The Gensokyo Trail

The Gensokyo Trail (幻想郷トレイル) is the collective name for a series of Touhou Project-themed boards in the HotShots Party series of video games. On the boards, various characters from the Touhou series are in charge of the board's shops and games.

The main gimmick of these boards is they alternate between day and night every two turns, which changes the way how the board functions when a certain time of day has passed.

HotShots Party II
"Hiya, luckies! This is the Gensokyo Trail! In this haunted trail, magical girls and their boyfriends' bullet mazes line the patterns and youkai gather after nightfall. Unleash your spell cards as you go through this forest! Your objective this time is to defeat the revengeful ghost Mima, who has been terrorizing Gensokyo for centuries and is on the loose once again."

- Akira Kogami, introducing the board

In this board, players are dressed as Gensoukyans and assume the title of muggles for male characters and youkai for female characters. The main antagonist of the board is Mima from the Driller Engine 1 Era, who is trying to terrorize Gensokyo once again. One of the main methods of fast transportation is that Marisa Kirisame can take the player across the board for a fee of ten coins.

In the ending of this board, Reimu Hakurei will come up to the start space and inform the host that Mima was spotted nearby. Meanwhile, while Cirno is trying to get away from Mima, Mima shows up and transfigures Cirno into a ferret. The superstar then shows up and undoes the transfiguration put on Cirno, and the champion then engages Mima in a danmaku duel. After they unleash a powerful blow, Mima is permanently sealed into an ofuda by Reimu. Cirno then thanks the superstar for saving her and Reimu tells the player they are truly the superstar.

HotShots Party 3
"Akira: Hiya, luckies! Welcome back to the Gensokyo Trail! It's so great here, but scary as you might think. Cirno will be your guide of the board. Cirno: This is a trail that has existed for centuries, and we reopened it a few months ago. The island is somewhat dangerous, so don't land on the event spaces or the Scarlet sisters will make you watch some horrible event."

- Board introduction

The board reappears again as the second board the player plays in Story Mode, and the board layout has been given a complete makeover with a new layout and paths, while still keeping the day-and-night gimmick from the previous game. Cirno is the secondary host of the board, with Akira Kogami running the Lucky Star space. Marisa's Broom transporter reappears on this board, but can only be accessed by landing on the event space near Marisa's home. Upon landing on it, she will take the player who landed there on a ride on her broom absolutely free. Any other players who are caught in Marisa's path will immediately jump on.

Landing on the event space on the island segment will cause Remilia Scarlet to appear and question who is trespassing on the island. If one player is currently on the island, Scarlet will unleash a red mist similar to the events of Touhou 6: The Embodiment of Scarlet Devil and blind all players for two turns, with the direction on junctions being chosen randomly. If two or more players are on the island when this happens, Flandre Scarlet will appear and unleash a bullet storm on all players on the island and will lose the amount of coins based on the number of Lucky Stars they are holding, multiplied by five. If the player does not have any Lucky Stars, they will simply lose all their items instead.

Behind the Scenes

 * The name is likely a spoof of the popular resource management game The Oregon Trail, although it is based on more fantastical settings, rather than a 19th century America theme. Surprisingly, there are a number of fangames called The Gensokyo Trail, which is played the same way as The Oregon Trail.