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Mystic Square

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東方怪綺談 (とうほうかいきだん)
Mystic Square
Mystic Square
Developer

ZUN Soft

Publisher

Amusement Makers

Released

Trial: 1998-11-21
Full: 1998-12-30 (Comiket 55)

Genre

Vertical Danmaku Shooting Game

Gameplay

Single-Player Story Mode

Platforms

PC-98 (NEC PC-9800 / EPSON PC-486/586)

Requirements
  • Intel 486 66MHz
  • 2MB hard disk
  • EGC
  • PC-9801-86 (FM SOUND BOARD)
  • 520K RAM
Touhou Series chronology
Lotus Land Story Mystic Square
(1998)
Embodiment of Scarlet Devil


Touhou Kaikidan(Bizarre Romantic Story) ~ Mystic Square (東方怪綺談 ~ Mystic Square) is the fifth game in the Touhou Project, and is the last game for the Japanese PC-98, released in 1998. It is the first game in which Alice Margatroid appears and features four selectable characters - Reimu Hakurei, Marisa Kirisame, Mima, and Yuuka Kazami.

Gameplay

Mystic Square allows the player to select from among four unique protagonists, each hailing from one of the 2 prior danmaku shooting games in the series. Series mainstays Reimu Hakurei and Marisa Kirisame are joined by former enemies Mima and Yuuka Kazami for a journey reaching to the depths of the Makai. Mystic Square also marks the first appearance of Alice Margatroid as an opponent, who later stages a comeback in Perfect Cherry Blossom.

Although limited by the PC-98 hardware, Mystic Square is the most refined of the PC-98 Touhou titles, and features gameplay quite similar to Windows Touhou games. It employs a variant of Lotus Land Story's Dream Bonus system, rewarding the player for taking risks (i.e. collecting point items from the top of the field area). Its rank system, however, is more lenient than Lotus Land Story's.

Concept

The final Touhou PC-98 game developed by ZUN, Mystic Square followed its predecessor Lotus Land Story as a bullet hell-styled game. This iteration adds two more characters to the cast, but eliminates a choice of shot types for any individual character.

As the final PC-98 Touhou game, Mystic Square's gameplay bears the most resemblance to that of the Windows games.

Name

The game's title is a reference to a mystic square, a specific type of magic square, which is an n x n grid with numbers 1 through n2 arranged to give the grid special properties; the fact that Sara's theme is called "Magic Square" proves this.

Story

Following the events of Lotus Land Story, a massive quantity of demons beings to pour out of a cave, once again buried in the mountains. Seeking the source of this invasion, Reimu Hakurei and the other playable characters, Marisa Kirisame, Mima, and Yuuka Kazami must travel to Makai and journey to the fortress Pandemonium in order to confront the one behind the problem, Shinki.

Music

The soundtrack of Mystic Square includes 23 songs. Unlike previous games, which usually had unused songs revealed in soundtracks or Mystic Square's own music room afterwards or in Akyu's Untouched Score, this game didn't have any more music made for it.

Press

Mystic Square was developed and released in 1998 at Comiket 55. It was the last PC-98 Touhou game, and eventually on September 19, 2002, all the five PC-98 games have officially stopped being sold, a little after Embodiment of Scarlet Devil was released.

Mystic Square's soundtrack was included on Akyu's Untouched Score vol.2 at Comiket 71 in the winter of 2006.

External Links

Official

Unofficial

Additional Information

  • The game's Japanese name () contains the character for "elegant/beautiful" () in Shinki's name (), following the trend of mainline games' names referencing their final bosses or other important characters.