Shenmue

SEGA Teases Next Dreamcast Collection Titles

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SEGA’s Ben Harbone is teasing Dreamcast fans, but it’s a good kind of teasing. In a video interview with Gamesreactor, Harbone hints at Shenmue and Skies of Arcadia being the next Dreamcast titles to hit download services. Said Harbone, “Those are a couple of our most requested games. I can’t say ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ but we may be working on them.” Don’t let us down SEGA, both of those titles would sell like hotcakes, and I’d love to see them sell so well that we get a sequel for either one!

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Yu Suzuki speaks Shenmue and future of series

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SEGA’s legendary former designer Yu Suzuki recently discussed his widely loved Shenmue franchise and the future of the series. In an interview lasting just over 12 minutes, Suzuki talked about the content of Shenmue 3 and what would become of Ryo’s thurst for revenge against Lan Di, but perhaps the most interesting part is how Suzuki said that if he could, he would try to obtain the license from SEGA to further develop the series. A must watch for any Shenmue fan.

[Thanks for the tip Madara!]

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Five Great Santas in SEGA History

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Consider this a SEGAbits exclusive: Santa is real! Yes, as it turns out the annual gift giver is the real deal. All those Santas we see at malls? They’re just the middle men. They’re the guys that report to the real Santa. How about all those variations we see of Santa in the media? This is a marketing effort on the real Santa’s part to keep his image alive. Proof of this exists everywhere, but today I thought I’d highlight five notable Santas in SEGA history. After the break, we reveal our Claus.

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More Yu Suzuki at Toulouse Game Show 2011

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After years of being MIA it’s absolutely fantastic to see one of my heroes back in the public eye again. Here is another video of his Toulouse Game Show appearance and a lot of great questions answered! It’s subtitled in English.

Many thanks to Kenji who translated, subtitled and directed the video and Ziming for uploading it!

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Yu Suzuki Interview – Toulouse Game Show 2011 (Must Watch!)

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Yu Suzuki attended the Toulouse Game Show 2011 and here is an absolutely fantastic interview with Yu Suzuki from the event, possibly the best I’ve ever seen! Yu Suzuki is maybe the most iconic person to have ever worked at Sega, Suzuki is the man behind some of Segas most beloved classics such as OutRun, After Burner, Space Harrier, Hang-On, Daytona USA, Virtua Fighter and of course the ill-fated Shenmue saga.

In this interview by videoxoc.com Yu Suzuki answers some of the most important questions any Sega or Shenmue fan cold pose and they are met with some great replies from Suzuki.

Hit the jump for highlights:

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Years of the Dreamcast Part 3: Shenmue

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Click here to read Part 1 and Part 2

After watching the Shenmue trailer on my Dreamcast’s demo disc, and after seeing the outrage that the cancellation of Shenmue 2 received, I decided to pick Suzuki’s epic up. The actual game wouldn’t win me over so easily, though. Shenmue was unlike anything I had ever played. It was slow and rigid. The character couldn’t jump or do anything particularly interesting. What kept me coming back was the world and the story. It was unlike anything I had ever seen before. The cinematics put Sonic Adventure to shame. The storyline was almost like a movie.

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Years of the Dreamcast Part 2: Good Things Never Die

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To Read Part 1, go here.

In July, reality finally caught up with me. Something had possessed me to join the SEGA forums. Because I hated being told that my name was already taken, and I figured the Knuckles name must already be taken given he’s such an awesome character, I decided to cut to the chase and just leave the K out of my name. Upon joining the forums, I discovered the Dreamcast had been canned and, being a teenager, I immediately latched on to the first online petition I saw. Those were the days. Keeping a thread ever present at the top of the forum whenever I got home from school or my friend’s house. Arguing with older, wiser, more realistic individuals like the naïve teenager I was, a large part of my Dreamcast experience came from defending it from bashers and supporting a petition that SEGA probably never even saw, let alone cared about.

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Mike Hayes – We’re not deaf to Shenmue demands

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Sega West big boss man Mike Hayes has been talking Shenmue again, in an interview with CVG he said while Sega has “no plans at the moment” for a new Shenmue on consoles, he encouraged Shenmue devotees not to lose hope, insisting that the publisher is taking demand for a new iteration “very seriously indeed“.

“Hopefully, we’ve shown that we’re listening to [those that love old Sega IP] because we have pretty much reduxed or reinvented all of it in one way or another,” he told CVG.

Make sure to read on after the jump:

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Yu Suzuki talks Shenmue and open-world games

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Yu Suzuki was interviewed in the latest Famitsu issue, isn’t it great having more and more Yu Suzuki content? This time around he talks about why Shenmue cost so much. Basically his team was an arcade team and they tried to do a game that wasn’t thought about before, on a console that they haven’t really worked on much.

“The main difference between open-world games and other types of games is the overwhelming size of them. Making all the endless objects that build up the world one by one, and portraying how the weather and time of day affects it all, requires massive amounts of time and manpower. “For example, if you enter a building, the room on the other side of the door doesn’t exist until the game generates it in the sliver of time when the player pulls the knob. We didn’t make every tree in town individually, either. There are a bunch of graphic resources for tree branches and leaves, and trees are generated mathematically based off of them. The NPCs in town are also independent — instead of giving unique motions to every single one, they all function independently based on road data and behavior pattern programming.” – Yu Suzuki, producer and director for Shenmue

Not to mention all the details that Shenmue had, which most had to be done by hand!

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SEGA promotes Japan relief auctions with free Dreamcast PS3 theme

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[American Theme/European Theme]

If you didn’t know, SEGA is selling tons of rare swag on ebay. Nice right? To help promote this, they are giving a free PSN theme away. The theme comes in two flavors, European and American.

What is the difference? The European Dreamcast had a blue swirl, thus the theme is more blue and the American had an orange swirl, making the theme more orange.

Since PSN is down, download below:
American Theme | European Theme

Someone buy me a copy of Shenmue signed by Yu Suzuki, please?

[Via: SEGA Blog]

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GDC 2011: Yu Suzuki Career Retrospective

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Are you a fan of Yu Suzuki? Of course you are! Well this video is for you.

This is the GDC career retrospective of Yu Suzuki and it’s translated into English. Full of great information regarding Suzuki’s long career with Sega and the ground breaking, revolutionary games he has created over the years including OutRun, Virtua Fighter and Shenmue amongst others.

I’m sure you’ll agree, this man is a legend.

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Four SEGA titles make IGN’s list of “so bad it’s good” voice acted games

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If there’s one thing I know a thing or two about as a SEGA fan, it’s wonderfully bad voice acting, and apparently Adam Sutton at IGN Australia feels the same way. The article’s a tribute of sorts to games with voice acting so bad that it actually enhances the experience, and SEGA’s all over it: 4 of the 10 games, in fact. Hit the break to see which games made it.

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