Rakim wrote: Someone should contact the Kickstarter team and Corey and try to get them to make him into a reward.
i.e. He'll record your voice mail or send you a personal message in Ryo's voice if you pledge.

Already ahead of you. I've been in contact with Corey directly as well.

Wow, there are some rather nifty tools available now that make Shenmue modding a breeze. Making a full English Shenmue II on Dreamcast was always something I wanted to do, but it was technically impossible to achieve on 700 MB media. But now that downsampling the audio is a possibility, it obviously is. However, it might be possible to get away without downsampling it so heavily. 8,000Hz is pretty bad. I see the French, German, and Spanish files have been removed in this release, but there are far many more unused, useless files on these discs that could be axed. Maps, audio, etc. Hell, there are even duplicates of entire area folders that serve absolutely no purpose. I don't think they even tried to clean things up. So, given my knowledge of what all isn't needed, I could more than likely do this while retaining more of the sound quality. All I need to know is what was used to downsample the AHX files, which I'm going to look around and find out how to do.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwpv1PfuNVE

I always wanted to do something with the "Borrowing Naoyuki's Bike" track, so I finally got around to it. There's not much else to say except I put a lot of effort into it. :P

And if you missed my previous mixes...

Reticence:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5_p6uHUI2Q

Rising Sun:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sH7gkAC0dQU

White Tiger:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMuok3YxN6M

By the way, do we have confirmation from LanDC that these tracks are not being used with permission? It's possible some sort of agreement was made for their use.

I don't want to make accusations.

Hell no I didn't give him permission.

If I didn't think trying to profit off Sega's properties was the dumbest idea ever, I'd be selling these myself. I notice he's doing the same thing for Kingdom Hearts. This guy needs to be put in his place.

Aaaaaaand I'm back with another Shenmue mix. Tears of Separation, always one of my favorites, so I wanted to do something with it. I've also wanted to make something a little jazzy, and I thought this was just the track to put that spin on.

I really enjoy your renditions, and the sheer amount of thought and talent you put into all your tracks. All of them are stunning and i always find myself listening to at least one of your tracks once a week...

Thanks for all the effort and contributions you've made over the years too, for me you were key to reminding me just how special and unlike anything else shenmue really was by putting it on the forefront of our minds. And it was always great to hear new shenmue content crafted with such skill that made listening to these classic tunes invigorating and fresh again... :-)

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Thank you! I did put a load of effort into this, and I'm grateful to see someone acknowledge that. I posted this on Shenmue 500K and barely got a look. But someone can post a random photo about sailors and get 300 likes... It's crazy.

Comments like these give me motivation to want to make more tracks like this, and I do believe I will! I'm actually working on several right now. I tend to fluctuate between projects because I can get burnt out easily. But my greatest enemy is work. I've gotta do a lot of that to recoup that nearly 13 grand I put into the Kickstarter. #-o Don't regret it, don't regret it! 8-[

You people do realize that Cedric is instructed to not spoil anything, right? Adam Boyes even stated last year, he almost had a heart attack when Yu Suzuki tweeted a photo of a forklift. Shenmue III will be on Sony's stage if it's there, and that means they have to play by Sony's rules. If you would have asked Cedric or Yu Suzuki the day before E3 last year, "Hey, are there any plans for a Shenmue III reveal at E3?" then guess what, your answer would have been a big fat no.

Furthermore, is it that goddamn difficult to expect something new to be shown? They managed to throw together a half-assed scene last year, before the first cent was given towards development. Hell, before there was even a team assembled. It's been over three months since the teaser at Magic Monaco. You're telling me that despite a team working around the clock, they can't come up with SOMETHING to show? Absolutely not buying that bullshit. I'll go as far as to say Shenmue III WILL be at E3. It's not going to be a 2 minute cinematic trailer, showing off gameplay and all that jazz, but we will see more of the game. Bank on it.

Yeah there's several pieces of data regarding the bike on the discs. There's even some help information in the 1st_read.bin of What's Shenmue. Like when you press start while riding the bike, it tells what works the horn and whatnot. It's very possible that everything we need is there, but activating it is no easy task.

A lot of people have been wanting to know what we saw on that laptop. I can safely say there were no story spoilers in there. The majority of the footage consisted of location shots. What blew us away was the quantity that was shown, however. I think most of us have had doubts as to how far they've actually gotten into development, after only seeing a few shots of Bailu Village after all this time. But when we saw Bailu Village, Baisha and Choubu, any doubts I had were put to bed. They looked very fleshed out and beautiful already (and note that the footage was 3 months old when we saw it). There were bits of cutscene material, and a QTE testing scene, but those were really early tests and not much to talk about.

As some of you may now, YsNet recently started hiring additional staff to work on "high-end cutscenes." They are working their asses off, no doubt in my mind. I'm not saying this WILL happen, but I wouldn't be surprised if we got the first official trailer by December at Playstation Experience. Hang on a little longer, it'll be worth the wait.

Hm. That's pretty interesting stuff; did Yu make a point of telling you the material was out of date or was it just something you noticed from a date/time caption on the footage?

Can we ask more detailed questions now that the cat is out of the bag about stuff you saw?

He made it a point of telling us. He wanted us to know that it looks "much better" now.

I'm reluctant to answer very many questions. I'm not sure what I should and shouldn't talk about. I felt I could tell you what I just did though, because I gave nothing secret away. We all know those areas are in the game. They told us not to take photos or video, but didn't say we couldn't discuss the video.

Oh good lord, hearing Yu talk about trying to get the smallest details just right... sends chills down the spine. And to think, the footage we saw was all pre-Keiji Okayasu arrival. I'm really curious how much more Shenmue it looks now.

What I personally want to stress for my part, is what makes Shenmue, Shenmue. - Keiji Okayasu

Beautiful times we live in.

I think it's still the old model. They looked like the same old models in the footage we saw too. I should also note that Shenmue I and II characters were walking around in Choubu. Obviously placeholders, so the models just haven't been the priority yet. I'm assuming they wanted to flesh out the environments and work on gameplay mechanics first.

Thread Resurrection!

Just wanted to tell you how much I love this track, I've been listening to it no joke for at least once every day for the past 3 months. Every aspect is so energetic and on point. Fantastic track that's been getting me pumped especially when working out, really great vibes all round!

Thank you very much! And I look forward to what's (potentially) to come! :)

(Also, if you do have a portfolio space or website with your content/blog/support channel etc let me know!)

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Thanks a lot! I'm actually deeply involved in a mix of Guilin Forest 5 right now. As always, I'm being too much of a perfectionist and taking too much time. I'll eventually nail it in my mind though!

Oh and to Yokosuka... Yu may know of this stuff, but has hasn't asked me to work on Shenmue III yet. :p

We're not going to have to wait till E3. Unless something drastically changes, the next Kickstarter update will include the footage Peter and I saw on the bus. After Yu showed us the footage, he said everyone would be seeing it (and more) "in December." He never specified PSX, but Peter and myself clearly thought that's what he meant. The last $10,000 dinner was already confirmed for San Francisco on the week of PSX, so it seemed like a no-brainer. But this goes to show that we should never expect anything until we have 100% official facts, no matter how logical what we're expecting may seem. Let's keep a cool head and wait a few more weeks! We'll see this month's update sooner than usual, I'd imagine. The team should be afforded a good holiday break, so they won't even be there to update on the very last day again.

Don't get too hyped. We don't want a repeat of PSX disappointment. I'm not going to say anything is for certain, because nothing is certain. But they do (or at least did in mid September) intend to publicly show new footage in December. According to Gio Corsi, they never planned to showcase it at PSX, and Yu wants backers to see it first. So, Kickstarter update it is.

I'm only trying to keep the morale up in this bitch, so please don't be hatin' if nothing happens. :p I'm only saying what I know. I can't think of anything more positive than what Yu Suzuki said himself. I heard it with my own two ears, folks. I could even understand that part without the need of our awesome translator. And I certainly hope I'm not breaking any rules by saying that. I don't remember hearing that we couldn't talk about it. The only thing Yu made clear was, "No video or photography."