I’d like to start our fourth episode of SEGA Sequel Saturdays by congratulating Yu Suzuki, who will be honored with the Pioneer Award at at the 2011 Game Developers Choice Awards, and I figured that it would be appropriate to devote this week’s to Shenmue, a series that’s near and dear to the hearts of many a SEGA fan.
We all have our own personal favorite SEGA moments. So this week the staff is sitting back, thinking about our favorites. As always you can let us know your favorites via the comments.
After you spend hours in your favorite SEGA game, you always get those damn catchy tunes stuck in your head. They won’t go away, now we will share our favorite SEGA soundtracks, hopefully they stay stuck in your brain like they have ours.
If your favorite soundtrack wasn’t featured, make sure you head down to the comment section and share.
Seems that the Yakuza development team is showing some Shenmue love by giving players the ability to drive a forklift in the zombie filled city in their upcoming Playstation 3 exclusive.
The forklift was listed in the latest Famitsu magazine, which listed a bunch of other vehicles a player could use. This included tanks, armored cars and bulldozers. So maybe a forklift is the least badass of the vehicles announced.
It has also been confirmed that crazy Goro Majima will be able to use a flame thrower, chainsaw and rail gun. Each character will have their own unique weapons.
[Source: Siliconera]
Courtesy of our awesome community member Supa comes a great interview with the English voice actor of Ryo Hazuki, Corey Marshall! Fittingly, this interview comes the day after Ryo’s fictional birthday. Ryo would have been forty-two years old. Check out the interview to see what Corey has been up to, hear some great stories from the days of Shenmue 1 and 2 and his thoughts on Shenmue City!
[Even 10 years later, Shenmue’s still a fanbase favorite]
All throughout the life of the Dreamcast, we were teased with images and trailers for what promised to be the most amazing and cinematic game to ever grace a home console. There were certainly high expectations for Shenmue to deliver, and, well, it may not have been the game everyone was expecting. For those of us who “got” Shenmue, though, it ended up being one of the most incredible gaming experiences of our lives, and to date, surpassed only by its sequel. This is a series that every gamer should play and playing it when it was released in 2000, 10 years ago, was a journey that, like much on Sega’s awesome white console, forever changed the way I looked at video games.
Yes! It is 10 whole years to the day… Erm, yesterday. But close enough right?
Shenmue was one of the most ambitious games ever made, it cost a whopping 70 million dollars in total, is the best series I’ve ever played and… Still isn’t bloody finished.
If you have yet to play Shenmue, well you may be a ‘gamer’ but you’ve still got your training wheels on, that’s for sure. Get your act together, go buy a cheap Dreamcast and enjoy a true classic.
If you have, fantastic you are a real man. Here’s to more Shenmue, sometime in the next 10 years! Come on Sega…
Until then, Shenmue City anyone?
Yes, the title says it all: a new Shenmue game. However, it’s not for consoles, nor is it even being released on a disc: it’s going to be a premier title for Yahoo’s new “Mobage Service”, a Japanese PC Social Game Service. The new game, Shenmue City, will be debuting this winter on the service.
The new service, which has been in beta since September 21st, just launched today, and it currently has over 100 titles lined up for release, including games from Tecmo Koei and EA. You can visit the site here.
Source: andriasang
Father’s day usually has me picturing Football and beer, but today we will talk about SEGA dads, which is your favorite? My vote goes to Iwao Hazuki. First of all he was voiced in Japan by Hiroshi Fujioka, the man that played Segata Sanshiro. Already awesome.
In the game Shenmue, there is also flash backs to Ryo and his dad as kids, like where he convinces him to eat carrots, even though he dislikes them. If you know kids, you know you have to be pretty good to convince them do what they don’t want to. Especially me, I was a fucking brat.
Not to mention he gave the location of the Dragon Mirror to Lan Di so he wouldn’t hurt his son. Even though we know its very important object, so much so that he would fight and risk his own life to protect it.
Who is your favorite SEGA dad?
Even though SEGA released their own racing game, Sonic & SEGA All-Stars Racing, doesn’t mean SEGA characters can’t crash Sony’s Modnation Racers party. Since the game features some pretty deep create a character tools, it was expected that a SEGA fan would create their favorite characters in the game.
Our forum member Monkeroony has done just that. Creating Sonic, Shadow, Beat, Aiai, and even Ryo Hazuki. If you own the game, search for his creations or you can check them out here.
Shenmonth continues with a new segment called SEGAbits All-Stars! Unlike the similarly named ‘SEGA All-Stars’ series of games, SEGAbits All-Stars will highlight the underdogs of the SEGAverse. The characters who weren’t the star of a game, nor were they playable, but they still made enough of an impact to be memorable.
Gotta take a leak before reading more? You should probably hold it in, because our first SEGAbits All-Star knows all the best spots to relieve oneself.
I’m one of those guys that does not think Yakuza is much like Shenmue, I think it have small elements that barrow for Yu Suzuki’s amazing game, but much different in the end. What does Nagoshi have to say about the comparisons?
“Fans are free to judge the game as they like. All of these games were created by SEGA. We might have included game elements from past titles unconsciously. But all of those elements appear in an evolved style.”
I dunno about “evolved style”, Shenmue had a better weather system on the Dreamcast and more varied character NPCs. Just saying. You can read the SPOnG interview here.
If there is one thing Shenmue fans can’t get enough of, it’s ‘Shenmue III’ speculation. Fans have put everything from obscure items found in the Hazuki basement to AM2 concept art under a microscope in hopes of finding clues towards what we could expect from a ‘Shenmue III’. Unfortunately, that speculation went from fun in 2002 to nearly hopeless in 2005 to hopeless in 2009. Despite a sequel being nowhere in sight, the past year has provided a few glimmers of hope:
In October 2009 Ryo was announced to be in ‘Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing’ and in January 2010, Sega actually acknowledged that Shenmue exists and that fans want it. Couple that with Sega’s continued support of the Yakuza series (they got a “3”! And a “4” to boot!) and the return of a 2D Sonic on home consoles after 16 years and one could argue that Shenmue fans could move from hopeless back to nearly hopeless.
With all that in mind, let’s fuel that hope and take a look at 5 things ‘Shenmue III’ should have!
May is Shenmonth! That’s right, a whole month devoted to articles about the beloved Dreamcast series ‘Shenmue’. Expect an article a week at the Dreamcast Junkyard and SEGAbits. If writers here or from any other Sega blog wish to participate, feel free to grab the header image above, slap it atop a blog post and write whatever you wish about ‘Shenmue’. A “Top Ten Ugliest NPC Characters” article is up for grabs.
You saw us post them as a rumor, that both Shenmue and Jet Set Radio were coming to XBLA. There have been numerous PartnerNet leaks, newest one being Crazy Taxi, but this one came from a shady source who calls himself the XBOX360LEAKER.
Not only that, other people that have PartnerNet can’t seem to find traces of Jet Set Radio or Shenmue on the services. When users on NeoGAF contacted “XBOX360LEAKER” he said he got the games off of “Test Net”, a service that does not exist. Even worse, he left traces of his photoshop work behind on his ImageShack account.
I think he took advantage of all the news about Dreamcast leaks, decided to play on some classics that fans wanted. A shame really.
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