called a gohei... what are the cards called? I imagine the game is called "Highly Responsive to Prayer" because the girl is using the power of prayers to make the ball bounce. Or because you'll think its a miracle you survived the bosses. Or maybe its telling you its an easy way to fire off bombs when in a fix. Or.... Personally I'm more curious about the title "the Last Dream of All Living Ghost."
Ofuda. They're basically strips of (usually) paper with calligraphy on them that serve as talismans, wards against evil spirits and such. In reality people just stick them onto walls or whatever they want protected, but it's a common trope in manga and anime for exorcists to throw ofuda at a demon or ghost to seal it, effectively making them projectiles (Ghost Sweeper Mikami even has them fired from machine guns), which ended up influencing video games as well. Kiki Kaikai/Pocky & Rocky, the original miko shooter does the same thing.
Same! I don't know if it's obvious from the video, but I haven't really played much of the Touhou series either. This video is pretty much an "outsider's perspective" (even though I tried to do due diligence and present the facts accurately). This was the first time I sat down and tried to finish... and then actually get good at one. I was surprised how addicted I became to this game! Also learning about Zun was an eye-opener. I had heard that he makes these games all on his own, but only now did I really start thinking about what that means, and how much dedication that takes! Also, Zun just seems like a really cool guy, and I can relate to his love for beer!
I find it hard to get into this series now if you weren't a fan already since the beginning (or at least since the beginning of the Windows titles), since there are just so many titles, including spin-offs. I also tend to have some prejudice with games/series which are overrated/overhyped (for quite some time this was basically the only shmup series people would ever talk about, and a lot of people until now acts as if these games invented bullet hell or floating characters), to the point that I won't even want to try them.
The solution is take your time and read wiki, you don't have to know everything in one day. Look at me, I've been in this fandom for 7 years and I only read the official materials once, I don't read the fighting games' dialogue, the last time I played the game is 2 years ago
As much as I like schmups I never liked Touhou and eventually developed a dislike to the series because of the type of people who are fans. I've had bad run ins and had to defend myself resulting in death three times because of them. Touhou will always hold a place in my mind as a clarion call to violent extremists.
