You can even lose a third time and then you'll get this:

The feeling of entering into a completely fresh Shenmue experience after all these years.

Finally got my new baby hanging on the wall.

http://i.imgur.com/As6eTJt.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/RrS92zU.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/njhn48L.jpg

I saved up for a new TV almost all year and lived without a TV for months. It's just unbelievable to have this thing in front of me. The first picture may give a clue as to how far or rather how close I sit from it. The immersion is crazy.
I would've never thought that I'd buy a Sony. But since this is simply the best package on the market I couldn't refuse the brand.

Another great find! It looks really funny when Ryo does it. It's just so unlike him, something he would never do.
That makes it all the more enjoyable.

Well in a really perfect world we would've gotten Shenmue III in 2003 on 6 discs with a 32 Mb RAM module as the absolute pinnacle of Dreamcast games. And by now we would be waiting for late 2017 to bring us Sega's new console of the ninth generation and full fledged remakes of Shenmue I - VI in on epic box.

Now as we aren't exactly in a perfect world the PS4 way is the best way to go. Having the game on Dreamcast in 2017 would be awesome, but only for die hard fans. They could possibly give us more of the game there since it's much simpler to create characters and game world there. On the other side we could get less because the tools are not as highly developed like UE4.

Having no way to get to up on that ledge with tables and chairs at Café Anna.
It isn't just that it's blocked off for Ryo or something. No, there isn't even a visible way how to get up there.

Did you know that this is also a "stepped fail" command QTE?

These QTEs have a different animation depending on how many of the button promts you execute.
If you do none Ryo get's beat up right away but get one or two right and Ryo will manage to fight one or two of the guys respectively before eventually getting beat up. Same mechanics for the QTE in Ren's Warehouse.

I guess we all know about the old homeless man at the Freestay Lodge and the question about rivers that he asks.
But did you know that there is not just one but two more instances where he will ask Ryo a question that triggers the action selector?

I totaly stumbled across the first one recently and was pleaseantly surprise to find something new yet again.
Of course this sparked my interest in finding more and I dug through the files and found one more conversation.
Typicaly for Shenmue, for everything that you stumble across you'll have trouble figureing further things out.
It took time and different attempts until I got him to talk for the third one. That bum was always sleeping.
The solution was to make no progress at all and come back the next day. Too simple I guess...

Shenmue is like life. You always get something new to learn.

https://youtu.be/hzOMeD0KalQ

I wouldn't worry too much. There is high potential that one of the games can't meet the release window.
And even if they do arrive at the same time Shenmue III sits comfortably in it's niche and won't be affected very much by it's surroundings.

Anyone ever tried their luck betting on Yidian Wai Sik while playing Big or Small?
I never really considered this guy at the middle table, as you can only play for 300 HK$ there. I always thought the guy on the right had the best table with the highest payout. Well, I was wrong. The odds for Yidian Wai Sik are crazy.

https://youtu.be/gbLtks-QoZY

I gotta report that I returned the Sony TV and switched to an LG OLED C6. It looks a bit lost in comparison as it's only a 55" model and the bezel is really thin. The curved design also gives it more of a different appearance.

http://i.imgur.com/IWkarNR.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/d6Ih9KM.jpg

Long story short, the Sony's LCD had too many limitations and issues and I returned it. I came to the conclusion that OLED just works better for me and I can live much better with the limits of this technology. OLED is overpriced but this 55" model has come down a lot and is priced very reasonably. Even though I really wanted 65" I can live with it for now as I decided not to keep it for very long. There is enough time for another generation of new models until Shenmue III comes out and that's when I really want the fresh best TV.

Bioshock Infinite

Aaand to complete the collection, the third entry in a row. This one took longer as I has no knowledge of the game prior to starting it and I spliced some other stuff inbetween for little breaks.

The setting of this games was definately unique. It's really the absolute opposite of Rapture. Not just because the city is in the air but because everything is or at least seems so much happier, in good shape and it's very religious and actually pretty damn racist. The whole thing is really gorgeous to look at in places and the overall design is brilliant.
Gameplay has been refined once more, the controls are more responsive and the action can be really stressful at times.

I found the story to be rather confusing, I honestly have to say I didn't understand what they were going for with the ending. The whole thing also felt less grounded (no pun intended). Bioshock managed to explain the whole deal how the underwater city came into existance much better and thus made it all the more believable. In Infinite it seems everything is just magic, even though it is explained. Things could've been even more mechanic and also steam powered in my opinion.

They definately went the extra mile to make Elizabeth as helpful as a female companion can be in a game. A welcome contrast to the typical damsel in distress situation. However I think they forced it too much because things like lockpicking really could've been done by Booker himself.

The Rapture DLCs were of course great. Seeing the city still in glorious shape in the first episode was amazing and the second episode really tried some interesting new things, especially playing it in 1998 mode and it gave more insight to the story of Rapture and also made some connections to Columbia, necessary or not.
The Clash in the Clouds DLC was... meh. Just kill wave after wave. There was some fun to be had but getting all the blue ribbons was truly a test of patience and skill and just made the whole thing much more of a chore.

Overall I have to say that I expected more from this game. It was in no way a bad experience but it felt a bit lacking overall. I definately prefer the Rapture games over this one and the original simply can't be beaten.

Uuuh, flashy and animated! The "sled" with the forklift and ducks is just hillarious. I still like the style for Shenhua, though I'd like to see the classic 3D style also. Just look at this nice old render.

http://www.shenmuedojo.net/gallery/albums/userpics/10001/normal_orchcdart09.jpg

Here's my way of saying Merry Christmas!

Pretty much everything I can think of has already been mentioned here and there but I have things to add.

Mafia II and L.A. Noire.
With so many ports of last gen games it would only seem natural to have these two big entries. They are fantastic games as they are but a refreshed version could benefit from increased resolution and framerate and maybe even some extra stuff to make the experience even more impressive. While you can more or less attain those improvements by playing the PC versions (wich I did) it's still something else to have them on a current console.

When I mention the sequel of course I also have to bring up the original Mafia.
The og PC version is getting old now, it's almost in line with Shenmue, at least Shenmue II. This it deserves a proper remake almost as much as the game we all love. It has also never been rereleased properly, just a lame downgrade for PS2 and Xbox 2 years later.

Yu Suzuki talks about what makes and breaks a story in a videogame and how he approached the storytelling of Shenmue. Watch the video update here.

Read the full Kickstarter update here.

Discuss this news on the forums

I'd rather want to see Ryo in a new Virtua Fighter game. But Sega needs to make one first...

So until that happens I'd take this chance to get a little fighting action with Ryo. I used to really hate Tekken back in the day but playing 6 and TT2, they weren't all that bad. I could live with this guest appearance.

I'm happy that you enjoyed this! If this interesting to watch in general then I'll do more of those time-lapse videos.

I think there was too much going on at one point. The game confused the spawning and then it somehow didn't load the routine for this NPC. Too much standing in one place? That's what I guess at least. In any way this was interesting and funny to see.

Okay, so here is Yamanose in a time-lapse since it was requested and because the shrine is indeed worth watching.

https://youtu.be/XHKPh-iogcE

I had to pull off some tricks to get a good look at the shrine. I simply couldn't find a spot that gave a good angle without Ryo locking on to virtually every NPC. So I used the power of nullDC Cheater to freeze the camera in place and then moved Ryo out of the way.

There's definately something interesting going on with the shrine visitors. While trying to get this video done I noticed differences in who would appear during my bunch of attempts on different days. Like already mentioned by ShenGCH, Liu-san will visit the place early in the morning. He only appears there after you've met him in Suzume Park however.
You can also see Manabu Takimoto and he didn't always appear at the shrine. I don't know how it works but it could be that the game has some sort of weekly schedule for who appears on wich days. Could also be dependent on where you are in the story.

I was actually expecting more visitors and also thought it would be possible to see the kids change shift taking care of the kitten. Since there aren't that many NPCs walking by I made it run quite a bit faster than the previous one.

I just noticed that the watch looks a little bit cleaner and smoother when it's displayed in one of the arcade games.
I wonder if it has something to do with the video mode that's used there. Image for comparison is enlarged to 400%.

Ugh, mobile games... Well now they sure know from me how much I like my Sega games and how little I give about mobile crap. It was quite funny how many boxes I was able to check at times.

The production quality of Shenmue The Movie is very debatable as it omits a lot of really important scenes and changes music timing quite a bit. But it undeniably has much higher quality voices than the game.
Because of that it's easy to assume that the movie has been redubbed since the whole audio mix has been redone from scratch anyway. That is not true however, as they we're able to use the uncompressed recordings... for the most part. And here things are getting interesting.

You see, the video footage for the movie has been captured from the Japanese version of the game. Since the movie was designed to play with the English dub this was a somewhat stupid decission because they had to work with the Japanese lip syncing of the game. This forced them to redo a few lines here and there in order to match the spoken words with the lip animation on screen. Sometimes they just used bits from a different scene, repeated or shuffled things around a bit but every now and then they seem to have made some new recordings just for the movie.

I've put all the changes in one video, comparing the game and the DVD back to back. In order to do this I had to watch the whole thing and compare it to the game bit by bit. This obviously took hours and so did the scene gathering and editing. This was a lot more work than necessary, really... Since it was taking long enough already I also didn't include the minor grunts during fights or QTEs, as well as instances where some lines were shuffled around or dialogue cut short. After all those don't add anything, let alone something new.

https://youtu.be/Jm9iK3XNTyE

I'd love to make a comparison like this with the Japanese version. As far as I know the Japanese dub has only been added for the DVD release and it might actually be a full redub. I know for a fact that Lan Di actually threatens Iwao to kill (korose) Ryo when he's holding him up. But I don't think I know Japanese nearly enough to notice all the fine nuances in the wording that the DVDs voices might have to make a proper comparison.

What I'm about to post here might seem a bit biased compared to what I wrote in the topic regarding the first game since it's going to include a lot more stuff. I do like Shenmue II quite a bit better than Shenmue and I think it's well known how often I have been speaking up for it in the past. But there is just so much refinement in Shenmue II that needs to be mentioned so I'm trying to make this my definitive "what's better" post.

As mentioned in the other topic I do feel that the changes in Shenmue II made it more streamlined wich leads to it becoming more (even if only slightly) of what's typical for a video game. Some of the things I'll mention here are very much doing that but I think that they make the overall experience more enjoyable, especially when you replay the game multiple times.

I'm not going into the story or the characters and how they are written. Shenmue II obviously has a lot more to offer in that regard but I think it's unfair to compare the two games here. The first one was only ever intended to be the opening chapter, almost just a prologue of the whole saga so naturally it's not as full and rich yet.

- Much bigger game world
- More NPCs
- More dialogue options
- More things to collect and play with
- More secrets and sidequests to discover
- More gameplay elements that always introduce something new (rock smashing, leaf catching, etc)
- More instances of failure leading to a branching path instead of a retry
- More fights, more QTEs
- QTEs are more varied and inputs better represent fighting actions
- Better cinematography, better action scenes
- Overall more refined graphics and a more vibrant look
- NPCs blink and have more natural looking mouth movements
- Drastically improved sky box
- Larger and more diverse soundtrack (it's extremely hard to say if it's better overall)
- Better Jukebox music (that I can say for sure)
- Money plays a bigger role and comes with lots of ways to earn and spend it
- Costumizable move set (at the expense of having some moves at the same time)
- Improved camera respone for zooming and especially turning
- Faster capsule toy animation
- Enemies have life bars
- Submenus that make the overall menu less cluttered with items
- Shenmue collection easily allows access to fights and minigames
- Maps and leading NPCs (I just wish there was a way to turn off owned maps)
- Cutscene skip option (after clearing the game and also after fails)
- Time skip option
- Save anywhere
- Uninterrupted disc swap

"More" really is the keyword here as Shenmue II simply has more to offer in just about every aspect. Shenmue II simply is a game of a much bigger scope. In order to reach this goal it made some sacrifices in areas that made Shenmue groundbreaking and unique but I feel that this is a good thing for Shenmue aswell. It makes it worth to always go back to it, just for the different feeling between the two games. I really hope I have cleared this up for me now...

Well to a certain extent Shenmue does feel less like a game than Shenmue II. They were going a more unique way when they made the first entry in the series. The changes to the pace and the reduction of the mundane in Shenmue II made it more enjoyable overall but they also made it come closer to a traditional game while doing so.

Talking about the setting is a difficult matter. Shenmue is meant to have a familiar feeling city and a fixed location you can call home while Shenmue II is meant to throw you in a foreign enviroment with ever changing life conditions. Of course everyone can have their preferences but I don't think it's fair to say that one or the other setting is better. I could only rate how well the games manage to pull of their respective feel and to me the slight winner here is Shenmue II.

In specific points, this is where Shenmue has the upper hand
- Weather effects
- Importance of time (and how you go about to make it go by)
- NPC routines
- Free training
- Ease of counter attacks (the timing in II is so strict that for a long time I thought they were gone)
- Kitten
- Forklifts
- Telephones
- Online features of the Passport Disc (too bad it's so hard to access the stuff)
- Raffle and winning cans

There are only a handful of things missing from Shenmue II that go deeper into the details of the game, like the items that don't carry over or were made into capsule toys since they lost their purpose or how the camera can be moved during fights.

That video itself isn't too bad actually but the title sure is clickbait garbage.

I am also guilty of trying this out in real life after playing that part of the game a couple of times.

Me and a buddy took a little torn piece of a sheet of paper and let it drop for the other one from a high position behind a bed curtain. This made it less predictable when it would drop. And oh man it was already extremely hard to predict how it would fall. It would move in any directions with all sorts of turns and flips. It was also way faster than the leaves in the game. I guess those paper pieces were just to heavy.

Using the whole hand worked at times but we never managed to catch the thing with just two fingers, like Ryo.
On rare occasions it was pretty close but then it would always just get pushed away by the fingers. We didn't try this very often or too long, it was just to impractical to do and the results were too frustrating. :lol:

As someone who expected this right from the start I don't mind the delay at all.
Yu said some very positive things about the reasons for the delay and I fully trust him it will all be for the better, to give us a fuller and richer Shenmue III experience.

I hope that they can use the extra time to gather more funds, to keep things moving at full steam. It's now really up to Sega to make the right decisions with Shenmue Remasters and use the time wisely, bring it at the right moment to give Shenmue III another boost in interest just when it needs it.

I found another crazy little detail in Shenmue II. Something that is so ridiculously easy to overlook, it wonders me why they even bothered to put the extra effort into it. In short it's typical Shenmue. And I love it!

The game shuffles around the textures for the cassette tapes in the trash can every time you come to this point.
So the contents of the can will always appear slightly different.

http://i.imgur.com/vLnI064.jpg

Please use the Discussion Topic so there aren't two split discussions going on about this news topic.

They are going to bring OG Xbox games to the Xbox One! Possibility for Shenmue II in 4K right there!!

Here's my little contribution to stir some hype in the final hours before things get serious.
Also just about enough time to watch this before the Dojo stream starts.

Very good questions in here. Would've loved to add one myself but couldn't quite think of any as everything has pretty much already been asked here. Looking forward to the interview!

I briefly mentioned that I got some interesting "merchandise" heading my way during the last episode of Peter's Shenmue II stream and well, it finally arrived today.

http://i.imgur.com/TP2IYAo.jpg

I was looking for info and pictures on this machine from time to time but never found much solid stuff.
About 3 weeks ago I searched again and found some pictures that lead to an eBay auction that was still running. Naturally I didn't hesitate to buy this thing. It's about the nerdiest Shenmue thing to do but it is a cool item related to the game and a quite nice looking machine. Once I have everything up and running well and some more info I'll demonstrate the thing in a video.

Turned out brilliant! That video was just the icing on the cake, really uplifting and interesting to listen to him talk. Really a great guy!

I think it would be best to use other topics to discuss Shenmue HD and the possibilities of Sega Forever and leave this one be. The E3 is done and over, not much point to go on with new stuff here.

That's right up my street. Very cool indeed. If I had one i'd do as LGS suggested and reproduce a tape from the game. What's the model number? i can't make it out.
It's TRQ-298. Don't worry, I already made some plans what to do with it when I bought it. I fixed an issue with the play button and it runs pretty well for such an old machine that was advertised as untested.

Master Chen talks about this matter when he talks to Ryo about the Mad Angels.
Oh and what an opporunity to bring out this joke gif I made a while ago.

If you can handle the droning commentary here's the video showing the tape recorder in action, including parts of the tape from the game.

No way, they're coming to Germany? Just a while ago I was asking myself if Yu Suzuki ever set foot here and now this opportunity, if he somehow attends the show himself. No matter how there's no excuse this time, I have to get there somehow!

And finally the real Shenmue III logo. Even though it's still thin on content this update is the best one so far! =D>

This is my chance finally, I'll definately attend the show for at least the day they're planning to unveil the game when they got something on stage. Not sure how exactly I'm gonna do it but man I really have to this time!

Great efforts have been made to exchange the dub and increase the visual fidelity of Shenmue, things that can greatly enhance the experience. One thing that is part of the experience but often easily overlooked is the Passport Disc and there is something that should be tackled to increase the enjoyment of Shenmue even more.

The reason why it's often ignored is as everyone knows it's too damn hard to access all it's neat still functional on disc contents and features. Things like long term weather forecast, status on the kitten or trading slot house prizes with Oishi for animal capsule toys, stuff that is actually aiding playing the game. Other stuff like the online manual, character database and an incredibly in depth statistic on what you've done in the game.

What we need is some kind of hack that either tells the game that it's on an active dial up connection or just remove the check alltogether. I've been thinking about this countless times but have no idea where to start to look for a solution. This is where brainstorming and some serious work should start to be put into. There must be a way...

The first idea for a spinoff is obviously a fighting game with all the characters that have a proper style in game.
The roster would easily be big enough for todays standards.

A spinoff inside the established world of Shenmue would be awesome. Like absolutely revisiting Dobuita and Wan Chai as a different character with totally different goals and gameplay elements.

"I'm not giving up." - Ren