Of course, I do know that the idea of combining fighting and shmup genre has been done already. Still, the hybrid of these two genres hasn't been explored much, since there are not many games that take on this concept.
From what I researched, there are three Touhou fan games that take on this concept and focusing more on shmup rather than fighting. They are Touhou Rekkaden, Touhou Gensokyo Rensa, and Acceleration Of Patchouli ( which is a parody of the game that also take on this concept, Acceleration of Suguri )
However, Touhou Rekkaden isn't complete, since it's only 1 player even though it's 4 people brawl.Touhou Gensokyo Rensa is also a bit slow IMO. Acceleration of Suguri was great, but again, it's 1-on-1. Even though Acceleration Of Patchouli make it possible to fight against 4 people, but I think balancing of Acceleration of Patchouli is pretty terrible. I haven't tried Senkou No Ronde, but I have downloaded all the videos and system and mechanic explanation and studied it to see how the design work.
My point is that, you're right that this idea isn't unprecedented. But there aren't many games that take on this idea. And I personally think another addition to the hybrid of these two genres wouldn't hurt :D
@Makai
I'd LOVE to make the network play, but my network programming isn't enough to pull that off at the moment.
I'll try to finish the offline version first and learn more about that later and makes a network play patch or something. Or if anyone has any suggestion on how should I take this matter, I'd really appreciate it!