Yu Suzuki, the influential Japanese game designer famously known for his work at Sega, will be delivering a Classic Game Postmortem on the iconic Dreamcast game Shenmue. We will keep everyone with updates on our Twitter page.
UPDATE: Our readers who are having trouble viewing the stream through GameSpot can view the stream on Twitch.
The annual Game Developers Conference will be taking place in California throughout next week. There are various panels available on topics related to the gaming industry to listen in on for attendees. However, of particular note is the Shenmue Postmortem featuring then-series director Yu Suzuki and PS4 architect Mark Cerny as Suzuki’s translator. It will be taking place on March 19, 2014 at 2:00 PM US Pacific Time and will close at 3:00 PM.
Per the GDC website’s description of the panel, Yu Suzuki will be discussing the origins and development history of the first title starting as a Virtua Fighter RPG for the SEGA Saturn and its eventual release as the Dreamcast cult classic.
The GDC panels are not typically streamed or otherwise made available to non-attendees; however, Gamespot plans to stream this particular panel. With the panel fast approaching, you may want to make time to watch it if you will be available!
From last night’s stream, NicoNico Live featured the celebration of Virtua Fighter’s 20th Anniversary. The event was held in Tokyo Joypolis Park hosted by Sexy Saitou and Asapon. AM2’s Daichi Katagiri, VF’s game coordinater, made an appearance as well as other special guests such as Tekken series producer, Harada and former AM2 head, Yu Suzuki on pre-recorded video to share their thoughts and experience with the series. During the stream, SEGA announced a ton of awesome Virtua Fighter news to celebrate the series anniversary. What to know what they are, hit the jump young grass hoppers.
This week on the show Barry and George talk about the future of the Shenmue franchise, their take on its future and of course Project X Zone, which recently came out. Besides that we cover your weekly news, for more on whats on the show check the show notes after the break.
David Cage was working on his game Indigo Prophecy around the same time Shenmue was releasing. If you played Indigo Prophecy or any of Quantum Dreams games, you will notice they used Quick Time Events (QTE) quite a lot. This technic in video games was popularized by SEGA’s Shenmue.
In this interview with both David Cage (Heavy Rain director) and Yu Suzuki talk to Game Informer about storytelling. Its awesome watching Yu Suzuki explain what he tried to capture with Shenmue and what David Cage tries to capture with his games.
Also really like the part where Yu Suzuki took pictures of David Cage’s new game Beyond: Two Souls, because he found it interesting and wanted to look up more information on the game when he got home.
Yu Suzuki turns 55 years old today. Yu Suzuki is known for his many arcade titles like After Burner, Out Run and many others. The thing is, Yu Suzuki is a big part of how SEGA became the company it was famous for. Yu Suzuki delivered huge hits before Sonic Team ever existed and most of those titles stand the test of time. The man created driving games, took us to the Fantasy Zone and even laid out the foundation for 3D fighters. Have I mentioned Shenmue? Just check out the twitter and facebook fans demanding SEGA to finish off the trilogy.
Any way you slice it, Yu Suzuki is a huge part of SEGA and since SEGA is a huge part of my life, so is Mr. Suzuki! Just want to say happy 55th birthday and hopefully there are many more to come.
Most people follow around sport teams and their players, here at SEGAbits we follow SEGA studios and developers. There have been tons of employees and developers that SEGA have fired or left throughout its long history, as is expected with every big publisher. But sometimes there is that developer that was behind one of your favorite games, when he leaves the company it really tugs at the heart strings. So in this week’s round table we will be discussing which ex-SEGA developers we miss the most!
There are many questions about how Yu Suzuki would bring us Shenmue III. He has stated many times he just wants to end the series and now more than ever has been making headlines. First he suggested he wants to use crowd sourcing like Kickstarter and recently was spotted at GDC in talks with Sony (and former SEGA) employee Mark Cerny. Hit the jump to hear what we think of this whole thing in this week’s round table!
“Mark Cerny & Yu Suzuki talking strategy for Shenmue III. For reals you guys.” – Megan Scavio
You had me at Yu Suzuki, you sold me on Mark Cerny and you made me smile at Shenmue III. Let’s make it happen!
The tweet above is from Sebastien-Abdelhamid, he happens to work for a indepent French channel and is part of the Monaco Anime Game Show (which I never heard of). I obviously don’t watch French television, so my knowledge of him is basically nonexistent, but this tweet has thrown the guys over at NeoGAF in frenzy.
So if Yu Suzuki put up a Kickstarter to fund Shenmue III, would you drop some of your cash? Also what consoles would you want to see it on?
SEGA has announced that they are making a social adaptation of the Virtua Fighting games on the popular Mobage platform. The game was announced as being called Virtua Fighter Cool Champ. Yes, I’m not making that up. Its called “Cool Champ”.
This Virtua Fighter spin off is going to be a card battling game that will feature characters and elements from the series. You can build up your character and fight against rivals. The game is being published by Epics and Yu Suzuki’s Ys Net Studio will be supervising them, along with SEGA who will supervise the project as a whole.
If you are a Mobage member, you will have access to the game on your phone… today! That’s right, are you a cool enough dude?
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!]
Even though we all wanted to play Shenmue City or Shenmue World (whatever you want to call it), it seems we won’t get the chance. According to Ysnet, the official developer for Shenmue Gai (the Japanese name of the game) has said that the game will cease to exist. No more updates, no more support. The site has a thank you message to all the users that played it.
This is pretty bad news for the Shenmue franchise and for hopefuls that this would lead to Shenmue III.
[Edit] It seems that this was already discussed by Yu Suzuki in an interview. Basically they are closing the mobile version of the game, but they are going to launch a ‘smart phone’ version for devices like Android and iOS.[/Edit]
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!
Legandary SEGA designer Yu Suzuki is set to leave his current role with Amusement Research and Development division, and has confirmed that he shall remain at SEGA in an advisory role from this September. He will continue to work on his personal company, YS Net. Speaking to Gamasutra, Suzuki said the following:
“In 2008 I established YS NET, my current company,” he said. “I’ll be leaving my current job at Sega this September, and after that point I’ll remain on as an advisor.”
“So I’ve formally been with both companies from 2008 until September 2011. With the new company, I’ve been doing pretty much what I personally want to do myself,”
The interview itself is fairly long and gives another great insight into what the man has been doing and what he may go on to do. It is well worth a read for anyone interested in Suzuki and his thoughts, not only on his time at SEGA but also the industry in general.
[Interview: Gamasutra]