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Fantasy Maiden Wars (Gensou Shoujo Taisen) on Steam! In English! Sometime this year!

A very special project I've been excited about just went up on the Steam store! Fantasy Maiden Wars—a turn-based strategy game that acts as a retelling of the early Windows Touhou games with some creative liberties and reordering. Around a decade ago, an old friend messaged me on AIM (yes, that long ago), asking if I could translate an objectives screen for this game. My interest was piqued, so I asked him more about the game. I knew nothing of Touhou at the time but quickly got a crash course. I was so enamored with this game that I reached out to some people on Something Awful who were doing a Let's Play thread where they translated the dialogue, and offered to chip in on the fan translation effort. This turned into a full-blown fan translation patch. I was not the lead translator - instead, I offered proofreading and error-checking. In doing so, I got to see the lead TL grow from a cautious amateur into a confident professional, and I work with them in a professional capacity to this day. We were all very passionate about the project and wanted an official release. A colleague suggested compiling a pitch for Phoenixx, a publisher of indie games. But when I ran the numbers, the sheer volume was discouraging. I gave up, thinking it wasn't financially feasible. Imagine my surprise when, a few years later, Phoenixx not only published the game in JP but also reached out to me about "a turn-based Touhou strategy RPG", while also reaching out to a member of the fan TL team about reusing their work. I was right when I assumed a TL from scratch was financially unfeasible. But we reached a middle-ground solution (with the blessings of all previous fan TL contributors) where we cleaned up the fan TL while just translating all the content the fan TL never managed to cover. This combination of clean-up and fresh translation took the better part of two years. Most people seem to have given up on any chance of this game ever coming out officially in EN, but I'm happy to say that it's happening, and it was brought about by a passionate, dedicated team.

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