So this is the first time I've decided to make a blog post about a Touhou game.
Anyways, the Touhou game I am looking at is Highly Responsive to Prayers. Highly Responsive to Prayers was the very first game in the Touhou Project series. It was released either in November 1996 or August 1997, depending on your sources, for the PC-98 computer. When it was first released, it was not a "bullet hell" game like the current official Touhou games are today. It was a block breaker game, similar to Arkanoid. In this game, you to control Reimu, while she attempts to hit with a bouncing Yin-Yang Orb various on-screen targets, "cards" and "bosses" alike. Reimu can hit the Yin-Yang Orb, slide-tackling it, or by firing things at it. Every 5 stages the player encounters a boss stage that will try to shoot Reimu down and the player needs to hit them with the orb several times. Bullets can be canceled in the same way you can hit the orb.
The game consists of twenty stages of increasing difficulty, with a boss fight occurring every five stages. To complete a stage, the player must clear all cards or defeat the boss. Getting hit by a projectile or the Yin-Yang Orb causes the player to lose a life.
Unlike the other Touhou Project games, Highly Responsive to Prayers was not a bullet hell, but a block breaker game. The game could be more difficult for people who play Touhou a lot and got used to the bullet hell style. The game only features one protagonist, Reimu herself, since Marisa does not appear until the next game. This game also marks the debut of one of the more famous characters, which is Mima. Many people want Mima back into the Windows games because she appeared in nearly every PC-98 Touhou game except for Lotus Land Story.
The setting of the game is in "The Eastern Country," which ZUN mentions to be a "strange, strange world." The current setting of the game series, GSO, wasn't used until the release of Lotus Land Story, where it appears in the game's name, and Embodiment of Scarlet Devil, which was the first Windows game.