Touhou 2: The Story of Eastern Wonderland (Drillimation)

Touhou 2: The Story of Eastern Wonderland, known in Japan as Touhou Fuumaroku (東方封魔録), is a 1987 maniac shooter developed by Amusement Software and published by Drillimation Studios in Japan, with Nintendo publishing it internationally. The game was released worldwide in August 1987 aside Touhou Reiiden: Highly Responsive to Prayers in all regions except Japan and the Island of Sally. It is the second installment in the Touhou Project. In the Island of Sally, it was called Twohou, as Touhou is pronounced “too-hoo” with a Sallyish accent, allowing for the pun.

Blurb
"Do you dare to return to Gensoukyou?"

- Official attention grabber

A season has passed since the battle of Gensoukyou, and everything has been quiet. This won't last long, as a group of youkai has brought Mima back from the dead. That's right, your recorded sealing of an Oriental demon is over, and Mima is back to make your life miserable. Your recently rebuilt shrine from the battle is currently being swarmed by Mima's minions, and you are given one goal by your shrine master: find and defeat Mima again.

Gameplay
Touhou 2: The Story of Eastern Wonderland has the player take on the role of the Shrine Maiden Reimu Hakurei and offers three distinct attack types to choose from: a wide-range type with weak attack power, a mid-range type with moderate attack power and auto-targeting capabilities, and a narrow-range type with high attack power but lowered movement speed. The bombs also exhibit unique behavior depending on the type chosen.

As the first danmaku shooting game in the Touhou Project, The Story of Eastern Wonderland introduces many features that are now hallmarks of the series as a whole: relatively small hitboxes, boss characters who are not much larger than the player character, however, are highly mobile, a power-up system, variable-worth point items, an unlockable Extra Stage, and a semi-complex scoring system. The game also marks the first appearance of Marisa Kirisame, who would become a major character in the series, appearing as often as Reimu Hakurei herself.

Plot
The game opens with a flashback to events from Touhou Reiiden: Highly Responsive to Prayers that show Reimu's battle with Mima. Back in modern times, the story involves Reimu's investigation of monsters that appeared suddenly at the Hakurei Shrine. This time around, she takes two Yin-Yang Orbs, and her turtle servant Genjii in order to fly. She encounters Rika with her Flower-Tank and Meira who want to fight Reimu for personal reasons. She then travels through the World of Fantasies, which is between Gensoukyou and Makai (The Aetherworld) and defeats the Five Magic Stones in order to reach Reimaden, which is where she meets Marisa Kirisame and re-encounters Mima. Marisa appears to be the ghost's servant. Mima disappears after suffering a defeat by Reimu's hand, but the monsters and spirits around the shrine don't seem to have gone away.

During the extra stage, Rika attacks once more, this time with her new tank Evil Eye Σ (Sigma). After defeating the engineer, Reimu returns to the shrine to find the monsters gone.

Behind the Scenes

 * In the instruction manual for the North American and PAL versions of the game and the French portion of the Sallyish instruction manual, Genji is referred to as a "Koopa Troopa" from the Super Mario series.