Lotus Land Story

Lotus Land Story

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Title screen

Developer:	ZUNSoft / Amusement Makers
Release date:	Demo: July 2, 1998 Full Game: August 12, 1998
Previous game:	Phantasmagoria of Dim. Dream
Next game:	Mystic Square

Lotus Land Story (Japanese name: 東方幻想郷, Touhou Gensoukyou) is the 4th main series Touhou Project game, developed by Amusement Makers in 1998 for the NEC PC-9800 series of computers. It was the first game with several mechanics most associate with Touhou, such as focus, graze, and deathbombing, and in many ways can be considered the first modern Touhou game.

Controls

LLS uses the standard Touhou control scheme.

• Z: Shoot
• X: Bomb
• Shift: Focus

Movement can be done using either the arrow keys or the number pad.

Playable Characters and Shot Types

Lotus Land Story has 2 playable characters, with 2 shot types each. Each shot type has different shot behavior, but the bombs are the same for each shot type.

Reimu Hakurei

Reimu Hakurei			A	B
			Description:	Description:
			Strengths: Weaknesses:	Strengths: Weaknesses:
			General Information:

Marisa Kirisame

Marisa Kirisame			A	B
			Description:	Description:
			Strengths: Weaknesses:	Strengths: Weaknesses:
			General Information:

Difficulty

Lotus Land Story has 4 difficulty modes. The harder difficulties have higher scoring potential. They are:

• Easy
• Normal
• Hard
• Lunatic

The game has 6 stages. To get the bad ending, you must beat Stage 5 on Easy or after having continued. To get the good ending, you must beat Stage 6, which can only be reached on Normal or higher without continuing. If you lose all lives in the final stage, you can't continue and get the bad ending.

It also has an Extra stage, which is treated as its own difficulty mode. It must be unlocked by doing Normal 1cc or higher. It is the only Extra in the series to have 2 bosses, Mugetsu and Gengetsu, who both have a bomb shield. If you attempt to timeout either of them, they both shoot extremely fast and dense bullets.

You can choose between Turbo and Slow mode. Turbo lets your computer handle slowdown, while Slow increases slowdown when many bullets are present. Beating the game on Slow will not record your score. You're forced to play on Turbo in Extra.

Basic Mechanics

Power

As with most Touhou games, Lotus Land Story has a power up system, where you start the game on low power and power up as you collect more red items. You also lose a small amount of power on death. There are small and big power items, small items increasing your power by 1 and big items increasing it by 10. Power starts at 0 and maxes out at 127, and when you reach max power, the screen is cleared of bullets.

Resources

With default settings, you start with 2 extends and have 2 bombs per life. Extends are awarded at 3M, 8M, 15M, 22M and 30M score. The Stage 3 midboss, 2nd Stage 4 midboss and the penultimate Stage 6 enemy also drop extends. You gain a bomb at the end of a stage. The Stage 2 midboss, 1st Stage 4 midboss, one of the Stage 4 enemies and the 3rd to last Stage 6 enemy also drop bombs. You can have 10 extends and 11 bombs in total. In the Extra stage, only the ghost sprite drops an extend, so you can have 8 extends and 2 bombs in total.

Rank

LLS is one of the most rank-affected Touhou games. Rank is a mechanic commonly found in arcade games that makes the game harder the better you play. A more in-depth explanation of the rank system is given later in this article.

Items

Lotus Land Story has several items that serve different purposes, such as gaining power, score, or lives and bombs.

Power Items

Item	Name	Value
File:Touhoupc98smallp.png	Small Power Item	1 Power
File:Touhoupc98bigp.png	Big Power Item	10 Power

Point Items

Item	Name	Value
File:Touhoupc98pointitem.png	Point Item	51,200 points (maximum) + Current Dream Bonus
File:Touhoudreambonusitem.png	Dream Bonus Item	1 Dream Bonus level

Resource Items

Item	Name	Value
File:Touhoupc981up.png	1-Up	1 life
File:Touhoupc98bombitem.png	Bomb Item	1 bomb

Trivia

Lotus Land Story is the last official Touhou traditional shmup without Lunatic No Miss No Bomb.

Kurumi is the only character who is both a midboss and a boss in PC-98.

The ghost sprite in the Extra stage is likely Yuuka Kazami, since she also becomes one when fought in Stage 5 and 6.

Lotus Land Story is the origin of "Bad Apple!!", the Stage 3 theme, which has become popular on the Internet for remixes, the most famous of which is nomico's remix.