Touhou Smash

There are a lot of franchises and IPs in Japan that struggle to make an impact in the West despite a hardy, determined group of fans, and one of these is Touhou; famed for bullet-hell shooters, the name has been widely incorporated and utilised in a huge number of fan projects of different genres.

One of these projects is Touhou Super Smash Battle, which is aiming to blend Super Smash Bros. mechanics "in the form of a Touhou Doujin derivative"; it's the work of three fans that form indie dev From Soy Sauce, and has a recently launched Indiegogo campaign that's off to a decent start in pursuit of a $10,000 goal. You can see the pitch video below.

The campaign is for PC, Mac and Linux, but the developer has told Nintendonuggets that it's also aiming for a Wii U release late in 2015 or early 2016. The only proviso, at this stage, is that the studio is still in the process of getting permission to use the brand; optimism is inevitable considering how many fan-projects are out in the wild, but it shouldn't be assumed. Beyond that, From Soy Sauce seems keen to bring a remaster of one of its older games, Glass Wing, to Wii U.

We've seen within our own forums that the Touhou brand has staunch supporters, but is perhaps more niche than a number of other Japanese franchises and IPs. If this project sees the light of day on Wii U and gets released in the West as promised, it'll be interesting to see how it's received, especially as interpretations of the Smash Bros. mechanics are at the core of the experience.

Is this a project you'll be following closely?

[source indiegogo.com, via nintendonuggets.com]