ys net
Latest
'Shenmue III' delayed -- again -- until November 19th
If you've been waiting patiently for the arrival of Shenmue III, you'll have to temper your excitement a little longer. The long-awaited third installment in the classic series has been delayed yet again. Ryo Hazuki is now expected to return to your screens November 19th.
Shenmue development bugs included cats walking like people and empty streets
Shenmue was an ambitious game for its time, incorporating a massive open world, environments full of people and activity and a complex combat system, all of which was delivered using state of the art graphics. It was a huge project and, as director Yu Suzuki revealed during the Shenmue postmortem panel at GDC 2014, it wasn't without some bizarre development bugs. In fact, up to 300 were found every day, according to Suzuki. Without some form of compression, said Suzuki (through interpreter Mark Cerny), all of the content in Shenmue would have required 50-60 CD-ROMs. As that would have been ... prohibitive to the average consumer, the Shenmue team had to come up with ways to save space, though this sometimes created unexpected results. Like cats walking on two legs.
Seen@GDC 2014: (The mob surrounding) Yu Suzuki
There were a lot of people at the Shenmue postmortem panel during GDC. Alas, Yu Suzuki, director of Shenmue, didn't stun the audience with the surprise announcement of Shenmue 3. That wasn't enough to stop eager fans from crowding around the former Sega guru behind classics like Virtua Fighter, Virtua Racing, Outrun, Daytona and Space Harrier. Can't see him in the photo above? Let's get a little closer.
Yu Suzuki expresses interest in obtaining Shenmue license from Sega
Get your grains of salt ready, we're about to report on the potential release of another Shenmue title. Speaking to French fan site Shenmue Master at the Toulouse Games Show (not to be confused with the other TGS), Shenmue maestro Yu Suzuki expressed possible interest in obtaining the Shenmue license from Sega. When asked exactly who owns the license, Suzuki responded that the license currently belongs to Sega. That said, he added that "we can obtain the license from Sega," presumably speaking on behalf of his company, YS Net. Of course, that's not a direct confirmation that YS Net is actually pursuing such a transaction. Even if it is, there's no guarantee the license would be used for a true Shenmue sequel anyway. After all, the last Shenmue project turned out be a (recently shuttered) social game. See the English translation of the interview after the break (skip to 9:40 for the question regarding Shenmue's license).
Yu Suzuki leaving management role at Sega in September
Yu Suzuki, the living embodiment of all your favorite Sega memories, revealed in a Gamasutra interview that he is leaving his management position within the company's AM2 studio in September, though he'll remain at Sega as an advisor. He's actually been working at his own company, YS Net, since 2008, in conjunction with his continued employment at Sega. After dropping the news of his departure, he discussed some of his previous works -- including the unreleased MMO, Shenmue Online. Suzuki described his concept for the game as "a town that players create as they enter the game and play it -- something like a multi-CPU system, with each player serving as a CPU." One player, then, would handle important drunk-Santa computations, while another would act as the hot-dog vending core.
Shenmue Town is a 'side story,' made by Yu Suzuki's new company
Here's a thought experiment. Would it be worse if: Yu Suzuki's Shenmue story continued, but in the form of a mobile game that none of us will ever play, or a new (mobile, Japanese) Shenmue game was made by Suzuki, and didn't continue the story? Both of those are kind of hellish -- the first means that we'd only be able to catch up with our pal Ryo through online summaries by fans, while the second would mean that the Shenmue story was being drawn out even more without reaching any kind of resolution. Shenmue Town, the Japan-only mobile game announced last month, will be a "side story" to the Shenmue games, developed by Yu Suzuki's Ys Net and managed by Sunsoft. So Suzuki finally figured out a way to make more Shenmue ... and it's a "side story." There are still few details about the game: Andriasang reports that you'll start in Yokusuka, setting for the first Dreamcast game, as Ryo Hazuki. Art on the official site is all Dreamcast-era character art, with a note that "Shenmue returns" and an invitation to "Come back this winter."
