^Done. I wrote some emails to the biggest video game and computer-related media in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.Perhaps some of them will cover the news about your book, although I think in non French-speaking countries people would be more interested in the English version. I think I'll do the same thing again once the English translation is out.

It never hurts to spread the word about Yu and Shenmue. :)

Thanks for the feedback guys, appreciated !

^Not too sure about that. I prefer reading critical journalism over all that "officially approved" stuff.

Also I think, for the sake of Shenmue it is better this way. This way, if something highly controversial surfaces in that book, Yu can always say "I didn't approve of the book and I was in no way involved in it" to Sega, whereas if he officially approves of it and there is still some things in there which he thought were OK but Sega don't like, then Yu could be in trouble.

That said, I still think you're overreacting a bit. YS Net and Sega have a signed contract about Shenmue 3 and the project has been funded long before the book's release.

On top of that, remember the book is in French. English translation seems to be on its way but is still a maybe at the moment and Japanese translation probably won't happen. At least not anytime soon. I doubt that someone in SegaSammy's higher management will be able to and take the time to read a 500+ pages book on a former employee - in French. :)

He's aware of it now as I got the chance to talk to him about it when we met today.

Does Suzuki himself know about this? Having a book written about you is a pretty big honor!

Yu Suzuki is still working as a consultant for Sega if my memory is right so I guess they still have a good relationship.

I have to say that I do not know what's inside the book beside the content that I've translated and/or been working on, like my 2 pages etc.

The book will probably never be available in japanese. But what's important here is Yu Suzuki exposure and the games he has created so far, Shenmue included.

If we keep providing our support like we've been doing for the past years, great things will happen. When I say good news are on the way, I mean it.

So let's keep going ;-)

The book is in fact listed on British Amazon. Not available on there yet, but I guess it will be changed to "available" after release. They probably haven't got it in stock yet.

I just thought this might be interesting for some people because

a) shipping might be cheaper than Geeks Line's shipping fees
b) you won't have to register an account with Geeks Line
c) you won't have to do the whole ordering in French (Geeks Line's website seems to be French only)

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Yu-Suzuki-Maitre-Berget-Benjamin/dp/B014UDN7ES/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1442296811&sr=8-1&keywords=le+maitre+de+sega

very good news. i cant wait to buy it.

German video game website Nexgam have covered the book and put it on their news section. Nexgam was founded in 1998 and claims to be one of the biggest gaming websites in Germany with over 10,000 articles online.The even put up a link to the Dojo forums regarding the English translation. You can find the article below. English translation by me.

http://www.nexgam.de/forum/thread/87331-franz%C3%B6sische-biographie-%C3%BCber-yu-suzuki-erschienen/?postID=2124053#post2124053


Französische Biographie über Yu Suzuki erschienen

13.09.2015, 18:11 Uhr

Neu
Wer kennt ihr nicht - Yu Suzuki, den Schöpfer von Virtua Fighter oder Shenmue.
Der französische Videospiel-Journalist Benjamin Berget hat nun eine über 500 Seiten starke Biographie über Yu Suzuki geschrieben, welche am 25. September erscheinen wird. Das Buch behandelt Suzukis gesamtes Leben von seiner Kindheit und Jugend bis zum Beginn der Arbeit an Shenmue 3 in diesem Jahr und nennt sich Yū Suzuki - Le Maître de Sega (de l'arcade à Shenmue)

Wer hier Interesse hat, sollte sich einmal die offizielle Buchseite vom Verlag ansehen:
geeks-line.com/histoire-du-jeu…henmue-9791093752068.html

Zudem scheint eine englische Version des Buches bereits für nächstes Jahr in Planung zu sein, wie der Autor im Shenmue Forum schreibt:
shenmuedojo.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=49065

Auch IGN hat bereits ein paar Zeilen über das Werk verloren:
fr.ign.com/shenmue-iii-rumored…cais-consacre-au-createur


M.C.

French Biography on Yu Suzuki published
Sep. 13, 6:11 pm

Who does not know him - Yu Suzuki, the creator of Virtua Fighter and Shenmue. French video game journalist Benjamin Berget has now written an over 500 pages long biography on Yu Suzuki which will be published on September 25. The book covers Suzuki's entire life, from his childhood and youth up until the beginning of his work on Shenmue 3 during this year and is called Yū Suzuki - Le Maître de Sega (de l'arcade à Shenmue).

If you're interested, you should check out the publisher's official page about the book:
[I'm not gonna put the links into the translation; Hyo Razuki]

Furthermore, it seems an English translation of the book is planned for 2016, as the author wrote in a Shenmue Forum.
[They put up a link to the Dojo Forum thread about the book here; H. R.]

IGN have also covered the book already.

If I run into more German language news coverage on the book, I'll keep updating here.

http://i.imgur.com/jdTQFtr.png

A new book by French author Benjamin Berget, which covers Yu Suzuki's outstanding career in the gaming industry, will be published on September 25th 2015 by Geeks-Line. An English version will be available in 2016.

Dojo member DEVILLE_David has also been working on the project as a Japanese to French translator.

You can preorder the book via the Geeks-Line website here .

Links:
Yū Suzuki Biography - Le Maître de Sega | Forum Discussion | News Archive

@ Benjamin Berget
will you be posting up any excerpts from the book in English, or do we have to wait until the English version next year?
it would be nice to have a taste of the book before purchase. thanks

Hi everyone! I just finished reading Benjamin Berget's extensive Yu Suzuki Biography and since an English version of the book is coming too, I wanted to share some thoughts about the book with the Shenmue community. Here we go!

First off, the presentation of the book is outstanding and far more than one can expect from a small publisher such as Geeks Line. The book comes in a beautiful book jacket with the words "Yu Suzuki" printed in a slightly convex way which gives the reader an interesting feeling while touching the book's cover. The paper is pearly white and the font size makes it a very agreeable reading experience. The book spans 500 pages plus a roundabout 30 color print pages which show pictures of advertisement flyers for Yu's Arcade machines. The quality of those pictures is very good and the colors come out vividly. Unfortunately there are no pictures of Yu Suzuki himself in the book.

The book's content covers Yu's entire life starting with his childhood in a small coastal town, his beginnings at Sega, Yu at the peak of his power at Sega in the late 90's/early 2000's all the way till the emotional E3 followed by the succesfull KS campaign for Shenmue 3 earlier this year.

As a long time Yu Suzuki fanboy, I wasn't expecting a lot of new information from the book, but there was actually a lot of small details in the book which I had either previously overlooked or forgotten about as time went by. Anyway, Benjamin Berget did one hell of a job accumulating heaps of old interviews from magazines dating back as far as the 80's and also loads of online interviews and other source material.

Also, I think most western readers didn't know a lot about Yu Suzuki's early years, unless they were able to read Japanese and thus understand Yu Suzuki Game Works. I found it really interesting to learn that Yu was a die hard fan of Ritchie Blackmore's in the 70's and in his teenage years spent most of his time practing guitar, trying to become a guitar hero just like Blackmore. But fortunately for all of us, just before the final exams in high school were about to happen and with his parents worried about his long hair and indifferent attitude towards studying, young Yu came to the conclusion that despite all his dilligent practice, he lacked the musical talent to become a rockstar. So our Yu got a haircut and enrolled for programming in University. The rest is history.

Benjamin Berget covers all the games of Yu's career, regardless if he was involved as a director, producer, supervisor or something completely different. He gives detailed information about the development, the technical specifications of each arcade machine, the console conversions and the commercial performance (sales) of each game. That alone is an achievement in itself but it is the small anecdotes and details where Berget's book shines. Hitting the letter G in the fourth stage of Hang-On gives you a million extra points, not just Nintendo but also Sega was super close to striking a deal with Sony in the early 90s but the narrow-minded executives of Sega of Japan fucked it up which led to Sony taking bitter revenge on both Sega and Nintedo by releasing the Playstation. Yu worked for Lockheed as an advisor and helped them create a tank simulator of which Sega released a civilian version as "Desert Tank". Shenmue 3 was almost announced for Xbox at E3 2004 and for some reason we still don't really know the announcement got cancelled at the very last minute. Yu initially wanted to do a Shenmue 3 Kickstarter in 2012, but Sega asked too much for the license.

Granted, all those things may not be new to some of us but as I said before I had either forgotten or never learned about them. And God, how much this book made me hate Peter "I put the nail in the Dreamcast's coffin in order to take its IPs to Xbox" Moore and Hajime "I want Sonic on my Pachinko machines to seduce a younger audience to gambling" Satomi and Sammy again. :lol: Yeah, I know, I need to calm down and there's nothing I can do about Peter Moore being an asshole and Sammy being a money-grubbing piece of shit company which unfortunately has taken over Sega. :D Still, the truth needs to be said from time to time. :)

Shenmue gets most attention of all games in this book with S1 & 2 being covered in a massive 100 pages chapter, Shenmue Online and it's cancellation being examined in great detail and Shenmue 3 being the finishing sub-chapter of the book with about a dozen pages. I also found particularly interesting the way Yu underwent the development of Shenmue. He first took a ton of location pictures which he showed them to the composers (Mitsuyoshi, Iuchi, Koshiro and so on) who he would then ask to compose some music for those locations. After they were done, Yu listened to what the composers had created and when he found a track he liked, he would play it to everybody involved (graphic artists, programmers,etc.). He asked them to listen closely and to go to work with the music in mind. In that sense, Shenmue's development started with its music and the incredible athmosphere could be created because everybody had the music in mind while working on Shenmue.

With its sheer amount of information and all his little dietails, this book is a great read for every Yu Suzuki fan and all those interested in Sega or Shenmue. However there is one thing about the book I didn't like one bit. While the price (25 Euros) is reasonable, the binding is very cheaply executed and very poor quality. Geeks-Line really need to find a new partner for their bindings. I read about 20 to 30 books a year, some digital but most of the still physical. I have never before experienced this with a new book. I have only read it once and I've treated my copy in an absolutely normal way but still the binding is so bad, some of the pages just came loose and fell out of the book! :no: :2gunfire: :letitallout:

However, I'd like to stress, that this is in no way related to Benjamin Berget's work or the contents and reading value of the book. It's an issue the publisher needs to deal with.

I advise every Shenmue fan to read the book, but if you buy the original version, treat your copy with extra care. Hopefully the English language publisher will do a better job with the binding.

@Sand4fish:
No dude, it's not authorized or official or something but that's why it's a bit more controversial. There are for instance passages in the book where Yu went on record in past interviews harshly criticizing the Saturn (during the mid 90's), the PS2 and Microsoft (about Shenmue 2X's marketing campaign). I guess Sega themselves wouldn't have wanted an author to dig out those interviews if it was an officially approved book. On a side note: I think that's also why there are no pictures of Yu in there.

@Peter: There is one of David Deville's YS interviews in the appendix of the book which also served as source material. The same goes for an interview with the founder of Shenmue Master (I think his name is Remy), the most important non-English Shenmue website. Other than that Berget used public material in French, English and Japanese (such as YS Game Works). A lot of his sources were also "offline" sources such as magazines, especially since most of the let's say pre 1995 stuff is "offline". Berget is very thorough with his citations. There are more than 400 citations (footnotes) in the 500 pages book. He uses the "humanities style" citation system. So yeah, he does make an effort to back up what he says.

@Benjamin Berget: Thanks for your book. I've learned many new things about Yu Suzuki from it. Thanks also for clearing up the issue with my copy. I'm glad it's not a problem with all copies. I will contact Geeks Line as you said. You've done a biography worthy of Suzuki-San, imho.

For other questions concerning the book, I will give you guys the quotes for the Peter Moore stuff and the E3 2004 incident later this week. Don't have that much time now. Sorry. If you have any more questions, I'll try to answer but please expect some delay as I'm super busy this week.

I'd agree with you Ben. I don't much mind Moore attacking Naka since I think they're both shallow, like two wild dogs ripping away at each other. However, businessmen like Moore really get to me since they prey on the talent of others and everything is a commodity for them. No respect for the human condition. A bit like Nietzsche's lion but a little disorientated and carried by the strength of others primarily.

Yes, that's normal here in Germany as well. Most small publishers tend to stay away from ebooks for some reason.

Maybe some bastards scanned a (physical) copy of your book and made it into PDF? Must be such a bad feeling. 5 years of work and some assholes are just cashing in at your expense. Feeling sorry for you, dude!

I payed 15 Euros for the shipping to Germany, ordering from Geeks-Line directly. Of course, that's super expensive, but out of personal preference I prefer not to buy stuff on Amazon (in fact I do almost no online shopping at all, because I don't like it). Well, it was worth the price to me. Especially since (I bought merchandise :mrgreen: ) I was super hyped about the book and couldn't wait for release so I didn't wanna wait till November and preordered via Geeks-Line.

Now available on Amazon.fr, with shipping it's about £22 to the UK (not available on Amazon.co.uk currently).

http://www.amazon.fr/dp/B014UDN7ES/ref= ... P2000_1000

Book arrived this morning, wasn't expecting it to arrive until Wednesday. Looks to be in good condition, think Hyo Razuki got unlucky with the binding on his copy, will write a review once I've finished reading it.

https://scontent-lhr3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xaf1/t31.0-8/12238082_10100613430432662_869591870587577375_o.jpg

The book is indeed solid and very sweet. The only drawback is that the spine is inevitably folded after reading.