Touhou Project: The Most prolific independant shooter series

These past few years, independent videogames have exploded in popularity, from the origins of the “virtual LEGO” Minecraft to the smashing impact of Undertale, which is even rated by GameFAQs “Best Game EVER” (Frank, 2015), pretty much anyone who has been familiarized in some way with videogames at any point during the last decade is very likely to know a couple of indie games and really love them. The broader audience has moved from the consoles (Sacco, 2014) to the PC since Indie games tend to be cheaper than AAA games, a lot of Indie games and are available even for free, you just have to look in the popular platform Steam and you will find one in less than five minutes.

So after seeing how Indie games are very likely to be most successful than AAA games, this leads to the question: Then, what is the most successful Independent Game? Is it the “Best Game Ever” Undertale? Is it Minecraft with its insane revenue? Even Flappy Bird is one of the simplest games ever conceived and it gave its creator fifty thousand dollars ($50,000) every day before it was taken down (Hamburger, 2014). But personally, I feel like the ultimate independent game franchise is Touhou Project.

Touhou Project is a shoot’em up – bullet hell series of doujin games created by a single man who goes by the pseudonym ‘ZUN’. There are many terms to be described here, so let me go one by one.

Doujin (Pronounced dōjin) is a Japanese word that is used to talk about self-published content made mostly by non-professional artists or developers. This content includes mangas, videogames, music, and etcetera. These doujin productions tend to have a more audience-focused intention rather than focusing on money and having a revenue, doujin productions exist mostly for artistic purposes. Usually, doujin productions are sold in conventions like the very crowded Comiket in Tokyo (Wikipedia, 2016).

A Shoot’em up game is the type of game where the player controls something that shoots the enemies of the screen while also avoiding their projectiles. Touhou belongs to a sub-genre called Bullet Hell, which is more focused on a more defensive type of play, dodging patterns of bullets that cover an enormous portion of the screen.

Illustration 1, Example of a Bullet Hell game, Touhou 8 (Imperishable Night), proving why the genre is called like this.

Doujin groups are usually called Circles, however, even though there is a Circle for the Touhou games, Team Shangai Alice, said “Team” is run only by one single person: The enigmatic Jun’ya Ota, mostly known as ZUN.

Ilustración 2, ZUN, leader and only member of Team Shangai Alice

ZUN’s information is kind of limited due to the lack of known, translated or comprehensible data, but there is a good amount of relevant information to know about him.
Zun is kind of a cheerful guy, laughing on interviews and really loves drinking beer. He worked on Taito Corporation from 1998 to 2007 because he was disappointed with the job and didn’t need to stay due to Touhou’s huge success. He loves putting tons of ideas into creating the Touhou games, and generally does not care if he spends his life working on Touhou and drinking beer (Even though he is the father of a baby boy). He has jokingly stated that he’s been working on (and will continue) the Touhou games since he lacks of common sense (Ota, 2012), while the actual reason is because he couldn’t find any games he liked himself, so he decided to make games that he enjoys entirely. In an interview with the Swedish magazine Player1 he said: “I’m going to keep up making games that stand out, so if all my fans disappear I’m still happy I can keep doing the games I want.” (Player1, 2012)

It’s overall pretty clear that the Touhou games have all the elements of a successful indie work: Passion, dedication, useful knowledge… But is it really successful? It is known as “Japan’s biggest indie series” (Kemps, 2015). Gensokyo, the world of the game, is a brand new fantastical reality in which exist a large amount of supernatural beings, who are almost entirely female characters, these held in check by shrine maiden Reimu Hakurei, and her witch companion Marisa Kirisame, our two main characters. When something is out of place, the duo helps things to be in order again, in Touhou 7 – Perfect cherry Blossom, the spring has been stopped, bringing an eternal winter to Gensokyo, in Touhou 8 – Imperishable Night, several chunks of the moon have disappeared, presumably stolen.

The simplicity in the lore, together with the appeal of its graphical design have inspired fans to make endless content to express their love to the franchise, fan-made images are only the tip of the iceberg. In 2009 a Japanese dance pop song featured in one of the arcade games from the Touhou Series called “Bad Apple!!” was a blast, especially after it was uploaded in Nico Nico Douga (NND, Basically Japanese YouTube). In 2010, the original upload of the video became the first NND video to reach 10 million views. Based on a song of the same name from Touhou 4, Bad Apple!! Features 3D moving models and silhouette shadow art featuring a great part of the Touhou Project cast.

Why is Touhou full of girls anyway? There are over a hundred characters and every single one of them is a girl, beast girl, ghost girl, tengu girl, bunny girl, and my personal favorite… Vampire girls. My personal take on this topic is beauty. Watching people play Touhou, and playing it myself just made me realize how pretty it is. The screen is constantly full of colors, patterns, shiny stuff all over the place, all of this while some electronic-folkloric-ish music plays in the background. I don’t care if I can’t get past of the stage 5 of Touhou 7 – Perfect Cherry Blossom over and over again just to watch the main enemy of the stage, Youmu Konpaku, throw all kinds of weird patterns, slowing down time, thinking about how cool her design is and how it relates to the insane patterns that she throws relentlessly.

Ilustración 3, silver haired girl, with a katana and a spirit going around... I'm in!

Touhou has been very successful pretty much from the beginning, back in 1995, that means it is 21 years of existence for this franchise now. And it is totally relevant due to the enormous amount of attention it gets in Japan and other eastern countries, of course it has even got some attention from the west. Touhou is the result of hard work, passion and also love, not only from ZUN, but also from their fans, and it really shows. In 2011 Touhou Project made it into the Guinness World Records for “Most prolific fan-made shooter series”, for having 18 games in 15 years of history, and does not look like stopping at all. This year, for the first time ever a Touhou Game will be released on a console (PS4 and PS Vita) instead of PC like every other canon game in the series, I am honestly shocked about how much these franchise keeps on growing.

All of this makes me think, without a doubt, that Touhou will probably never stop being popular, it has so much to it that I can’t think of a reason to strongly dislike the franchise except for its difficulty. With great characters, setting, aesthetic, narrative, music, concept, fanbase… Touhou Project is the best independent franchise for me, and I expect to keep watching it getting bigger.

By saying no more, this was Juan D. Durán, Touhou lover, thanks for reading.

References

Frank, A. (16 de December de 2015). Undertale wins GameFAQs' Best Game Ever contest. Obtenido de http://www.polygon.com/2015/12/16/10323192/undertale-gamefaqs-best-game-ever

Guiness World Records. (24 de April de 2013). Most prolific fan-made shooter series. Obtenido de http://web.archive.org/web/20130424041751/http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/records-8000/most-prolific-fan-made-shooter-series/

Hamburger, E. (5 de February de 2014). Indie smash hit 'Flappy Bird' racks up $50K per day in ad revenue - The Verge. Obtenido de http://www.theverge.com/2014/2/5/5383708/flappy-bird-revenue-50-k-per-day-dong-nguyen-interview

Kemps, H. (21 de April de 2015). An introduction to Touhou Project: Japan's biggest indie series. Obtenido de http://www.pcgamer.com/an-introduction-to-touhou-project-japans-biggest-indie-series/

Ota, J. (21 de December de 2012). ZUN/ZUN's E-mails. Obtenido de https://en.touhouwiki.net/wiki/ZUN/ZUN%27s_E-mails

Player1. (21 de December de 2012). Interview in Swedish Player1 Magazine. Obtenido de https://en.touhouwiki.net/wiki/Interview_in_Swedish_Player1_Magazine

Sacco, D. (25 de April de 2014). 'PC games have surpassed console games globally' | The latest news from the Computer and IT Industry | PC Retail. Obtenido de http://www.pcr-online.biz/news/read/pc-games-have-surpassed-console-games-globally/033849

Wikipedia. (5 de October de 2016). Dōjin - Wikipedia, la enciclopedia libre. Obtenido de https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%C5%8Djin