Yu Suzuki

Yu Suzuki working on a Kinect fighting game

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This is an exciting story and something we might see more of at E3; Yu Suzuki is working on a Kinect fighting game. The man that was behind Virtua Fighter! Yu Suzuki has joined Tokyo-based Premium Agency and they both announced their first title, which is Kinect-based. This means that it’s not a SEGA title, sadly.

How much hands on will Yu Suzuki have with the project? Unknown. He is being titled “Executive game producer” by the company, and has been said to be overseeing the project. So probably not too much involvement.

So what does this mean for Yu Suzuki and SEGA? I guess we will find out in the upcoming years.

[Source: MCV]

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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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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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Suzuki speaks on Shenmue III: “Of course I want to make it.”

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It seems we’ve come a long way from the days when Yu Suzuki was prevented from talking about Shenmue III in any form with the media. Shenmue III discussion began again earlier this year in an in-depth 1up.com interview with the iconic developer. Today the subject once again came up, during a GDC interview conducted by Sega superstar Mark Cerny.

The talk, which took the form of an on-stage interview, covered a wide variety of topics, ranging from his decision not to work on Virtua Fighter 5 (“I don’t want to continue the same games and series. I always want to be making new games”) to his interest in both the 3DS and NGP, to the imminent death of the arcade industry, to, eventually, Shenmue.

“Of course I want to make it,” he said. “Sega I think is going to let me make it, I think it is just up to the budget.”

So it seems that SEGA would need somebody to help front the money.

Regarding Shenmue Online, he regretted that the project was cancelled but expressed interest in once again returning to it if given the opportunity.

Though the discussion was only a small part of the interview and what was said wasn’t particularly surprising, websites such as Gamespot have used it as the main draw of the story, and it has generated a sizeable number of enthusiastic comments.

All this media attention can only be a good thing.

[Source: Gamespot]

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Shenmue Town set to invade your smart phone

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Shenmue Town (referred to here as Shenmue City) was developed for Yahoo’s mobile application and DeNa Mobage-town portal in Japan, since they have the highest market share. But what about a smartphone app release? Yu Suzuki hints that they looking into it

“From the start, I’ve been thinking of this as a multiplatform game, So I’m thinking about smartphone strategies right now,” he said, hinting that he’s looking at both iOS and Android. Suzuki said that the platforms should be fine for a port, but that “the experience definitely needs to be customized for the smartphone.” – Yu Suzuki

As for other games Yu Suzuki has in mind for the future, he says he is imagining what he can do.

“Since Apple just announced their AirPlay initiative that allows you to play music and send a single out from your phone to multiple devices, that in the future you’ll be able to beam games out of your phone to play on widescreen TVs in massively multiplayer environments. You could play against other people with your iPhone as your controller.” – Yu Suzuki

I hope that the smartphone release of Shenmue Town gets a western release, I would pay for this app. You heard me SEGA? Pay, with real money! Yu Suzuki has responded to the name ‘Shenmue City’, which we and other press have been calling the game. He says that he would call the game ‘Shenmue Town’ because its too small to be a city. If Yu Suzuki says it, then we follow. The game will now be referred to as Shenmue Town.

[Source: Gamasutra]

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SEGA Sequel Saturdays: Shenmue

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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.

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Yu Suzuki Honored with 2011 Game Developers Choice Pioneer Award!

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Straight from SEGA comes word that the legend Yu Suzuki has been awarded the 2011 Game Developers Choice Pioneer Award. I, and I’m certain every other SEGAbits writer and reader, congratulate Yu Suzuki for this achievement. He truly is a gaming pioneer! Insert “Shenmue III please” comment here.

After the break, check out the press release and make note of his official title at SEGA.

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Round Table: Our favorite SEGA heroes

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We all have heroes that we look up to, since we here are big SEGA fans, we also happen to have SEGA heroes. I decided to make this article a bit more intresting and allow anything SEGA. This includes workers, game characters or marketing icons.
As always you can share your thoughts in the comment section.

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Shenmue 3: Choices in conversations change outcome in game

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1up has published the second part of the Yu Suzuki interview, in this second part Yu Suzuki talks more about what Shenmue 3 would have been like and where he has been these past few years.

As for Shenmue 3:

“This is not actually in the game, but as an example to give you an idea of what I mean by deeper dialogue, when Shenhua and Ryo are at home, Shenhua will ask Ryo if he would like to drink tea or coffee and the player will select one or the other. Or, Shenhua will ask Ryo a hypothetical question like: “There are four animals; a monkey, cat, dog and bird. You are crossing the river but you need to leave one behind. Which one will you leave behind?” And the player has to choose one. Shenhua will ask lots and lots of questions like these and the answers will get stored in the game and affect the outcome of the player’s relationship with other characters. It’s like a personality test. For example, the person who leaves behind the monkey is the type of person who leaves their wife.” –Yu Suzuki

Damn, the man is brilliant. Makes me want to play it now. Other stuff in the interview are comments like 360 being the Dreamcast 2 and Yu Suzuki talking about Nagoshi. Some good stuff, read it here.

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1up does a brilliant Yu Suzuki interview

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Wow, 1up is really pulling big punches when it comes to their Shenmue coverage, they even have their old editor-in-chief James Mielke doing the interview. James Mielke is now working at Q Entertainment.

Here is what you can expect to read from Yu Suzuki:

“It cost $2 million dollars to use the chip. It was part of flight-simulation equipment that cost $32 million. I asked how much it would cost to buy just the chip and they came back with $2 million. And I had to take that chip and convert it for video game use, and make the technology available for the consumer at 5,000 yen ($50) per console or else nobody would buy the hardware. But I did it. And because I was able to do that we were able to put textures on the Virtua Fighter 2 characters.”

Now that is some god damn dedication. This is what made SEGA, SEGA and why I love them. Then again, this is probably why they where in debt all the time…

Read the 1up interview here…

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Shenmue City Western Release Planned – Suzuki

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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.

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Shenmue City update shows returning shops

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[Flowers? Do you guys sale anything useful?]

Shenmue City website has been updated with a flash thing, that has scrolling city shops. If you put your mouse over the shop, you get a picture of the owner, see Nozomi up above.

It also seems the game will exclusive shops or at least shop owners. Tell me what new stuff you guys find. Also confirmed via twitter is that the game is in the last stages of development.  All I can say is, needs more Tom’s Hot Dogs.

[Thanks: Supa]

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Yu Suzuki: Shenmue City is not Shenmue 3

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Yu Suzuki sat down for an interview with Famitsu, to discuss the origins of Shenmue City and the future of the Shenmue franchise. He stated that Shenmue City is not Shenmue 3, so this should make most Shenmue fans breath easier.

“Shenmue has the image of grand scale.”But making something of grand scale requires appropriate preparation. I want to make 3 with the same volume as in the past. There have actually been a lot of requests from fans for 3 as well. There were even petitions signed by by tens of thousands of people. I wanted to carry out my obligations for the series.” – Yu Suzuki

So what made Suzuki interested in making Shenmue City a social game? Mafia Wars, the popular social game you might have heard of? Well, he said he tried the game, didn’t understand it then came to enjoy it after awhile. He said that having Shenmue in this perspective was odd since it didn’t require top notch graphics and sounds, two things the Shenmue series is known for.

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Shenmue City press event recap

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[Two mighty men walk on stage, only one leaves alive]

The press event for Shenmue City has come to a close. What did we learn? Well not too much, but more than we knew before. The event did have a lot of ‘looking back’ at the release of Shenmue, then Sunsoft saying “We will put our full power behind Shenmue Gai (City).” How nice.

Yu Suzuki (along with Takeuchi) took the stage, to explain what Shenmue City will have to offer. They show the game, you are a student in the Hazuki  Dojo and play along side Ryo. They showed the users ‘My Page’ that gives you a list of events (missions), Kung Fu and ‘Search’ options. Search lets you find more events, Yu explains that after you do most events, you will fight a boss in the end to advance to the next stage. In the Kung Fu tab, there will be a move list that you can master.

He also explained that sometimes you will find a ‘Match’ icon in your My Page, this is when someone is challenging you in the game, but this can only happen when you ‘level up’ enough to have your own Dojo. Depending on your success, your Dojo will be ranked, the ranks actually follow the Virtua Fighter ranking system.

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