neorichieb1971 wrote:Would a homebrew attempt at something similar to Ketsui get the same recognition as Ketsui on this site if it were a comparable attempt?
No, as one can see in the case of Zun's wonderful shooters (Perfect Cherry Blossom, Imperishable Night, etc).
The excellence of gameplay in these shooters easily rivals the best Cave has to offer, in fact I find these to be probably the most exciting score shooters to have been released in the last couple of years. Add to that the magnificent world of "Touhou", the catchy music and humour, and you get the kind of "complete" shmup package that we usually only associate with the best of console-only shooters.
So why are these games not as widely discussed as Cave's, for example?
One reason might be the graphics, whose mix of poly backgrounds and sprite figures still doesn't look as impressive as expensive, polished 3D stuff like Ikaruga or Under Defeat, or the intensely detailed pre-rendered bitmaps in Cave's works.
Another reason may be "arcade fundamentalism". A real hardcore gamer is supposed to play expensive PCBs with expensive Sanwa buttons, preferably at his own sitdown cab, whereas PC gaming is often associated with immature nerdism. (Of course there's Bloodflowers though, with his Imperishable Night cab

)
Or maybe these Doujin shooters are still too hard to get a hold of?
Anyway, Zun's games have shown me, that from now on PC gaming will be one of the main areas where I will be able to find the kind of games I want to play. Sadly, I see the number of arcade ports for consoles drastically diminishing in the next gaming generation, so the main areas to get shmups will be arcade-only and PC. I also think there will be more and more crossover between these two areas as well, as has already happened with Melty Blood.