While speaking to games™, Yu Suzuki revealed that he is currently planning to release the Shenmue social networking/mobile game ‘Shenmue City’ aka ‘Shenmue Gai’ in English.
When asked if Shenmue City might be converted to more commonly used western platforms such as iPhone or Facebook he replies,
“There are plans but I cannot discuss them now.”
When explaining the premise of Shenmue City, Yu Suzuki said,
“We’re building Shenmue City as a social game, and each individual player is the main character. The story progresses as each player take on the role of a student who works with Ryo at his dojo, called the Hazuki Bukan.”
When talking about the future of Shenmue City, Yu Suzuki said,
“Two more stories will follow in the future’, he adds, “and if management likes our performance, more stories will be a possibility.”
Shenmue City is due to be released on Yahoo Japan’s Mobagetown service this winter and will presumably come to the west in 2011. For the full interview with Yu Suzuki, see games™ issue 104, on sale 23 December.
I’ll be playing Shenmue City no matter what… If only just to show there is support for the Shenmue series in the west. Hell if it comes to Facebook I’ll just have it running in the background as I do my daily rounds looking at photos of people I went to school with and seeing which ones are now fat, ugly, balding or pregnant.
For impressions/questions on the Cell Phone/Mobile Phone version of the game I suggest going to THIS THREAD on our forums.