Rumors continue to heat up after a not-so-cryptic hint from SEGA’s Ben Harbone earlier this week regarding current-gen digital ports of Shenmue and Skies of Arcadia. Now a site called Gamerzines is reporting with a strong degree of certainty that not only are Shenmue and Shenmue II on the way, but they’re completed and have been for over a year.
Citing an industry source with close ties to SEGA, the rumor goes on to say that SEGA chose to wait on the release of these two digital titles “until it had a clearer picture of the future for the Shenmue franchise, namely, whether or not Shenmue III would ever see the light of day.”
That little tidbit adds a whole other level of intrigue to all of this, but of course it’s important to keep in mind that this is very much a rumor and we’ve had rumors like this before regarding the continuation of the Shenmue saga. Gamerzines does look like a legit website, however, and apparently IGN thought so too, since they’ve also reported this rumor. Thought I’d share it with all of you.
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If this is true, my guess is it is a gauge for interest in Shenmue III. That can be a catch 22, because I’m sure there are people like me that don’t buy remakes/HD ports of games I already have/own (Halo Anniversary being the one exception), but I would buy Shenmue III.
BUT would you re-purchase Shenmues I and II if you knew that the save would carry over to Shenmue III or (more realistically) Shenmue: Episodes?
Probably, yes. And I’m not opposed to buying HD remakes as long as they’re handled well. Remakes like Sonic Adventure and Crazy Taxi are not truly HD, and don’t warrant another purchase for me and many others.
I guess what I’m saying is, if it’s a remake like Halo Anniversary I’d be all over it; true HD update (not up-scaling or screen stretching) and a few added features.
There are however a lot of people that didn’t play the Dreamcast, and to a lesser extent Xbox, originals. Sega knows hardcore Sega and Shenmue fans will buy Shenmue III, but if that were enough to make the third game they would have done so already. It’s the gamers that didn’t play the Shenmue series the first time around they need to gauge.
Sonic Adventure and Crazy Taxi were just Sega being lazy and putting out the PC ports. I remember on the Sega forums someone asked why the first 4 games (SA, CT, Space Channel 5 and Bass Fishing) were chosen and it was simple. They all had PC conversions. Now that we’re past that, we’re gonna get some HD remakes. JSR, Shenmue and Skies of Arcadia (the one I’m mostly unsure about since I have on DC & Gamecube)
Well, if people like you wanna see Shenmue 3, you might need to do it just once.
Consumers vote with their wallets. EVERYONE who wants Shenmue 3 needs to buy both of these games, imo.
Besides, if we do get Shenmue 3, it’ll probably allow for a file transfer from these games. This was something that was supposed to happen in this series, but only Japanese and European DC owners ended up getting a chance to use it…
You’d think they’d decide the direction for the series BEFORE giving the green light to HD remakes. If they spent the money, and finished the work, there is no reason to sit on the titles for a year.
I can believe that ports are near complete, but not that they’ve been ready for more than a year.
I read about this on another website. I cannot wait if this is true. I think that a year of being finished is great. I bet they are tweaking them slowly to ensure a worthy re-release digitally! Shenmue must happen. One of the best series in Sega’s history.
this rumor appearing just after sega hinted at shenmue HD seems a little coincidental.
Ah Shenmue, the only game my family actually watched me play from beginning to end.
Day one buy, and smart move to wait until now. Dreamcast nostalgia is pretty high at the moment, also a digital release platform reduces publishing costs.
I wish they scrapped the orginal xbox release altogether and just waited for this time to put out both titles as HD. The original Xbox release was too close to DC’s end to build demand.
“The HD port was teased earlier this week by Sega from a GDC GameReactor interview. An unfinished build of Shenmue appeared on PartnerNet, the Xbox Live developer network, in 2010.” (http://www.vg247.com/2012/03/16/report-sega-sitting-on-finished-shenmue-hd-for-a-year/)
i will of course buy as many copies as i can to support future opportunities for the series.
and i hope that all hardcore fans do the same.
i know this alone is not enough but it will definitively help with the current situation if we can hope for newcomers as well.
Im with you, I will buy as many copies also. We need to get this done and get Lan Di. This the moment!
I had imagined SEGA releasing the chapters as XBLA and PSN games, then just keep on going past Shenmue 2. Whatever they do, I’ll be happy to have my saved game continue from 1 to 2, since I played Shenmue 2 on the XBOX.
I can only hope they did cheap ports, played them, realized they’re missing something, and sat on them until figuring out what to add/enhance. The first game is pretty rough to control, so I hope they take the sequel’s enhancements and add them in.
Having save files compatible across all games would be the greatest thing ever, especially if they’re dragging ass on figuring out now how to make them later compatible with the never-gonna-happen-but-we’ll-keep-dreaming third game.
It would be cool if they added some of Shenmue II’s improvements to Shenmue I but then the fear I’d have is that Shenmue I would then be beatable in like….an hour. Because Shenmue 1’s game is structured exactly like a detective story, where you have to seek out the exact person (or couple of people) who know the information you’re looking for, and find them by talking to others.
In Shenmue II, you can simply bring up a question wheel and say “Hey, where do I go to find ___?” and 90% of the people you ask will say “oh, I’ll walk you right there!” Shenmue II was more about plot progression and edgy action sequences than Shenmue 1’s often deliberately-paced clue-finding. Shenmue II had some detective work on disc 1 with the 4 Wude but beyond that, the game totally changed direction.
So they were very different games structurally. I’m not so sure they’d be able to put Shenmue II’s improvements into Shenmue I without having to *totally* go in and alter the game, and they won’t. That would involve re-recording dialogue to make way for the new questions you could ask, etc. etc. etc. Not happening.
The problem is that some of Shenmue 1’s weaknesses (like the many unhelpful NPC characters and the lack of ability to pick a question to ask them) may make the game hard to get into for gamers today, especially in the wake of Bioware games like Mass Effect 3….
God please be true. I have never felt so passionate about finishing a game series than Shenmue. I’ve been immersed into its universe from the moment I picked up the controller and played it. I still have not forgotten the great experiences and memories I have with Shenmue. The prospect that the Sega may be finally coming round to completing it, is too much to handle, it makes me feel so happy. Please be true!
Over the past 10+ years I’ve just learned to block out news like this. But after whats happened with JSR and earlier dreamcast collection games anything can happen I guess.
I’d prefer a disc based version for collection purposes but I’ll take what I can get if its a proper HD port with multi lingual support and in proper widescreen aspect ratio with higher resolution textures. Just give me every thing rendered in Dream passport specs at the very least and I will be incredibly pleased.
This is one of those rumours that I would absolutely kill to be true… But I’m quite sure is far too good to be true.
I do not believe that they would redo Shenmue 1 and 2 and then hold them back until they know more about Shenmue 3. I think they would either know right from the start or they would base Shenmue 3’s existance on sales of 1 and 2 in HD.
Oh man i am so excited right now : )
I replay them shenmue 1&2 every year on my beloved dreamcast, but I would definitely throw money at them and buy games I already own if it meant getting shenmue 3.