Switch knows his shit ya'll. If you want to learn Japanese he'll steer you the right way.

So maybe shenmue can help me get that JLPT N2... Thanks for your great contents Switch!

Can never get enough of this stuff

In other news: https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2018-05-16-thq-nordic-posts-revenue-increase-of-673-percent-following-acquisition-of-koch-media

THQ Nordic posts 673% revenue increase following acquisition of Koch Media. Excluding Koch Media revenue, THQ Nordic still up 64 per cent.

Guess we know how they're funding the delay.

EDIT: Also, Shenmue III showed up on a THQ Nordic slideshow presented today, with the classic logo again...

https://tv.streamfabriken.com/events/wonderland/5ab8eb30b2796e01ca6d9db3/slides/01_thq_nordic_ab_publ_interim_report_q1_2018_final_lw/medium/17.jpg

Another article for you guys. This time in Retro Gamer -



Full Page:

Small clip of new footage...! We get to see the little girl introduced in MAGIC 2018 in motion, and a small clip of Ryo in a village. And I mean small. It is from today's THQ Nordic financial presentation: https://tv.streamfabriken.com/thq-nordic-cmd-2018?seek=4323

Skip to the slides where they briefly talk about Shenmue. Around slide 20.

EDIT: looks like (what I hope to be) old, outdated Ryo and Shenhua models in a slightly different Gamescom teaser. Interesting stuff.

Example:

https://preview.ibb.co/kD0jgJ/Untitled.png

Images added to OP. Thanks to Rikitatsu and Kiske for the images below .

https://i.imgur.com/cPAxFjc.png

https://i.imgur.com/aywXLpy.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/a0btjNu.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/Ii4ygCX.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/IYQWwRM.jpg

Video added

https://youtu.be/rXkThIMfP0M

I just can't wait for this game to be released...

There is something very familiar looking on that screen in the background in the photo of Haruka at the mic.
Anyone else spotted and recognized that bit from the cave?

https://i.imgur.com/SyyNYvj.jpg

Anyway, an unexpected update indeed. It's a bit sad another major character can't be voiced by the original actor or actress. I'm sure Haruka will deliver a compelling performance but one wonders if Masaya will be the only one returning for the original cast.

Credit to mjqjazzbar for finding this out, but the Sound Director in the image is Takayuki Nakamura who has been working in sound on video games for nearly 30 years; including AM2 titles like Virtua Fighter/Virtua Fighter 2, and Daytona USA.

http://www.mobygames.com/developer/takayuki-nakamura/credits/developerId,78235/

http://www.vgmonline.net/wp-content/uploads/takayukinakamura1.jpg

https://abload.de/img/03_recording_offshottmux9.jpg

I've been with contact with Robert Pontow from Deep Silver, who is working on Shenmue 3.
I told him about Eric Kelso, Paul Lucas, and Lisle Wilkerson, and how they want to return to Shenmue 3. This is his reply:

Hi, thanks for contacting me. Would you have any email addresses of the voice actors, their agents or any other means of contacting them? Unfortunately I wouldn't be able to discuss anything over FB, so we would need to take an official way to get in contact with the voice actors. But I am sure that Yu Suzuki would be happy if we can secure the same crew for Shenmue 3. Best regards

This means there is hope yet. I will try to find a way to get in touch with those three, I'll tweet Shenmue AM2 podcast who had been in touch with them recently. If you guys know anything that might help, let me know too


This also confirms my suspicion that they didn't know that the VA's wanted to return

I knew the "M--" file naming convention on the screen reminded me of something...



From Ryuji Iuchi's blog, last May. Curious.

I think in the case of these kinds of suffixes (sorry, I don't know the proper name for them.. honorifics?) like -san, -kun, -chan and so forth, there are some distinctions between them and the types of titles and nicknames we have in English. There seems to be a kind of formality and a subtle expression of respect for tradition that we don't really have as much of in the West. So in those kinds of situation I think it works better to not translate them, especially since they can be picked up pretty quickly and understood in the context of the situation. Of course it gets a bit muddled as at this point in the story we're seeing Chinese characters using Japanese phrases.

As for "Oh, it's you," I think that's something that we could reasonably expect a very young kid to say. The child pretty much looks like a toddler so that seems like it could be a realistic reaction when seeing someone she has met recently.

I knew the "M--" file naming convention on the screen reminded me of something...

http://www.ryujiiuchi.com/images/diary/2017/20170518.jpg

From Ryuji Iuchi's blog, last May. Curious.
Small bump, Ryuji Iuchi brought this photo up on Twitter the other day. Switch graciously translated the tweet as the machine translation wasn't very clear.

Unfortunately this had nothing to do with Shenmue, seems the naming convention was just a coincidence. We'll probably be hearing more about the music sometime in the future anyway, though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIub0Ok5zQs

So I was digging around the internet, and found some gameplay footage from Shenmue Online that I had never seen before. I thought it was the TGS 2005 footage, but it is different. Apparently, this is from T2 Technology Holdings' 2005 strategic conference on November 15th, 2004. Interesting stuff.

Source: http://bak1.beareyes.com.cn/2/lib/200411/25/20041125198.htm

Ryo's Japanese voice actor has tweeted an image of the script. It's huge! From what I can get from Google Translate the pages are double sided too. https://twitter.com/matsukazest/status/ ... 3463392256

Happy 3rd everyone! It's that time of the month where we celebrate all things Shenmue (really that's everyday, but you know what I mean). If you missed my last video, I'm trying to do a monthly Shenmue News series where I update the community on everything going on in terms of games updates, rumors, and within the community itself. My goal is to have one of these out every 3rd of the month to align with the Shenmue tweetathon. I have other Shenmue videos in mind that I may release as a substitute if news is slow any given month. This video covers the Shenmue III Delayed Release Date, a rumor from my last video that I received a source for, the THQ Nordic Presentation, Shenmue I & II Pre-Order status update, and some information about the Tweetathon moving forward. Hope you enjoy the video and please leave feedback. These videos are for the community and I'm always open to suggestions on how to improve them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OrDRGQZ435g

I keep thinking about what Yu Suzuki said in a past interview, that he was hoping for some kind of synergy with SEGA.
(If someone finds this interview, it would be great)

http://www.phantomriverstone.com/2017/08/game-watch-interview-with-yu-suzuki.html

Q: At the moment, there are a lot of revivals of previous or classic games. Do you have any plans for a revival of Shenmue I and II? I think there would be a lot of people who would try them if they were available on PS4.

YS: The Shenmue IP belongs to SEGA, so I'm not in a position to give a direct answer. Personally, I also think it would be good if something could be done in connection with Shenmue III. It would probably also have a synergistic effect.

The logic want after the first Gameplay Trailer all games realase after one year minimum. Shenmue 3 have nothing, when the first (and true) beautiful and official trailer (not technical video) will be show at E3 2019 you can be sure the game will be realase after one year minimum. If you check all statistics of all videos games you will consider and discover the true about Shenmue 3 realase.

And what if the first GAMEPLAY TRAILER comes out in 2018?

I don't get this obsession with E3. There are other events in the gaming industry.

Love this video Switch! I learnt loads of new words from it, and unlike other ways of learning, I haven't forgetten any of what I learnt from your video haha

Looking forward to lesson 2!

Hum, all of this make me curious :
How much time worth of dialog will there be stored in the game ?
How much was it for SH1 and SH2 ?

I did a little digging around and found out that for the first game the script had about 42,000 lines of dialogue and a count of 330,000 English words, according to this community gaming database . If you take the average reading speed of 180 words per minute, the entire Shenmue 1 would have roughly over 30.5 hours of recorded dialogue audio. More surprisingly, the script was bigger than RPGs like the first Mass Effect and Tales of Vesperia!

Hopefully Shenmue 3's budget will hold and we can have once again a fully voiced game.

It seems to be impossible to find any pictures of the Dorikore version.
Does the cover it even look different, like the rest of this rerelease lineup?

It's just the standard edition with a sticker slapped onto it, labeled Dorikore and maybe an extra spine. I have it and would take a pic of it but I just moved, so that discounted version is buried somewhere among other piles of stuff. I will post a pic whenever I find it, but it is really nothing to write home about. I guess it's uncommon because like the limited edition the sticker was on top of a shrink wrap, so it is hard to locate a mint condition one nowadays.

Edit: Found a pic while browsing...
http://i57.tinypic.com/wsaesl.jpg

Small snippet of unseen Shenmue HD footage from the PC GAMER show at E3:

Looks great!

Hi guys, I recently went on my travels over to China and Japan, and visited quite a few places along the way. I took heaps of photos and video footage, with the intentions of creating some sort of video series when I got back.

Part 1 -
https://youtu.be/mXRc6z4SEpk
In this first part I visited the Beijing Zoo, The Great Wall of China, Temple of Heaven, Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City.


Part 2 -
https://youtu.be/kqvyGUQWcWc
In this episode I visited the Terracotta Warriors Army, The Master of the Nets Zen Gardens, The Venice of the East Canal District, and Tiger Hill (Pagoda / leaning tower)

____________________________________________________________________________________________________

Why is this considered a Shenmue Inspired Travel series? Well I believe that without Shenmue I would never have ever made it to these wonderful countries, it's because of Shenmue that I was inspired to make the journey to see some of the places from our beloved series. Whilst I didn't end up visiting Hong Kong or Guilin, what I did get to see in China, in my opinion was some of the things that Yu Suzuki would have originally seen on his travels, and it's these things in turn that I believe went on to inspire Shenmue aswell. I also did the one thing that's on every Shenmue fan's bucklet list - visit Dobuita Street in Yokosuka! :)


I will update this original post whenever a new Part of the series is available! Thanks for checking out the videos guys, and I hope you enjoy them 8) !

Trailer -
https://youtu.be/5Sq7UANsA1w

Upgrades are available it seems!

Switch wrote:Not only that, but Suzuki mentions themes that he still holds with importance today with development of Shenmue III, such as "reality vs realism".

I love this part.

Some new posts to Switch's blog including a guest post from yours truely O:) - thanks for inviting me back Switch!


https://i.imgur.com/CJQPILx.jpg Japanese Lesson #1 (Video) | Learn Japanese Through Shenmue

https://i.imgur.com/U74AhJF.jpg Patron's Choice Blog Topic for June

https://i.imgur.com/h9GitnZ.jpg Brief New Shenmue I & II footage from E3 2018

https://i.imgur.com/0M6Z0jr.jpg "Soft Launch" of Backer Survey Emails | Kickstarter Update #83

https://i.imgur.com/v4bnOvf.jpg [Part 1/2] "15 Secrets of Shenmue" 1999 interview with Yu Suzuki | Translation

https://i.imgur.com/MbkRSSn.jpg A Visit to the Forbidden City - my guest blog post 8)

Thank you for this!

Wonderful! Love what you're doing, Switch. I will get those Weekly Am2 links to you soon!

Quick update in here for now, and Mattis ( TheTimeRanger ) now joins Mr.Rod as part of the Designer/Coder group so he will have full permissions across the site, and is part of the team.

Its been 2 months now of sleepless nights, countless design ideas and full site restructuring.... but we are almost there! If we thought we were working hard before, then now is a big step up. Everyday of the week is now dedicated to working on the new site. Id say we are about 70% complete, with quite a few more things to do, but we are getting there. Its crunch time folks, so go visit the current site because its weeks away from going. Whilst its not completely 100% official yet, we are shooting for a release on July 20th . This could change slightly, but we want the new site up and functional by the end of the month, for stress tests and functionality before Gamescom rolls around. The site and forums will be offline for 3 day s, but our social media outlets will still be open, as well as being welcome to visit other community sites such as Shenmue Master, 500K, Team Yu, Shenmue Forever, Phantom Riverstone and others that are out there.

I will try and keep you updated as much as possible as we push towards the end. Now, wheres the coffee....

https://i.imgur.com/y5zyDMp.jpg

The Shenmue Dojo streams are back! For fans and viewers of the Shenmue Lounge, it's Peter that will be firing up his Dreamcast for one last ride with the original Shenmue before Shenmue I & II hit modern systems!

Tune in weekly - Thursday 26th July @ 9pm BST / 1pm PT / 4pm ET / 5am Japan :)

You can catch the stream on your platform of choice -

Twitch: https://bit.ly/2hLEfFt
YouTube: https://bit.ly/2KkVPuP

See you on Thursday! :king:

By the way, if you haven't received your survey yet (they're going out in waves) but don't want to wait, go to https://fulfillment.fangamer.com/kindling/shenmue3/survey_support, enter the email you used to pledge, and you'll get it immediately.

Some screen captures from "Megumi's cousin" clip:

https://i.imgur.com/j1xrOX0.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/MXdUWfo.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/N1b7rDw.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/QvwGE8o.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/CJysqhz.jpg

Hello everyone. Continuing with my monthly Shenmue News series, this video covers the fangamer survey, Shenmue's appearance at the PC Gaming Show, a rumor about Gamescom 2018, SEGA's recent tease about news on July 3rd, and an update on the Slacker Backer Campaign!

http://bit.ly/ShenmueNewsEp3

A photo of Fenghuang.

Skies right outta Shenmue III.

New images have been added on the steam page.
https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steam/apps/758330/ss_72972e60629931334f3343e806bad5dea65574dd.1920x1080.jpg?t=1530526025
https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steam/apps/758330/ss_5c72fc3b023665b84ffbba49030aa7cfb7fcae8a.1920x1080.jpg?t=1530526025
https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steam/apps/758330/ss_acb9711de7fafa0e04a2f298d6c7102ddc2bc3f4.1920x1080.jpg?t=1530526025
https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steam/apps/758330/ss_95d0538133318057ca300ce59c23a57f60ec8129.1920x1080.jpg?t=1530526025 https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steam/apps/758330/ss_e096776cb57f5a7c59f725ac21ac3e49114ba5d2.1920x1080.jpg?t=1530526025 https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steam/apps/758330/ss_24df32b2e52233864f36f80cb98f578deabc204d.1920x1080.jpg?t=1530526025

More here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/758330/Shenmue_I__II/

^ Would you by any chance be happy to be able to play in Japanese with English subtitles?

Interesting info! The loading stuff, I guess was a given, but hearing that it'll be virtually non existent really makes you aware of how great of an experience that will make the game!

I'm disappointed about the omission of the Passport features, I understand the online stuff would be difficult to replicate, and obviously they wouldn't want to pay for servers for something like that in this remaster, but there was some decent offline stuff aswell, like being able to collect and view cutscenes as you progressed and a couple of trailers, and also all of the music in a nice jukebox set up...and obviously the infamous Passport models, for tutorials :P...Also the online stuff is still reachable through workarounds, so with a bit more time and effort perhaps they would have liked to have stripped all that stuff away from the online and made it offline viewable.

I hope that there's a few more secrets left to be discovered. I'd love a unlockables area to make up for this, perhaps bonus concept art, or early trailers / footage as unlockables from earning each achievement - 1 per achievement? With them keeping the camera options for Shenmue 2, i'm assuming that the comic pages will still be unlockable, and I hope atleast that the Shenmue 2 museum is left intact :)

It's not the end of the world anyways, I couldn't be more hyped for this still, it's going to be incredible! Thanks for the info flag!

Noticed these images in one of the Japanese Shenmue Dreamcast guides, hopefully they're interesting for atleast one person :), seems to be more here than originally posted on page 1!

https://i.imgur.com/gbaT2b0.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/YDgiqDh.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/DZ826yQ.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/f1JfYbQ.jpg

Be neat to do a bit of a quiz on naming the characters based on these caricature...I guess the Japanese under the faces gives them away to anyone who can read it though :P

Here's a summary of the latest information released by Sega and Adam Koralik since the release date announcement.

https://i.imgur.com/h5jWRvm.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/dXQ60eG.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/9wCa31g.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/WjLqtzp.jpg

Hello Friends. :)

Been a while ;) I've been a bit... busy.
https://img.cinemablend.com/cb/1/2/c/1/9/5/12c19596652c547695cc4a2af6a5d1469bf3d8c2a98c8eb34b110d9858714bd4.jpg
===
I''ve become heartbroken again... so I need to occupy myself. So I have some good news as my hacking skills are itching.
===
So. A while ago I was working on packaged versions of what I call "The Shenmue Explore Mod" which was a collection of nifty hacks from the community in one playable build of the game.
http://www.shenmuedojo.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=37&t=50503#p1144541

The aim was to make each and every area of Shenmue freely exploreable.

I stopped distributing it since I didn't want Sega to kick my ass but now I know that things are a bit more cool.

SO. I am going to begin working on a 2.0 release of my Shenmue Explore Mod.
===
What is it?
The 2.0 release will be an effort to get EVERYTHING unlocked.
My 1.4 release was near complete on terms of unlocked maps but there are a lot of optimizations I could make. I also didn't get the chance to migrate the passport maps from retail or WS. Also I didn't get the chance to properly hack the What's Shenmue maps (aside from Dobuita).
===
Why?
I am making it so we can properly document the changes between Shenmue on DC and Shenmue HD.
===
Release Date?
I am going to be working on this with intensity so I hope to have something done around end of August.
===
Historical Notes!

What is it?
This is a mod of Shendream's BETA release of Shenmue 1 Disc 3.
This mod allows you to walk around most areas without clipping. This allows you to walk through walls and most objects.
It also contains playable maps for Dobuita in Whats Shenmue, Beta Yamanose, Beta Sakuragaoka, and Wish Road!

Why?
I made this for my own purpose but I wanted to share it with everyone. I always wanted to go wherever I wanted to when inside of shops and stuff.

How?
Each mapinfo.bin has been hacked to remove all clipping data.
Sub-sectors of PKS IPAC data have now begun being hacked.
Notebook hacked to show basic version number and instructions

Who?
The original clipping method was developed by Giorgio.
The ECAM warp zone removals were developed by Me.
The IPAC clipping hack was developed by Bluemue.
The beta maps were hacked by Wude.
The Beta itself was released by Shendream.
The What's Shenmue to BETA map conversion was done by me.
The grunt work was done by me :)


Footage!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhEXA-J5_zc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yswgUAEEOAc

This interests me as it sounds like Yu is trying to create a battle system for all.

The question is how is he going to do this. As we know the originals were based on the VF system which is quite complex. Now many of us enjoyed the learning of new moves and implementing them in a fight, however I have watched some playthroughs where people haven't bothered and sometimes struggled with the fighting.

How do you create a system that is easy to use but difficult to master so that those of us can go off and learn moves, practice etc.

The idea of being able to interact with surroundings sounds great but how do you make this challenging for people? All questions I am sure we will find the answer to very shortly.

Great article as usual

I don't think anybody is trying to suggest that these are the perfect dream ports of Shenmue.

Even I'll admit that there's stuff I wish they could have implemented. It'd be great to see 16:9 cutscenes. 4k? I'd love to play it on my 4k monitor. Obviously these things would make it a definitively better port; you'd be hard-pressed to find somebody who doesn't think this.

But are these problems enough to write off the entire port? I wouldn't say so. In the grand scheme of things some of these criticisms are fairly small. It's not like d3t and SEGA aren't putting effort into these ports. We could have had a lazily done emulated port with zero enhancements, but that's not the case. Things I rarely see the people who are overly saddened by these ports mention is features such as saving anywhere, both dubs, short loading times, modern controls etc. I'm not saying that people should ignore the shortcomings because there's good things too. But when you feign ignorance to these things and focus exclusively on the negatives then obviously you're going to be disappointed.

Do we deserve better? It's a tough one to answer. Technically we don't really deserve anything. Only a couple of months back getting any sort of remaster seemed like an impossibility with SEGA barely uttering a single word about Shenmue. Some are so quick to forget about this. I know that there are posters here who have never uttered a single positive thing about Shenmue, but even still, apply some context and realise that we're actually getting something pretty decent (albeit with a couple of shortcomings) instead of acting so ungrateful and demanding we have it better.

To summarise, I just don't get how people can get this upset over these ports and make SEGA and d3t out to be lazy and awful when what we're actually getting is going to be a well crafted, decent port (after many years of asking for it) with a few drawbacks.

How on earth do these rumors get started/conclusions get leaped to?

The game has had a dedicated Japanese web page on Sega's official site from day one.

http://shenmue1-2.sega.jp/

It's taken longer for the local release date to be announced, but China and Korea were just recently confirmed for August 22nd.

As mentioned, it's a PS4 exclusive in Japan.