1UP's Shenmue Anniversary Celebration

[Without Remorse]

Programming a game in assembly . I know it HAD to be done at the time, but good grief, the very idea of doing that is awesomely insane. These articles they are writing are excellent, and kinda making this last week of the semester not quite as painful.

[ThyDarkAngel]

Now this is what I call an interview!

Now this is what I call going beyond fashions, institutions, commercial sucess, numbers and the like; seeking truth and honouring those that most diserve it, instead of those that were made icons without a life's work to support such titles.

This is what I have always said!
Yu Suzuki is THE videogames author!

The strenght and influence of his legacy is unmatched and gargantuous.
Time and again, he has set all the foundations and the others were only able to do what they did because they built from there, after this man and his team have laid all the groundwork.

Yu Suzuki revolucionized the 2D, then he did the same with the 3D. Racing games, fighting games, open world games, shooters to a point, he established, time and again, time and again!, the models (both technical and in terms of gameplay) that pretty much everyone followed, copyed, used.

He made some of the best games in their distinct genres and then he made a game with unsurprassed ambition and a 'heart', with a soul far bigger than the ones found in any other videogames. A game that challenged and changed the notions of what videogames were and what they might become. A project that, a decade later, with much more powerfull hardware available and the videogames industry moving more money than ever, is yet to find it's match.

And look how he is commonly treated by the videogames world: he is mostly forgotten, when authors that haven't done anything special are put on pedestals and praised like geniuses and pionners.

AAARGHH!!


I hope part 2 is all, or mostly, about Shenmue; it's origins, the never told background story of what really happened to it after the commercial demise of the Dreamcast and, specially, about the future of the series.

[shenhua legend]

Second part is up.

http://www.1up.com/do/feature?cId=3182650

Overall, decent interview but this should never be under "shenmue cover story" because is not really about Shenmue. I know that we can ask Yu more than 100 interesting question about Shenmue because we love it and we are harcore fans but I think the interviewer could do a better job taking into account that this was something for a Shenmue week special.

Anyway, I'm happy to hear Yu again and some of the question were good, no matter if the topic was Shenmue or not.

[ThyDarkAngel]

YS: The concept for Shenmue 3 already exists, so... [Laughs] The world of Shenmue 1 and 2 expanded outward. So, for example, in the original games, of all the data used for dialogue in the game, the main characters' dialogue was about 20%. The remaining 80% was dialogue by characters other than the two main characters. But Shenmue 3 doesn't expand outward, but inward. A lot of the dialogue is used for the main character and especially dialogue with Shenhua. They talk about a lot of different, deeper things. For example, and I can't say too much, but here's an example.

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.




JM: So, back to your plans for the future. I don't know if you've heard, but [Resident Evil creator] Shinji Mikami's studio, Tango, was recently acquired by Bethesda parent company, ZeniMax. Would you ever consider working with a Western publisher if you could get the funding to make Shenmue 3?

YS: That depends on the terms of negotiations. If we're given the freedom to make what we want, it doesn't matter where the company is from. I would take my family and move to the States.

[ThyDarkAngel]

And so many people doubted Suzuki all this time...
READ the interview, he was trying to do Shenmue, he was trying to do other games, original ones at that, they just kept closing all the doors on his face.

Read the interview, he would do Shenmue III tomorrow if he had/has the chance. The only condition? That they give him freedom to do THE GAME HE WANTS and envisions. No freaking compromise. That's how much he wants to make Shenmue, 'our' Shenmue, HIS Shenmue, a proper, full scale Shenmue honouring the Dreamcast games and his original project.

[DoubleO_Ren]

Haha BETHESDA GIVE YU FUNDING YOU LOVE OPEN WORLD GAMES DOOOOOOO IT!!

[The_Intruder]

The person who interview Yu Suzuki. Should of ask him of how much would cost to make Shenmue 3 and since SEGA are releasing Dreamcast games on Xboxlive and PSN. Is Shenmue one of those games to be released.

[Clint]

This is a great time for Shenmue fans.

It's taken 10 years to hear from the great man himself. And with the new Shenmue and talk of Shenmue III. Things are looking up for once.

Shenmue III will come. It might not be on this console generation, but it's going to happen eventually.

[ThyDarkAngel]

This is a great time for Shenmue fans.

It's taken 10 years to hear from the great man himself. And with the new Shenmue and talk of Shenmue III. Things are looking up for once.

Shenmue III will come. It might not be on this console generation, but it's going to happen eventually.

!!!

Is that really you, Clint?!



You tell them, man.

[Clint]

Yeah. It's nice to hear about the future of Shenmue after all these years of nothing. Very nice indeed.

It's finally looking like the pieces are coming back together again.

This was interesting to hear from YS:

Would you ever consider working with a Western publisher if you could get the funding to make Shenmue 3?

YS: That depends on the terms of negotiations. If we're given the freedom to make what we want, it doesn't matter where the company is from. I would take my family and move to the States.

Sounds as if he's very serious about Shenmue III.

As long as we keep the buzz going, a big developer can't ignore the prospect of Shenmue III.

[Tailzo]

I get both happy and sad when reading this. Happy hearing SOMETHING about Yu Suzuki again. Sad that he has been so ignored, and Shenmue too, for years!

[kakuzawa]

Programming a game in assembly . I know it HAD to be done at the time, but good grief, the very idea of doing that is awesomely insane.

I highly doubt that they did entire game in asm. For instance, Yu says S2 was written in C -> here

[Supa]

Great interview. But a couple of questions I would've added:

What happened to Shenmue Online?

What happened to AM Plus?

Can you tell us anything about Shenmue I or II being ported/remade for XBLA/PSN?

[Without Remorse]

Programming a game in assembly . I know it HAD to be done at the time, but good grief, the very idea of doing that is awesomely insane.

I highly doubt that they did entire game in asm. For instance, Yu says S2 was written in C -> here

In the 1st part of the interview yu states: "

YS: ...Then there was a programming language called C. Back then if you were programming in C, it didn't work because it was too slow.

JM: Right. That's why veterans would write in assembly. Because that's what you'd use to get the best results from your hardware.

YS: Unlike now, C was really slow back then. The fastest program that I used was 200 times faster than C. However, in general it is a good thing that game development became standardized with C. Just like it was a good thing that manual cars became automatic. The driver can concentrate on driving. "

Bottom of Page 3 http://www.1up.com/do/feature?pager.offset=2&cId=3182648

Can you imagine how difficult that would be? Legendary.

[Riku Rose]

They moved to Dreamcast so they could do a swordfight? I'm pretty sure in this fight Lan Di would reveal he is Ryo's father.