Dear all,

My name is Rob Scharr, and I am one of the Kickstarter sponsors joining with Yu Suzuki and Shibuya productions this weekend here in Monaco. It was also a great pleasure to meet Peter and a few others from Shenmue Dojo last night. I hope to fully become a part of this community going forward and hope to speak with as many of the other Shenmue supporters as possible.

I studied Japanese for six years and Chinese for three years, but I am a political scientist by trade, and I will have earned my PhD in that field after a few more months. As wild and wacky as the political situation in my home country- the United States- has become, I will have plenty of reasons to do my best in this field going forward. But a prominent US political figure said something a few years ago that stuck with me. He said, "People don't succeed because they are smart, or wealthy. They succeed because they have passion for what they do. Passion is what really makes all the difference." And as soon as he said this, the first thing that came to my mind was Yu-Suzuki and Shenmue, and I hoped that someday, I could translate my latent passion for Shenmue into results.

I should come clean about one thing. With only a handful of sporadic exceptions, I have not gotten deeply involved in gaming for the past 15 years, and therefore I probably know much less about the ins and outs of the Shenmue universe- and gaming in general- than just about anyone in this community. In fact Shenmue I was one of the very last games that I delved into on any meaningful level, and for reasons I will go into another time, the game changed my life. A couple years after that, my college gaming friends all went their separate ways and I for the most part lost the community with whom I had shared then Shenmue experience in 1999/2000. I was also deeply demoralized by the way Sony and the gaming press dispatched the Dreamcast simply by lying about how much more powerful the PS2 was supposed to be; all Sony had to do was say "55 million polygons per second," and all of the third-party developers flocked to the PS2 like stupid sheep. I was furious at Sony for years, and since Sony had basically remade the entire gaming industry in their own image and I frankly wanted no part of it. Given how much Sony is doing to support Shenmue now, I don't quite hold a grudge against them like I used to, but that's another story. Bottom line, I basically removed myself from the gaming world after the Dreamcast's early demise.

On top of that, Aspect, Sega of Japan's publishing arm, released a book under Yu Suzuki's name that was heavily autobiographical in 2001, entitled "Game Works: Volume I.". Yu Suzuki himself didn't sit down and write the book himself; rather, he was interviewed by a man named Akira Nagae, who in turn compiled a series of interviews with Yu Suzuki with some brief commentary in between. There was never a "Volume II" and I had no idea what plans they had- they might have gone back to Suzuki for more material, or they might have gone to Yuji Naka or someone else at Sega. The book, as it was put together, had a few quirks, the cover was bland as could be, and I might have chosen a different title had it been up to me. From what I can tell, the book sold extremely poorly in Japan, even though it was packed with good information. If Shenmue taught us anything, it is that we cannot necessarily rely on the collective senses of the Japanese gaming masses to know a good thing when they see it, and if the book had have been released in North America and Europe with a few adjustments, I believe it could have easily sold tens of thousands of copies.

With this in mind, shortly after finishing my undergrad in 2002, I translated the entire book into English. Despite Aspect's and my best efforts to find a U.S. publisher, it never happened. At that time, the only gaming-centric publishers (such as Prima) focused only on strategy guides, and mainstream publishers, none of whom knew the first thing about games, all refused to touch it. Efforts took place on-and-off over the years to revive the project, but nothing ever came of it, and after that disappointment, aside from a brief stint teaching Japanese at DigiPen Institute of Technology (which is Nintendo of America's school), my involvement in the gaming industry went back to zero and pretty much stayed there until last year when Shenmue III was announced.

With that announcement, the passion very suddenly began rushing through my veins again, and I made the decision to stretch myself to my financial limits and make the $10,000 contribution on Kickstarter so I would have the chance to thank Yu Suzuki in person. And so here I am in Monaco ready to spend the day with Suzuki-san and my fellow contributors Chao and Amir, both of whom are outstanding people from the UK. Today, I plan to discuss with them what plans they have for voice acting, and I will ask Yu Suzuki- who himself knows much about history, how the end of the Cultural Revolution in China and how the beginning of the economic reform era will manifest itself within Shenmue III's environment. And when the Japanese script for Shenmue III is finalized, we will need people with have not just good language ability, but with a deep and visceral connection to Shenmue in order to do justice to the game's message. Whether I will be one of those people that makes this happen is entirely up to Suzuki-san and his team, but at any rate, I don't feel that we will be well-served if this game's translation is left entirely to contractors with no real connection to Shenmue, as is the case with most games these days.

We all have our own professions, and going forward, I will be the most competent political scientist I can be. But also, going forward, I will go above and beyond whatever is asked of me by Suzuki-san and his team for this game and others that follow; at the end of the day, this isn't about me, but about realizing Yu Suzuki's vision, but I think I speak for all of us when I say that we will do whatever it takes to make this game the kind of success it can be. Even post-release, our work won't be done. It will especially be up to sites like Shenmue Dojo- and in particular, people like Peter, to make sure the press treats Yu-san fairly and also to make sure we pull out all the stops in spreading awareness of (and providing word-of-mouth publicity for) this magnificent endeavor.

Therefore, I hope to become part of this community, even after my long hiatus from the scene.

Thank you.

Rob Scharr





I wish I could post more, but my brain has literally flatland. It did a while ago during the day to be honest. I am going to try and get some sleep, fly home tomorrow, and then sit and try to type out anything I can remember from the past few days. It was so crazy, I haven't been able to do what all of you guys have been doing all day, and actually digesting the new information and images, as well as going nuts about them.

One thing I can remember and can be open about, is that when the "surprise" part of the confrence happened, and Cedric brought Suzuki-san back on stage, and the video of the Shenmue tree as well as the interior of Shenhuas home.... It legitimately almost brought me to tears. It's the best video I have seen yet, and I was unbelievably blown away by how faithfully it had been recreated, down to the last pot and pan. That blew my mind beyond words, and it's the video that has filled me with the most confidence about this game yet.