Shenmue Dojo

Hearing the story about the first meetings with Sony just makes me so giddy. Cool to hear about the codenames, so weird to think about how bummed a lot of people got after GDC 2014 that Shenmue III wasn't announced, that that whole time Sony was working with Suzuki-san...

If anyone finds a YouTube recording of this, please let me know so I can add it to the Newspost section. Thanks!

Thinking about how they already had things planned for III when they held the Post Mortem last year is crazy!
I remember how frustrated everyone on here was back then that nothing has been announced and all the time Yu Suzuki just kept the bomb with him and smiled at us, dot dot dot...

Right away Shenmue 3 was first on their "Building the List" campaign. It is so cool to know that the fans were loud enough that Sony took notice and worked with Yu to bring this project to life.

Again, that this happened the way it did, is nothing short of miraculous. This just doesn't happen after this much time. Ever. That it was the fans' and Yu's relentless faith that one day it would happen that got Sony's attention and got the ball rolling remains one of the most inspiring things I've ever seen in my life.

ok so it's at the top of their list and yu calls and says he'd like to schedule a meeting.,who told him they were interested?

I really like this video actually. Sure, it makes reference to the whole "Kickstarter only used to gauge interest" idea, but it does it in a neutral way and looks at a number of different points and arguments. I definitely wouldn't say that they are misinformed unlike a number of other game journalists. It also shed some light on the planning of Shenmue III which is always nice to see.

(they also used snippets of my video which was a nice surprise for me )

badamn wrote: ok so it's at the top of their list and yu calls and says he'd like to schedule a meeting.,who told him they were interested?

he basically cold called everyone, starting with the people who had the most money.

although i'm joking by calling it cold calling- as the Xbox chief said, most of these senior industry figures are acquainted with each other.

Sounds it was Suzuki-san who brought up Kickstarter to them first. Wonder what would Gio would have said if he had said "Give me $20 million."

Good video, but I'm not sure I agree with Dannys conclusion. He says Shenmue was carried on the back of nostalgia, like a return of casette tapes or Surge or something. I wonder if he actually played and liked the game.

Every once in a while you come upon a piece of media that truly immerses you. Its a lot more common now, which I guess is why Shenmue having that effect in 1999 was even more unique, but its environment, atmosphere, level of detail and story were so absurdly far ahead of most media bits in that time that it left an imprint. Personally, and this is probably true of everyone else here, we want to see the story to its conclusion. Its like when a favorite author dies before he can finish his work (r.i.p. Terry Pratchett), only kickstarter allowed us to don our cultist robes and summon a series back from purgatory.

So maybe its a nostalgic thing where we can look back on our teens, when we were sitting indian style in front of our fuzzy CRTs on a cold winter evening after school. But to me its much more about seeking closure for a story we loved.

InsanityIsCrazy wrote: Good video, but I'm not sure I agree with Dannys conclusion. He says Shenmue was carried on the back of nostalgia, like a return of casette tapes or Surge or something. I wonder if he actually played and liked the game.

He says in the video (at around 10:30) that he never owned a copy of Shenmue.

BlueMue wrote: Thinking about how they already had things planned for III when they held the Post Mortem last year is crazy!
I remember how frustrated everyone on here was back then that nothing has been announced and all the time Yu Suzuki just kept the bomb with him and smiled at us, dot dot dot...

Yeah.. It was too fishy for Mark Cerny to translate the event and not let it be a subtle hint that they were planning something.

Kiske wrote: He says in the video (at around 10:30) that he never owned a copy of Shenmue.

I take his interest in Shenmue with a grain of salt. It's just flavour of the month for Gamespot since they know us fans will watch, read and tweet about Shenmue.

In his twitter comments, when asked about Shenmue and whether the first two were worth playing, Danny said to someone, that he heard Shenmue has not aged well. While true in some respects, many other aspects of the games hold up very well. So despite Danny reporting on Shenmue he has not spent the time to understand the games himself.

I love what he does and to me, he is one of the better if not the best gaming journalist around on mainstream gaming sites. However he'd give himself more credit if he sat down and played through Shenmue himself to obtain his own opinion.