Shrine Maiden of Paradise ~ Reimu Hakurei (Touhou Project)

[zriL]

There is no official confirmation that 3rd party franchises are disallowed from getting non-primary reps. So I think it is safe to assume that Tails (Sonic), Ghosts (Pacman), X (Mega Man), etc are still eligible.

I never said the opposite.

 

[Lyncario]

Sanrio revealed every characters that would appear in the Hello Kitty X Touhou collaboration

There was a problem fetching the tweet

 

[TheTuninator]

Man, that's a cute Youmu!

I don't want to be negative but there is no way Touhou gets a second character while other big 3rd parties like Sonic still haven't got 2 characters. I must remind you that no 3rd party franchise has yet to get 2 differents characters in smash (echoes don't count), it will be a big deal when that happens. And since echoes won't work for Touhou, it would have to be a full character. That means smash 6 would have to expand the pool by a lot to realistically hope for several Touhou characters.

Yeah, there's no way Touhou ever gets more than 1 character, especially when it getting in at all would be rather surprising. There's a fringe chance that Marisa & Reimu could be a tag character based off of AoCF, but even that is pretty unlikely.

 

[SharkLord]

There was a problem fetching the tweet

Finally

 

[GSun]

Is the snow security better than the collar?

 

[Dr. Yatagarasu]

looks like Taiko is doing something

There was a problem fetching the tweet

 

[kaithehedgefox]

Here is one of my previous posts:

Reimu has made several appearances outside of her home-franchise. I can name a few.

• IOSYS (a now-obscure EDM band) music videos.
• Walfas (a now-obsolete animation program)
• Mugen
• Reimu has also been featured on thumbmails of certain trance/nightcore videos.

So what other appearances have Reimu (and Marisa) made outside of their home-franchise?

 

[PurpleXCompleX]

So what other appearances have Reimu (and Marisa) made outside of their home-franchise?

I honestly wouldnt really count any of your points for many obvious reasons that have already been pointed out last time.
I can list you some actual official outside Touhou appearances that i am aware of though.

Magic Pengel and Graffiti Kingdom
Lord of Vermillion
Nendoroid Generation
SOUND VOLTEX
Pop'n Music
Groove Coaster
Chunithm
CROSSxBEATS
Taiko no Tatsujin arcade and Switch (and Taiko no Tatsujin: Dokodon! Mystery Adventure)
Initial D arcade
Dandy Dungeon

And that is just video games, theres also collaborational merchandise with Sanrio, Hololive (though thats probably just through COOL&CREATE),
Supergroupies (designer watches and wallets), Eyemirror (Designer glasses), various Cafés, and many many more.

 

[kaithehedgefox]

I honestly wouldnt really count any of your points for many obvious reasons that have already been pointed out last time.
I can list you some actual official outside Touhou appearances that i am aware of though.

Magic Pengel and Graffiti Kingdom
Lord of Vermillion
Nendoroid Generation
SOUND VOLTEX
Pop'n Music
Groove Coaster
Chunithm
CROSSxBEATS
Taiko no Tatsujin arcade and Switch (and Taiko no Tatsujin: Dokodon! Mystery Adventure)
Initial D arcade
Dandy Dungeon

And that is just video games, theres also collaborational merchandise with Sanrio, Hololive (though thats probably just through COOL&CREATE),
Supergroupies (designer watches and wallets), Eyemirror (Designer glasses), various Cafés, and many many more.

So what appearances have Reimu and Marisa made outside of videogames?

 

[Soulor]

Happy to see Yukkuri making more appearances in things. Front and center in that image above too, lol.

Huh, whats that? yUkKuRi ArE pOpUlAr?!?

Also, I was hoping there'd be something related to 17.5 during that sponsor X event. But at least there's finally something about it now!

 

[SharkLord]

I honestly wouldnt really count any of your points for many obvious reasons that have already been pointed out last time.
I can list you some actual official outside Touhou appearances that i am aware of though.

Magic Pengel and Graffiti Kingdom
Lord of Vermillion
Nendoroid Generation
SOUND VOLTEX
Pop'n Music
Groove Coaster
Chunithm
CROSSxBEATS
Taiko no Tatsujin arcade and Switch (and Taiko no Tatsujin: Dokodon! Mystery Adventure)
Initial D arcade
Dandy Dungeon

And that is just video games, theres also collaborational merchandise with Sanrio, Hololive (though thats probably just through COOL&CREATE),
Supergroupies (designer watches and wallets), Eyemirror (Designer glasses), various Cafés, and many many more.

Ah, so they kept in the crossovers for the Taiko Switch port? Nice.

 

[Commander_Alph]

Mind if you write my as one of the supporter for Touhou or specifically Reimu to be in Smash?

I've been a supporter for Reimu ever since Ultimate cause they give attention to a lot of indie game character like Shovel Knight being an Assist Trophy and both Cuphead and Sans being a mii costume, it save to say that Touhou chance to be represented by Reimu as a fully playable character is most certainly higher than even the likes of Shantae but this is just my opinion because if we're going to get a true indie rep it could have been Reimu as Touhou is the grandmother of indie game. Even though western fans is always sensitive toward unknown series that isn't Super Mario RPG or even Devil May Cry that doesn't really diminished her chances as Touhou fans is massive in Japan standing in the same podium as even Dragon Quest.


Also I made spirit line up of character from the series if Reimu ever gets added into the base game since there is no limit on how much spirit you should have and it is usually more than 12 if the series has more installment of game, meaning more character. It is still unfinished but you get the idea
Concept spirit for Touhou https://imgur.com/a/r3UVXsL

Also, isn't it better if the stage that will come with Reimu is the entirety of Gensokyo itself where it's similar to Yggdrasil Altar which is traveling stage but you roam around Gensokyo's iconic location correspond with each game incident like inside Scarlet Devil Mansion of EoSD, among the Bamboo Forest of IN and around the Youkai Mountain of MoF. The starting point could be the Hakurei Shrine?

 

[Sc_Ev0lution]

Also, isn't it better if the stage that will come with Reimu is the entirety of Gensokyo itself where it's similar to Yggdrasil Altar which is traveling stage but you roam around Gensokyo's iconic location correspond with each game incident like inside Scarlet Devil Mansion of EoSD, among the Bamboo Forest of IN and around the Youkai Mountain of MoF. The starting point could be the Hakurei Shrine?

I mean, that's plausible but unlikely imo. It's true Touhou has a large number of iconic locations, virtually one per game. But I think I can overcome my bias long enough to recognize that's a lot of work for dlc. Yes, the Hero stage was pretty involved, but idk... Hero seems to be planned early on, plus it's hard to know if the stage was a request from SE.

Regardless, I think it's more likely the Touhou stage would just be the Hakurei Shrine. It's regularly depicted as a hub where lots of characters gather for parties, so it would be easy to include lots of cameos with a stationary stage.

 

[Commander_Alph]

I mean, that's plausible but unlikely imo. It's true Touhou has a large number of iconic locations, virtually one per game. But I think I can overcome my bias long enough to recognize that's a lot of work for dlc. Yes, the Hero stage was pretty involved, but idk... Hero seems to be planned early on, plus it's hard to know if the stage was a request from SE.

Regardless, I think it's more likely the Touhou stage would just be the Hakurei Shrine. It's regularly depicted as a hub where lots of characters gather for parties, so it would be easy to include lots of cameos with a stationary stage.

Really? Just the Hakurei Shrine itself? That place is literally more plain than the KoF stage and I doubt that they're going to do the same stage layout again, other than having cameo it is a pretty odd place considering in almost every Touhou game Hakurei Shrine has been the place barely any people recognize cause it only appear in the beginning. The stage in the fighting game isn't helping at all cause it is mostly just having 1 building and 2 trees in which isn't all that fun and just plain boring.

 

[GolisoPower]

Also, isn't it better if the stage that will come with Reimu is the entirety of Gensokyo itself where it's similar to Yggdrasil Altar which is traveling stage but you roam around Gensokyo's iconic location correspond with each game incident like inside Scarlet Devil Mansion of EoSD, among the Bamboo Forest of IN and around the Youkai Mountain of MoF. The starting point could be the Hakurei Shrine?

I actually suggested that a good while back, but since there wasn't much of a consistent official map of Gensokyo (The closest I've ever seen being made in Minecraft), as somebody pointed out, I can't remember, that wouldn't work. Honestly, the Hakurei Shrine, while plain by itself, does lend an aesthetic unseen in some similar stages like Suzaku Castle and the like. Besides, Sakurai has taken plain stages and turned them into absolutely fun areas to play in (The aforementioned KoF Stadium with the knockback walls comes to mind), so I wouldn't put it past him to give the shrine a unique twist.

 

[Blankiturayman]

Really? Just the Hakurei Shrine itself? That place is literally more plain than the KoF stage and I doubt that they're going to do the same stage layout again, other than having cameo it is a pretty odd place considering in almost every Touhou game Hakurei Shrine has been the place barely any people recognize cause it only appear in the beginning. The stage in the fighting game isn't helping at all cause it is mostly just having 1 building and 2 trees in which isn't all that fun and just plain boring.

There's some good ways to make it less "plain", for example having it go through different seasons and have characters cameo accordingly (because they do go to the Hakurei Shrine often anyway) For example when there's cherry blossoms Yuyuko and Youmu could show up, have a red mist reminiscent of EoSD with the scarlet sisters and Sakuya, winter has Cirno, maybe Marisa as well though she could appear more frequently, and so on.

The KoF Stadium you mention is at its core just a stadium, but the many cameos give it life. And even so, we hadn't gotten a stage like that stadium up until that point. The Hakurei Shrine would be similar in this regard, because sure, the closest stage at the moment is Suzaku Castle, but it's not quite the same.

Although, the idea for a stage travelling through Gensokyo is fairly neat too.

 

[Commander_Alph]

I think the hub part that you refer to is kinda strange considering that occurrence of character coming together only appear in Hopeless Masquerade if I'm correct which is not only just the Hakurei Shrine gets occupied but so does every stage which is not really that special

 

[TheTuninator]

The Hakurei Shrine is the beating heart of the setting. If Touhou ever were to get in, the Shrine has gotta be the stage. A flying tour stage could be interesting, but the Shrine is so much more important than anything or anywhere else in Gensokyo that making the Shrine the stage just makes sense. This would permit a much greater degree of interactivity with the Shrine such as character cameos/incidents as stage hazards or background changes, etc, which would serve to add more than enough flavor.

 

[Commander_Alph]

There's some good ways to make it less "plain", for example having it go through different seasons and have characters cameo accordingly (because they do go to the Hakurei Shrine often anyway) For example when there's cherry blossoms Yuyuko and Youmu could show up, have a red mist reminiscent of EoSD with the scarlet sisters and Sakuya, winter has Cirno, maybe Marisa as well though she could appear more frequently, and so on.

The KoF Stadium you mention is at its core just a stadium, but the many cameos give it life. And even so, we hadn't gotten a stage like that stadium up until that point. The Hakurei Shrine would be similar in this regard, because sure, the closest stage at the moment is Suzaku Castle, but it's not quite the same.

Although, the idea for a stage travelling through Gensokyo is fairly neat too.

I mean when you think of Touhou you think of a fast-paced air battle with a bunch of things floating around on your screen and floating around every location in Gensokyo perfectly capture that spirit and you could have random occurrence from character in that event as a hazard like Sakuya throwing a knife at the opponent inside the Mansion which perfectly captured her battle in EoSD.

The Hakurei Shrine is the beating heart of the setting. If Touhou ever were to get in, the Shrine has gotta be the stage. A flying tour stage could be interesting, but the Shrine is so much more important than anything or anywhere else in Gensokyo that making the Shrine the stage just makes sense. This would permit a much greater degree of interactivity with the Shrine such as character cameos/incidents as stage hazards or background changes, etc, which would serve to add more than enough flavor.

I mean does that really represent the core gameplay of Touhou? The last time I think that Touhou is a bullet hell sky shooter which is the thing that is more well known, but the Hakurei Shrine as the only stage feels like it only represent the fighting game adaptation more so than the original.

 

[TheTuninator]

I mean does that really represent the core gameplay of Touhou? The last time I think that Touhou is a bullet hell sky shooter which is the thing that is more well known, but the Hakurei Shrine as the only stage feels like it only represent the fighting game adaptation more so than the original.

This line of thought doesn't necessarily work because the actual stage backgrounds in the bullet hell games almost never depict a coherent structure which could be adapted 1:1 to a Smash stage, even if the stage itself is taking place at a particular location. There's no way to make anything other than an extremely generic flying stage if your goal is to remain slavishly faithful to the original backgrounds. The Shrine itself has also appeared as a location in stages in the bullet hell games from time to time, such as HSiFS.

In any case, if Reimu were ever to get in, you can bet that they would draw heavily on the fighting games as they are all official mainline titles & they provide a great deal of material for Sakurai to work with.

 

[Commander_Alph]

All the event in some of the game occured outside the shrine and making it as the stage hazard seems odd considering that place is like the equivalent of safe haven and prominent to Reimu personality is that she wants to keep the place save and clean.

 

[TheTuninator]

All the event in some of the game occured outside the shrine and making it as the stage hazard seems odd considering that place is like the equivalent of safe haven and prominent to Reimu personality is that she wants to keep the place save and clean.

Most incidents don't take place at the Shrine, but Reimu's stories almost always start and end there, and in the print works the entire setting more or less revolves around the Shrine because the series as a whole revolves around Reimu. It's where the post-incident parties are, where people go to talk to or mess with Reimu, where Marisa hangs out with her all the time, etc. It's far more important to Touhou than any other location and is the natural choice for a stage which is supposed to represent Touhou to the Smash community. You can have all sorts of cameos with characters drinking in the background, watching fireworks, etc, or zooming around in the sky as incidents like the Scarlet Mist or the Imperishable Night happen. There's other iconic locations such as the SDM or the Moriya Shrine, absolutely, but none of these are even remotely close to being on the same footing as the Hakurei Shrine in terms of screentime in print works and narrative importance to the setting, and thus I feel it would be a large mistake to present the Hakurei Shrine as just another location among many.

 

[Commander_Alph]

This line of thought doesn't necessarily work because the actual stage backgrounds in the bullet hell games almost never depict a coherent structure which could be adapted 1:1 to a Smash stage, even if the stage itself is taking place at a particular location. There's no way to make anything other than an extremely generic flying stage if your goal is to remain slavishly faithful to the original backgrounds. The Shrine itself has also appeared as a location in stages in the bullet hell games from time to time, such as HSiFS.

In any case, if Reimu were ever to get in, you can bet that they would draw heavily on the fighting games as they are all official mainline titles & they provide a great deal of material for Sakurai to work with.

I mean they could somehow make it more detailed like having a special transition not just swoop in to the next area and they could make it more interesting by having the stage rotate so that it will highlighted the surrounding area and not just the floor like seeing the stain glass or even the surrounding location of the mountain.


Tbh basing the stage off of the fighting game is just feel odd as it is a spin-off as Sakurai has been proven giving each and every franchise a justice and seeing him just have the shrine as the only place for you to fight kinda begs the question to a lot of people that attracted to Touhou from Smash like "wait, isn't Touhou all about fighting in the air and not on the ground?", "Is this stage even capture the charm of a Touhou game?" Or "this feels the same that KoF stage, why bother buying her DLC?"

 

[TheTuninator]

I mean they could somehow make it more detailed like having a special transition not just swoop in to the next area and they could make it more interesting by having the stage rotate so that it will highlighted the surrounding area and not just the floor like seeing the stain glass or even the surrounding location of the mountain.


Tbh basing the stage off of the fighting game is just feel odd as it is a spin-off as Sakurai has been proven giving each and every franchise a justice and seeing him just have the shrine as the only place for you to fight kinda begs the question to a lot of people that attracted to Touhou from Smash like "wait, isn't Touhou all about fighting in the air and not on the ground?", "Is this stage even capture the charm of a Touhou game?" Or "this feels the same that KoF stage, why bother buying her DLC?"

There isn't really a clear official vision of what Gensokyo looks like in between the various locations, which is another problem for the idea of a flying stage. Due to the nature of the bullet hell games, there's no 3D map of the world of Gensokyo like there is for something like DQ. You'd have to do a stage which transitions between known locations more like Castle Siege, which isn't quite the same.

Additionally, I think you're fundamentally misconstruing the role of the fighting games here. They're official mainline games and are just as valid as any of the bullet hell games. Sumireko, a 2hu introduced in the fighting games, has since seen an appearance as a playable character in her own bullet hell game, as well as an entire print work titled after her. There's no reason to suggest that Smash needs to draw only from the bullet hell games over the fighting games to do the series justice. They'd be daft not to draw on the fighting games. The bullet hell games were the genesis of the series, sure, but Touhou is soooo much bigger than the bullet hell games, to the point where I'd guess something like 95+% of its fans have never touched and will never touch the bullet hell games. Since Touhou is way more than just a game, what's more important than a stage slavishly representing the original bullet hell games is representing the essence of what Touhou is as a series, and that's not zipping around in the sky; it's the Shrine. What people love about Touhou at the end of the day is its characters, led by Reimu (and, of course, Marisa!) and the Shrine is the place where all of the characters gather.

 

[Commander_Alph]

Most incidents don't take place at the Shrine, but Reimu's stories almost always start and end there, and in the print works the entire setting more or less revolves around the Shrine because the series as a whole revolves around Reimu. It's where the post-incident parties are, where people go to talk to or mess with Reimu, where Marisa hangs out with her all the time, etc. It's far more important to Touhou than any other location and is the natural choice for a stage which is supposed to represent Touhou to the Smash community. You can have all sorts of cameos with characters drinking in the background, watching fireworks, etc, or zooming around in the sky as incidents like the Scarlet Mist or the Imperishable Night happen. There's other iconic locations such as the SDM or the Moriya Shrine, absolutely, but none of these are even remotely close to being on the same footing as the Hakurei Shrine in terms of screentime in print works and narrative importance to the setting, and thus I feel it would be a large mistake to present the Hakurei Shrine as just another location among many.

Yes, I know it is more important than everyone think but having these random event popping up don't really make it more unique. Someone who is not a fan of Touhou knew that it's a chaotic game and having the character just hanging in the background really scream "chaos" or "exhilarating".


Also I want just point this out which is kinda important is that there's no way in the world that you want to base the stage off the print work cause barely people know that and that print work main purpose is only to fill in all the holes that has been left throughout the series.

There isn't really a clear official vision of what Gensokyo looks like in between the various locations, which is another problem for the idea of a flying stage. Due to the nature of the bullet hell games, there's no 3D map of the world of Gensokyo like there is for something like DQ. You'd have to do a stage which transitions between known locations more like Castle Siege, which isn't quite the same.

Additionally, I think you're fundamentally misconstruing the role of the fighting games here. They're official mainline games and are just as valid as any of the bullet hell games. Sumireko, a 2hu introduced in the fighting games, has since seen an appearance as a playable character in her own bullet hell game, as well as an entire print work titled after her. There's no reason to suggest that Smash needs to draw only from the bullet hell games over the fighting games to do the series justice. They'd be daft not to draw on the fighting games. The bullet hell games were the genesis of the series, sure, but Touhou is soooo much bigger than the bullet hell games, to the point where I'd guess something like 95+% of its fans have never touched and will never touch the bullet hell games. Since Touhou is way more than just a game, what's more important than a stage slavishly representing the original bullet hell games is representing the essence of what Touhou is as a series, and that's not zipping around in the sky; it's the Shrine. What people love about Touhou at the end of the day is its characters, led by Reimu (and, of course, Marisa!) and the Shrine is the place where all of the characters gather.

Bruh, ask any person about Touhou and immediately their mind go to the crazy bullet hell game and not just the fighting game, sure that they won't even touch the bullet hell game but the main attraction of Touhou IS the bullet hell game.

Also yeah technically there is no real image of what the landscape of Touhou looks like but clearly Smash is not the type of game that could be taken as canon and having it in Smash is like their own part of interpretation of what the Gensokyo looks like, and I mean Sakurai would go to the extreme to just perfectly capture the essence of the series, we see this with Steve and the fact that he made all of the Earthbound stages into 3D despite the game being sprite base and making Castle Siege which is an original stage that doesn't based on any location in Fire Emblem and just simply there as a sort of nod to what the core of fire emblem game.

Keep in mind that Touhou popularity is centered in Japan and not many westerners knew what Touhou is all about outside of the chaotic game, I mean they could care less about the relationship of each character as the eye catching thing about Touhou is its character design and crazy gameplay. This is Smash after all where every fandom of each video game character come together and everyone get the equal treatment both for new and old fans, the fan of Touhou probably already satisfied with her gameplay and top that off with a traveling stage already giving it a true feeling of what Touhou would have been like in Smash. Having the stage be the shrine and have the character doing their thing feels like an Animal Crossing stage or even a Minecraft stage which is perfect for that series as the game is pretty much a simulator but for Touhou? You never really see the character interact with each other other than some dialogue which isn't much and more focus on the action while all the print works and manga is the medium that usually cover them and since Smash is a video game what would you choose?

 

[SharkLord]

Commander_Alph Please refrain from doubleposting. If you need to add something, it would be ideal if you could edit your previous post instead of making a new one.

There's some good ways to make it less "plain", for example having it go through different seasons and have characters cameo accordingly (because they do go to the Hakurei Shrine often anyway) For example when there's cherry blossoms Yuyuko and Youmu could show up, have a red mist reminiscent of EoSD with the scarlet sisters and Sakuya, winter has Cirno, maybe Marisa as well though she could appear more frequently, and so on.

The KoF Stadium you mention is at its core just a stadium, but the many cameos give it life. And even so, we hadn't gotten a stage like that stadium up until that point. The Hakurei Shrine would be similar in this regard, because sure, the closest stage at the moment is Suzaku Castle, but it's not quite the same.

Although, the idea for a stage travelling through Gensokyo is fairly neat too.

Huh, never thought of the season idea. Seeing as we've done something similar with Mementos and Minecraft World, it doesn't sound too far-fetched. Plus, it would be an easy way to cram in as many cameos as possible.

This line of thought doesn't necessarily work because the actual stage backgrounds in the bullet hell games almost never depict a coherent structure which could be adapted 1:1 to a Smash stage, even if the stage itself is taking place at a particular location. There's no way to make anything other than an extremely generic flying stage if your goal is to remain slavishly faithful to the original backgrounds. The Shrine itself has also appeared as a location in stages in the bullet hell games from time to time, such as HSiFS.

In any case, if Reimu were ever to get in, you can bet that they would draw heavily on the fighting games as they are all official mainline titles & they provide a great deal of material for Sakurai to work with.

I actually feel like we might have a Reimu with more focus on projectiles and some made-up moves., making her more of a translation of the shooters than the fighters. Seeing as the bullet hells are the mainline games, I'd imagine Sakurai would want to be a bit closer to that. Still, I could see the fighters being used as a basis for how to translate some of the moves (Hakurei Amuet, Ascension Kick, etc.), as well as her animations.

 

[Rikarte]

I think you could make a traveling Touhou stage work without the need of an official map or having to model all of Gensokyo. My idea was to have a platform fly up the Netherworld stairs for a while before getting gapped and transported to a random location (with a bunch of cameos) by Yukari. I think PCB's Phantasm stage is iconic enough to warrant it being the main portion of the stage. They could also add some enemies who fire bullets across the screen. That way you would represent both the fast-paced action side as well as the laid back character heavy side of 2hu.

 

[Commander_Alph]

I think you could make a traveling Touhou stage work without the need of an official map or having to model all of Gensokyo. My idea was to have a platform fly up the Netherworld stairs for a while before getting gapped and transported to a random location (with a bunch of cameos) by Yukari. I think PCB's Phantasm stage is iconic enough to warrant it being the main portion of the stage. They could also add some enemies who fire bullets across the screen. That way you would represent both the fast-paced action side as well as the laid back character heavy side of 2hu.

Yeah that is what I've been talking about the whole time, even if Gensokyo lacks any maps they could totally make it work, I mean not all of the stage have to be modelled, since the transition is fast without any inbetween pauses they could make the surrounding area being a moving 2D image, I have another idea that there will be other character that make a cameo but they only come and go in the background like Cirno, Nightbug, or other low level bosses depending on the location.

 

[Blankiturayman]

I mean when you think of Touhou you think of a fast-paced air battle with a bunch of things floating around on your screen and floating around every location in Gensokyo perfectly capture that spirit and you could have random occurrence from character in that event as a hazard like Sakuya throwing a knife at the opponent inside the Mansion which perfectly captured her battle in EoSD.

Indeed. They could come and show some danmaku as well, instead of just staying or flying in place, though some characters probably would, you could just have them in the background.

Now that I think about it, if they went with the season idea, and had one for IN with the moon, it would be pretty rad to have Kaguya and Mokou clashing in the background.

 

[PurpleXCompleX]

The advantage of Yggdrasil Altar is that they could import the map model from DQ11.
If it were Touhou, you would need to make the entirety from scratch because there is no official source material to pull all of Gensokyo from to make development easier.
So I say as wonderful as a travelling stage from multiple locations would be, I think the minimum we can expect is the Hakurei Shrine itself.
... and as already pointed it, it also makes the most sense since its the center of everything and the closest related to Reimu herself.
And you can also think of other Smash characters appearing since the shrine itself is sort of a gate to Gensokyo, right?

 

[Commander_Alph]

The advantage of Yggdrasil Altar is that they could import the map model from DQ11.
If it were Touhou, you would need to make the entirety from scratch because there is no official source material to pull all of Gensokyo from to make development easier.
So I say as wonderful as a travelling stage from multiple locations would be, I think the minimum we can expect is the Hakurei Shrine itself.
... and as already pointed it, it also makes the most sense since its the center of everything and the closest related to Reimu herself.
And you can also think of other Smash characters appearing since the shrine itself is sort of a gate to Gensokyo, right?

Well, you could say that to Banjo which doesn't have any good 3D model they pull from mainly because both the N64 and Xbox game are just a high-quality rendition of the old one, also I'd like to point out is that you don't really have model the entirety of Gensokyo specifically since the only location that I point out is the Bamboo Forest and The Mansion which is whole new different location by itself, you could argue about Youkai Mountain specifically as the place is located in an open area but I could see them only make a structure that is reminiscent to the stage from SWR and considering Smash could get away with things like having the background be a static image I could see them pull that off.


Also about Hakurei Shrine being the gate to Gensokyo, how about the battle starts right there, I mean I could see a platform emerging from the ground as if the barrier is broken similar to ULiL.

Yeah, I could see them uses just the Hakurei Shrine if they feel lazy since you could see the character interact but that interaction mainly only occured in the print works and manga, a medium that is barely been touched upon by some people. It is a good fanservice for long time fan but for newcomer they could expected more

 

[TheTuninator]

Commander_Alph Please refrain from doubleposting. If you need to add something, it would be ideal if you could edit your previous post instead of making a new one.

Huh, never thought of the season idea. Seeing as we've done something similar with Mementos and Minecraft World, it doesn't sound too far-fetched. Plus, it would be an easy way to cram in as many cameos as possible.

I actually feel like we might have a Reimu with more focus on projectiles and some made-up moves., making her more of a translation of the shooters than the fighters. Seeing as the bullet hells are the mainline games, I'd imagine Sakurai would want to be a bit closer to that. Still, I could see the fighters being used as a basis for how to translate some of the moves (Hakurei Amuet, Ascension Kick, etc.), as well as her animations.

The nice thing about the fighters is that even if they want to focus on Reimu's projectiles, the fighting game moveset covers that quite nicely! I think something like 2/3rds of her moves in the more recent fighters are projectile-based. Given that there's a physical attack button, a ranged attack button, and a special attack button, and that they all have 4 different moves depending on the direction input, it maps to Smash Bros quite well.

I remain fundamentally doubtful that Sakurai would try to closely emulate the bullet hell games just because that leaves you with really almost nothing to work with; all the characters do is fire bullets ahead in a straight line, bomb, and focus. Beyond even the special moves, you have to develop a jab, 3 tilts, 3 Smashes, and 4 aerials, which means that they're either making stuff up out of whole cloth or taking stuff from the fighters; so, at that point, why not just take stuff from the fighters? I absolutely could see some kind of focus mechanic as an homage to the bullet hells, but there really is almost nothing to work with there.

Well, you could say that to Banjo which doesn't have any good 3D model they pull from mainly because both the N64 and Xbox game are just a high-quality rendition of the old one, also I'd like to point out is that you don't really have model the entirety of Gensokyo specifically since the only location that I point out is the Bamboo Forest and The Mansion which is whole new different location by itself, you could argue about Youkai Mountain specifically as the place is located in an open area but I could see them only make a structure that is reminiscent to the stage from SWR and considering Smash could get away with things like having the background be a static image I could see them pull that off.


Also about Hakurei Shrine being the gate to Gensokyo, how about the battle starts right there, I mean I could see a platform emerging from the ground as if the barrier is broken similar to ULiL.

Yeah, I could see them uses just the Hakurei Shrine if they feel lazy since you could see the character interact but that interaction mainly only occured in the print works and manga, a medium that is barely been touched upon by some people. It is a good fanservice for long time fan but for newcomer they could expected more

I really don't understand why you're pushing this idea that using solely the Shrine is "lazy". They could very easily go nuts with stuff like cameos and incidents, etc. in the background of the Shrine if they wanted to. Fans of 3rd party series always seem want a transforming stage because any given game has so many locations, but not every series needs or should have one. For example, Ryu could easily have had a stage which transitioned between the dozens of different iconic SF stages, but they didn't do it. Mega Man could have had a stage which transitioned between dozens of the iconic bosses and stages from the series, but they didn't do it. Snake could have had a stage which transitioned between dozens of the iconic locations in MGS, but they didn't do it. Persona 5 could have had a stage which transitioned between each of the Palaces or flew around Tokyo, and they didn't do it. Etc, etc. There's a lot to be said for keeping a stage focused around one singular iconic area.

 

[Commander_Alph]

really don't understand why you're pushing this idea that using solely the Shrine is "lazy". They could very easily go nuts with stuff like cameos and incidents, etc. in the background of the Shrine if they wanted to. Fans of 3rd party series always seem want a transforming stage because any given game has so many locations, but not every series needs or should have one. For example, Ryu could easily have had a stage which transitioned between the dozens of different iconic SF stages, but they didn't do it. Mega Man could have had a stage which transitioned between dozens of the iconic bosses and stages from the series, but they didn't do it. Snake could have had a stage which transitioned between dozens of the iconic locations in MGS, but they didn't do it. Persona 5 could have had a stage which transitioned between each of the Palaces or flew around Tokyo, and they didn't do it. Etc, etc. There's a lot to be said for keeping a stage focused around one singular iconic area.

I mean the reason I said that is because you couldn't have Touhou without going crazy with the stage selection and as I said before people tend to relate Touhou with it's chaotic gameplay and a constant change of paste, considering that the stage from all the Street Fighter are pretty generic it is no surprise that they will give it an extra oomph because the gameplay of SF is pretty linear while it seems impossible to represent only one stage in Mega Man as each room holds different obstacle and that everything is taking place inside the Wily's Castle and even the gameplay of the mainline Mega Man still less chaotic than Touhou and being a platformer no wonder they added several platform as stage hazards. The game that you mentioned above with the exception of SF is taking place in the same location and Touhou takes place in the same area which is Gensokyo.

I mean the only good example is Bayonetta's stage that perfectly match up with the gameplay Bayonetta being fast paced and chaotic and the choice of Umbra Clock Tower reflects that by having it falling in a downward spiral, angels surrounding you which could pop on and off at anytime.

And again we rarely see each of the character interact with one and another other than through dialogue, most if not every scene of them doing what they do everyday is only contain on the print work and manga, something that is easily overlooked by many new fans and usually this kind of interaction only appear in some doujinshi. And the fact that you could represent every incident in one place doesn't really add up as if you were trying to cramp every possible content into one stage, I understand that the Shrine is the first place you battle on before transitioning but as the only stage that play?

If you really want a stage that represent Touhou but not make it too complicated like the entire Gensokyo they could instead go with the Scarlet Devil Mansion.

 

[Luminario]

Honestly the Shrine is fine as a stage. The locations are mostly just fluff in the background, it's all about the characters. We need Master Sparks, gaps and subway trains, Sakuya's time thing, Shinmyoumaru changing sizes. With the bat**** crazy stuff people can do in Touhou even just a flat stage should never be boring.

 

[Commander_Alph]

I mean flat stage is still boring after all but a little mix here and there wouldn't really hurt but it blurs the line of Touhou being an all out air battle and a stage that have the platform being suspended in the air would give it more of a flair. It would be safe if they include only the bullet hell part of Touhou as most of the ability that you mentioned above except Sakuya's time stop originated as something of a flavor text but made into reality in the fighting game spin-offs, all of that absurd ability could really work as a stage hazards but sometimes Sakurai always goes full on classic to pretty much all the roster that have existed before the 2000 with their mainline game as an inspiration.

 

[TheTuninator]

Honestly the Shrine is fine as a stage. The locations are mostly just fluff in the background, it's all about the characters. We need Master Sparks, gaps and subway trains, Sakuya's time thing, Shinmyoumaru changing sizes. With the bat**** crazy stuff people can do in Touhou even just a flat stage should never be boring.

Well said! Touhou is about the characters, not really the locations, which are barely even represented in the bullet hell games. The important thing about a Touhou stage is featuring a lot of good cameos, and the Shrine is a natural place for that.

I mean the reason I said that is because you couldn't have Touhou without going crazy with the stage selection and as I said before people tend to relate Touhou with it's chaotic gameplay and a constant change of paste, considering that the stage from all the Street Fighter are pretty generic it is no surprise that they will give it an extra oomph because the gameplay of SF is pretty linear while it seems impossible to represent only one stage in Mega Man as each room holds different obstacle and that everything is taking place inside the Wily's Castle and even the gameplay of the mainline Mega Man still less chaotic than Touhou and being a platformer no wonder they added several platform as stage hazards. The game that you mentioned above with the exception of SF is taking place in the same location and Touhou takes place in the same area which is Gensokyo.

I mean the only good example is Bayonetta's stage that perfectly match up with the gameplay Bayonetta being fast paced and chaotic and the choice of Umbra Clock Tower reflects that by having it falling in a downward spiral, angels surrounding you which could pop on and off at anytime.

And again we rarely see each of the character interact with one and another other than through dialogue, most if not every scene of them doing what they do everyday is only contain on the print work and manga, something that is easily overlooked by many new fans and usually this kind of interaction only appear in some doujinshi. And the fact that you could represent every incident in one place doesn't really add up as if you were trying to cramp every possible content into one stage, I understand that the Shrine is the first place you battle on before transitioning but as the only stage that play?

If you really want a stage that represent Touhou but not make it too complicated like the entire Gensokyo they could instead go with the Scarlet Devil Mansion.

The print works/non-H doujins/associated media/etc have a much bigger reach than the bullet hell games, so dismissing them out of hand is very silly. The bullet hell games are probably the most niche part of the franchise, ironically, because the genre itself is rather inaccessible.

As far as "generic stages", individual Touhou levels are extremely generic visually, as it's literally just a scrolling background. It's not possible to faithfully represent bullet hell levels in a Smash stage because they're abstract backgrounds.

 

[Blankiturayman]

I mean the reason I said that is because you couldn't have Touhou without going crazy with the stage selection and as I said before people tend to relate Touhou with it's chaotic gameplay and a constant change of paste, considering that the stage from all the Street Fighter are pretty generic it is no surprise that they will give it an extra oomph because the gameplay of SF is pretty linear while it seems impossible to represent only one stage in Mega Man as each room holds different obstacle and that everything is taking place inside the Wily's Castle and even the gameplay of the mainline Mega Man still less chaotic than Touhou and being a platformer no wonder they added several platform as stage hazards. The game that you mentioned above with the exception of SF is taking place in the same location and Touhou takes place in the same area which is Gensokyo.

I mean the only good example is Bayonetta's stage that perfectly match up with the gameplay Bayonetta being fast paced and chaotic and the choice of Umbra Clock Tower reflects that by having it falling in a downward spiral, angels surrounding you which could pop on and off at anytime.

And again we rarely see each of the character interact with one and another other than through dialogue, most if not every scene of them doing what they do everyday is only contain on the print work and manga, something that is easily overlooked by many new fans and usually this kind of interaction only appear in some doujinshi. And the fact that you could represent every incident in one place doesn't really add up as if you were trying to cramp every possible content into one stage, I understand that the Shrine is the first place you battle on before transitioning but as the only stage that play?

If you really want a stage that represent Touhou but not make it too complicated like the entire Gensokyo they could instead go with the Scarlet Devil Mansion.

Mega Man has a lot of locations they could use, and yet, they went with Wily's Castle because it's one of the most known and iconic locations to add, who hasn't heard of the MM2 Wily Castle theme? Personally, I like other ones more, but I feel that was a good choice.

Same thing could apply to the Shrine. The incidents almost always reach it, so you could show lots of the games in there. It's an iconic location in the way that if they had to go with a singular stage, it'd be a good choice. I see you've mentioned the Mansion, and the Bamboo Forest: While those aren't bad locations by any means, they're generally stuck to a single game, and thus I feel they show less. Even if EoSD is the first one people hear of.

Oh and by the way, character interactions aren't only in print works. There's often many of those in each game's endings. They can be pretty funny sometimes.

I understand that you wanna have with a big stage that goes to many places, and it'd be cool, but the Shrine really isn't that bad, and going from how they've done the DLC for now (with Yggdrasil being the only traveling stage, maybe Garreg Mach if you wanna push it a bit) I think it'd be about what we'd get.

 

[Commander_Alph]

Well said! Touhou is about the characters, not really the locations, which are barely even represented in the bullet hell games. The important thing about a Touhou stage is featuring a lot of good cameos, and the Shrine is a natural place for that.


The print works/non-H doujins/associated media/etc have a much bigger reach than the bullet hell games, so dismissing them out of hand is very silly. The bullet hell games are probably the most niche part of the franchise, ironically, because the genre itself is rather inaccessible.

As far as "generic stages", individual Touhou levels are extremely generic visually, as it's literally just a scrolling background. It's not possible to faithfully represent bullet hell levels in a Smash stage because they're abstract backgrounds.

To be perfectly honest all the media that isn't the game usually blurred the line of being something canon or not as not many people expected ZUN to wrote a manga and you could point that out to the Persona 5 stage by not having the character interact with each other considering it is a core part of the game. Plus, look at Wily's Castle and Castle Siege, these stage is based on every reoccurring thing that happened in every installment of its game.

for the original MegaMan you storms Wily's Castle–destroy all of his robot masters–defeat Wily– repeat the first act for every game. This is the same with Fire Emblem too which have you recruit a party member– go on an all out war with another royalty– infiltrate their base– and repeat step 1 again but this theme is immediately dropped when Awakening came out.

Touhou is the same too as you hear a Youkai causing trouble– fly to their location and beat the heck out of them– and face off against an entity more powerful than the enemy that you previously fight and again repeat it over and over again

Mega Man has a lot of locations they could use, and yet, they went with Wily's Castle because it's one of the most known and iconic locations to add, who hasn't heard of the MM2 Wily Castle theme? Personally, I like other ones more, but I feel that was a good choice.

Same thing could apply to the Shrine. The incidents almost always reach it, so you could show lots of the games in there. It's an iconic location in the way that if they had to go with a singular stage, it'd be a good choice. I see you've mentioned the Mansion, and the Bamboo Forest: While those aren't bad locations by any means, they're generally stuck to a single game, and thus I feel they show less. Even if EoSD is the first one people hear of.

I understand that you wanna have with a big stage that goes to many places, and it'd be cool, but the Shrine really isn't that bad, and going from how they've done the DLC for now (with Yggdrasil being the only traveling stage, maybe Garreg Mach if you wanna push it a bit) I think it'd be about what we'd get.

Usually if they ever get confused on what stage they could use to represent the series they usually go with a location from one of their most well known game, in this case Scarlet Devil Mansion as it is the series that literally make Touhou blew up in popularity, a recurring place like various of Kirby stage that based on the surrounding area of Dreamland, in this case the Shrine or even things that connect all the element of the game into one like the Minecraft stage with mobs spawning in and villagers do their usual thing like farming and example for Touhou is every mainline game scrolling background that is made more visually appealing by making it more alive than just an image.

Overall in my opinion the stage that perfectly represent all of Touhou franchise have to meet this criteria:

• taking place in the air
• have hazards being the bullet hell itself with each character having different pattern
• if possible, a some sort of moving stage but not entirely a traveling stage if you get what I'm trying to say.

It's just that interaction between character in Touhou is the second thing that ZUN ever prioritize evidence by his willingness to let the fans shape the personality of all of his character while sometimes wrote something so that the fans wouldn't go off the rail on what the character is meant to be, and just like Persona the interaction is the least important thing that made people interested in the series.

 

[TheTuninator]

Commander_Alph Please stop double/triple posting. You can use the edit functionality instead.

 

[SharkLord]

The nice thing about the fighters is that even if they want to focus on Reimu's projectiles, the fighting game moveset covers that quite nicely! I think something like 2/3rds of her moves in the more recent fighters are projectile-based. Given that there's a physical attack button, a ranged attack button, and a special attack button, and that they all have 4 different moves depending on the direction input, it maps to Smash Bros quite well.

I remain fundamentally doubtful that Sakurai would try to closely emulate the bullet hell games just because that leaves you with really almost nothing to work with; all the characters do is fire bullets ahead in a straight line, bomb, and focus. Beyond even the special moves, you have to develop a jab, 3 tilts, 3 Smashes, and 4 aerials, which means that they're either making stuff up out of whole cloth or taking stuff from the fighters; so, at that point, why not just take stuff from the fighters? I absolutely could see some kind of focus mechanic as an homage to the bullet hells, but there really is almost nothing to work with there.

What I meant was that she'd lean more into the projectile side of things. Most the Reimu movesets I see draw primarily from the melee button side of things. With all the crazy loyal movesets, I feel like Reimu would have ore projectiles as her normals, a la Mega Man. And besides, it's not like Smash hasn't just made up moves out of nowhere; Heck, even Terry needed a made-up move for his up aerial. I'm just thinking we'd end up getting an incarnation of Reimu different from both the ground fighters and the aerial fighters.