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SEGA bringing its Shining spin-off arcade game Blade Arcus from Shining EX to PS4 and PS3

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SEGA Japan has announced that they are porting the 2D arcade fighting spin-off Blade Arcus from Shining to the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 3 via Famitsu. SEGA will add ‘EX’ to the end of the game because the game will have loads of extras, including new playable characters.

In Japan the game will get two releases, a standard that will cost 6,990 yen ($56 USD) and a limited edition costing 9,990 yen ($80 USD). All first print copies come with the character Sonia from Shining Resonance. The “Blade Arcus from Shining EX Tony’s Premium Fan Box” limited edition comes with a Tony Taka-illustrated special box, “Shining Heroine Works” art book, Shining Ark character song CD, Shining Blade soundtrack CD, and “Shining Beach Heroines” swimsuit calendar.

As for it coming west, SEGA probably wants to see how Dengeki Bunko: Fighting Climax does later next month. As for the characters, if you are a old school Shining Force fan, don’t get too excited since all in-game characters are from Shining Hearts/Blade (some original characters for the game too). Hit the job to see who made the cut. 

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Atlus and Vanillaware tease their upcoming new project

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We posted earlier about Atlus and Vanillaware doing Odin Sphere Leifdrasir, a HD remake of the Playstation 2 game in HD and on PS3, PS4 and PS Vita. But that isn’t all they have in store for gamers, the companies have unleashed the teaser above. Atlus and Vanillaware gained a working relationship (working on a game together) when they co-developed Dragon’s Crown in 2013.

This could be Dragon’s Crown 2, but seeing the visuals in the trailer its leading me to believe it might be a brand new IP. What do you guys think? The game will get more details in September, catch it at TGS most likely.

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Shenmue 3 Kickstarter Ends At $6,333,295, 69,320 Backers

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The Shenmue 3 Kickstarter campaign has officially ended, earning a total amount of $6,333,295 with 69,320 backers.

Fourteen years after Shenmue II was released, and following two failed attempts at reviving the franchise (Shenmue Online and Shenmue Gai), Yu Suzuki was welcomed to Sony’s E3 2015 stage to officially announce the beginning of the Kickstarter campaign for Shenmue 3. Breaking the Guinness World Record for the fastest video game to reach $1 million through crowdfunding in one hour and 42 minutes (as well as initially crashing Kickstarter’s site), Shenmue 3 continued to break records by being the second fastest Kickstarter campaign in all categories to raise over $1 million. Less than nine hours later, Shenmue 3 continued to drop jaws around the world when it reached $2 million, its 100% funding goal. Since the announcement, the money has continued to flow in, raising almost $1 million more on its last campaign day.

The game has also become the most funded video game in Kickstarter History, a record previously held by Bloodstained, the third most funded Kickstarter campaign in the “Games” category, and, most impressively, the sixth most funded Kickstarter project of all time.

The Kickstarter campaign should be considered a massive success, and now we can all rest (if only for a little bit), and await a steady flow of Shenmue 3 news until December of 2017!

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New Shenmue III trailer, less than 72 hours left in the campaign!

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Last night, presumably to feed off of the hype surrounding the end of Shenmue III‘s Kickstarter campaign, YS Net released a short clip of very early footage of a Shenmue III cutscene running on Unreal Engine 4.

Rather than new content, it seems Yu Suzuki was content with recreating another Shenmue II scene. The game does look quite brilliant in Unreal Engine 4, and can only get better as development continues! Check out the original Shenmue II scene here.

What do you think of the new clip, and how much will it push the Kickstarter in these final hours? Sound off in the comments below.

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Yu Suzuki’s Twitter Q&A Part 2: Shenmue 3 in-game footage won’t be shown until 2017

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Last time Yu Suzuki was answering fan questions on twitter, I searched his twitter to find all the questions and answers to give them to you. This time, someone on Shenmue Dojo beat me to it. So you can check out the answers questions here or hit the jump for the complete transcript.

Some of the interesting bits includes a sketch of Akira in  High School from the cancelled Virtua Fighter RPG, Saying that we won’t see in-game footage of Shenmue 3 until 2017, and even confirmed that the game will be based on reality, unlike what that Shenmue Online trailer lead us to believe.

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SEGA Japan CEO talks about earning gamer’s trust, learning from Atlus and focusing on quality titles

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[Update: It seems that their might have been some mistranslation when it came to Siliconera’s reporting on the story. While it said it was Hajime Satomi who was interviewed, according to Gematsu it was actually his son and newly crowned president of Sega Games co that was interviewed. It makes sense since he barely got the job in April during the restructure.]

Its easy to see that there have been issues at SEGA that they have been trying to get patched up. One thing is for sure is that SEGA Japan’s in-house gaming studios haven’t delivered titles that have been up to par and it always seems that they are trying to go triple A development and falling short with unpolished titles being released. It seems that long time SEGA CEO and President Hajime Satomi understands fan’s frustrations, he talked to Famitsu about how SEGA Japan has actually been learning from Atlus’ model of game creation:

“As far as the Western market goes, we learned a lot from Atlus. If we can make a title with proper quality, I believe there’s a good chance for it to do well even in the West for players that like to play Japanese games.”

It also seems that Satomi is really eyeing the Playstation 4 as a future console they want to release titles on, while the company has been only focusing on the Nintendo Wii U in the West in the last few years (it seems that might change):

“It may look rough if you look a it from a Japanese standpoint, but on a global scale the PlayStation 4 has a record-selling history, so I believe there’s a good opportunity there,”

While we know SEGA will have a big focus on mobile games, considering that a huge percentage of Japanese gamers are using the platform as its main gaming machine, Famitsu asked him what they are looking to focus more on when it comes to console games. Answer? Quality.

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Yu Suzuki’s Twitter Q&A: Check out our complete transcript

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One of the issues with the Shenmue 3 KickStarter is that many people felt like there wasn’t enough details on the project. Unsurprisingly fans had a million questions for legendary game developer Yu Suzuki, thankfully Yu has tried to answer fan questions. First was in a form of a live Twitch chat, that didn’t go so smoothly (which he has apologized for).

Now he has taken to Twitter and allowed users to ask him any question, all you have to do is use the tag: #YouAskYu and the response was outstanding. But what did we learn from this? We gathered some of the best answers and posted them after the break!

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Shenmue 3 kickstarter adds physical PS4 copy

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Shenmue3PS4[Note: All art shown above is place holder artwork]

Did you demand that Shenmue III get a Playstation 4 physical version? Guess what? Yu Suzuki has heard your cries and it was added earlier today. Pay $60 dollars and get yourself a physical copy of Shenmue 3 on Playstation 4 (or PC, since its the same price).

It doesn’t seem that they have added a tier to allow users to buy both physical copies of PC and PS4, so I don’t know which one I would want right now. I’m leaning towards PC for the modification aspect. What version are you guys picking up?

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Corey Marshall the English voice for Ryo Hazuki reprises role for Shenmue 3

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It has now been confirmed that the voice actor for the English version of Ryo Hazuki, Corey Marshall, will reprise his role in Shenmue III. Corey Marshall has been a huge Shenmue supporter, especially when when it came to advocating for a new entry into the franchise. Many people had a love and hate relationship with the delivery and how he played Ryo’s character, but for those that have nostalgic memories playing the Western releases of Shenmue 1 & 2x will be thrilled to know the old Ryo has returned.

Corey Marshall has decided to help the cause of funding Shenmue III by adding a a new reward tier, as a $1,000 reward where you get a personalized Ryo voice message. If you pick up this tier, you will also get everything included in the $500 dollar package.

What do you guys think of Corey Marshall reprising his role of Ryo Hazuki? Did you guys want to see someone new? Do you think they even needed English voices? Let us know in the comments. 

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Yu Suzuki’s Shenmue 3 Kickstarter Twitch Q&A: Looking into adding physical PS4 copies

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It seems that the world needs to know more and more about the Shenmue 3 KickStarter as each day passes, so Awesome Japan got Yu Suzuki to do a live Twitch stream answering fan questions regarding the KickStarter. While the stream had some issues starting up and the quality in the video being behind times it did answer quite a few important questions.

One of the biggest requests is for Shenmue 3 is a physical copy on the Playstation 4, so far they have only been offering up a digital copy for Sony’s newest machine; while the PC got both digital and physical. Yu Suzuki says he is looking into adding it as a tier.

Yu Suzuki also clarified how some of the mechanics work on some of their stretch goals, like the ‘character perspective system’ will let you play as Shenhua and Ren in Baisha. Another question he answered was about how much story would be cut from Shenmue 3 and according to Yu Suzuki he decided not to cut much of the story out; thus Shenmue 3 won’t not conclude the saga after all. 

He also announced via Twitch that he would be adding a few grab bags of old Shenmue merch as rewards, but those where gobbled up rather quickly.

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Yu Suzuki will be on Reddit tomorrow answering all fan questions

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It has been updated via the Shenmue 3 Kickstarter that Yu Suzuki will be answering questions tomorrow (Friday) via Reddit.  Sadly the post doesn’t really say the time they will be on answering the questions or what subreddit they will be using. I will assume it will be either via /r/IAmA or /r/Shenmue. You’d think they would have details like time ready a day before the event starts, but they did say they will keep us updated.

So get your list of questions ready and keep checking on Reddit tomorrow for your chance to ask one of gaming’s most legendary developers all your questions. We will update you when we find out the time and place of the event, so check back.

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New Shenmue 3 information uncovered including PC version’s publisher

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While I jumped in and donated to the Shenmue 3 KickStarter right when it was announced, the whole thing just left me with more questions. I think a lot of fans right now are just so excited (like myself) that most forgot to question some of the aspects of the campaign. I see lots of gaming journalist assuming lots of things, but let’s get some facts out of the way. While the gaming press is discussing Sony stating that they are giving Shenmue 3 ‘some funding‘, we don’t know who the publisher is going to be… till now at least.

We know that the PC version (which is getting a physical release) will be published by Shibuya Productions. That would mean that SEGA will not be publishing that version of the game, sadly. They did say that SEGA and Yu Suzuki have a good relationship, so much so that they are allowing Yu Suzuki to use all the elements he needs from the first two games to complete Shenmue 3.

One of the new gameplay systems that the Kickstarter is promoting is the use of scrolls, while the older games had them to learn moves it seems that Shenmue 3 is set to expand on that. Skill scrolls are still part of the fighting system but will also unlock mini-games, gambling and other side quests.

It has also been confirmed that Shenmue 3 will take place right after Shenmue 2‘s cliff hanger. Cédric Biscay has been confirmed to be in charge of the PC version.

[Source: NeoGAF]

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Shenmue 3’s Kickstarter has been funded

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Shenmue 3 is Real

No more waiting. No more false hope. Shenmue 3 is alive, it’s coming, and one day we’re all going to get to play it. As of a few moments ago, Shenmue 3 reached its $2 million goal on Kickstarter, breaking all sorts of records along the way.

Shenmue 3 has become the fastest game on Kickstarter to break $1 million dollar and the fastest to reach a $2 million funding goal, hitting it in less than hours with more than 24,000 funders. The game’s funding moved so quickly in its opening hours that it practically broke the kickstarter page, hitting prospective funders with errors.  It’s also currently on track to outpace Bloodstained, which recently became Kickstarter’s most funded game ever at $5.5 million. For comparison, Bloodstained required 24 hours to reach half of Shenmue 3’s initial funding goal.

Of course, this is just the beginning. With more than 30 days left in the campaign, the project as more than $2 million worth of stretch goals lined up, ranging from Shenmue 1 & 2 cinema shorts at $2.5 million to an expanded Baisha village and additional mini games at $4 million. According to the Kickstarter page, we’ll be hearing more about these stretch goals after initial funding. We’ll post more details as they come in!

Shenmue 3 is being developed by Yu Suzuki’s independent studio YsNet. It is currently unknown how (or if) SEGA is involved, and whether any outside parties are will be performing publish duties or providing outside funding. The game is currently scheduled for a December 2017 release. For additional information on the project and its developers, check out the official kickstarter page and the game’s website. For a look at a list of all the known stretch goals, check out the image below the break!

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Shenmue 3 appears at Sony’s E3 2015 press conference, launches Kickstarter

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Shenmue is just one of those game franchises that make all SEGA fans sequel in delight, talk to any of the fans that played them and they’ll go on for hours about what makes the franchise so great. This year at Sony’s E3 2015 conference, Yu Suzuki announced that they will be doing a Shenmue 3 kickstarter and you can fund it right now! The budget of the game via the kickstarter is only 2 million dollars, so chances of reaching it are very high (since its at 150k right now and it hasn’t even been an hour!). But 2 million dollars seems a bit low of a budget and it also seems to have a new character models that seem out of place. This is obviously very early assets that will hopefully change down the road. The game will also be developed by Yu Suzuki’s new studio called Ys Net. It seems that the project will only be available on Playstation 4 and PC.

Regardless you can fund the game and enjoy some of the rewards offered. $500 dollars gets you a set of capsule toys, who doesn’t like capsule toys? Are you guys excited for Shenmue III? Let us know in the comments.

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SEGA announces Yakuza Zero has sold over 500k units, series has sold over 7.5 million

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We mentioned before on the last financial report on how Yakuza Zero has been the lowest launching Yakuza game in Japan, especially when it was released on both Playstation 3 and Playstation 4 consoles. Well, SEGA seemed to be aware and launched the game in Asia back in May where it sold out instantly. Now SEGA has stated that the game has sold over half a million copies, talk about a quick turn around.

SEGA has other games it is releasing over to in Asia including Phantasy Star Nova and Shining Resonance. SEGA hasn’t announced plans on releasing Yakuza Zero in English, but it will be releasing Yakuza 5 this fall on Playstation 3.

SEGA has also announced that the franchise as a whole has sold over 7.5 million. The franchise has had over 11 unique titles including spin-offs released since 2005. SEGA also announced before that the Persona franchise reached over 6.2 million, surprising seeing the Yakuza franchise outsell Persona when Persona‘s been around longer and is more popular in the west.

[Via: Playstation Lifestyle]

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