Please! Do not ask for these! This was a personal job, not
outsourcing the work to other people. If you want me to work out
something for you, I will do so for money only.
This was a fun project. I decided to make some period-accurate mockup
covers for the Shenmue series on the Master System, using the original
chapter artworks from an AM2 presentation. I had to upscale these
artworks, which were difficult to find in decent quality. All in all, a
fun project.
As usual, comments disabled here to avoid the spam I get on these.
Shenmue 3 was finally released....!! After all these years!!
It doesn’t even feel real. Is Half-Life 3 coming next week??!
I
still remember buying my Dreamcast brand new. Getting Shenmue 1 a few
short months later, spending hours... days.. weeks exploring it!
Then
before the end of the Sega era... We did get one last hurrah in the
form of Shenmue 2...! Discovering such a bigger adventure.. with only
came to an end on that darn’ annoying cliffhanger...!
And now.. finally...
SHENMUE 3 is here! Ryo is back!!!
The game does look pretty decent actually, better than what I feared.
But good..
Or bad...
It
just feels so odd to actually play it after so many years!!! (Even
wilder and stranger than when Duke Nukem Forever finally came out, if
you ask me..)
I just can’t process this...!!!
It’s
like coming back home. Things aren’t exactly as you remember them. You
see stuff in a new life. You notice the passage of time. But all in all,
it feels like home.
Recently, youtube channel DigitalFoundry recovered some huge news, for Sega fans.
I've been really enjoying the re-release of Shenmue I & II. It's nice to have an excuse to replay these all-time classics.
But originally Sega planned a much bigger more ambitious project. That's why the Shenmue I & II HD remaster had been rumored and then announced a couple of years ago. Considering the final product, a pretty simple widescreen HD-scaled release of the original Dreamcast games with minor additions, there's an explanations for such a long development period.
Originally Sega wanted to make a Yakuza Kiwami-style remake of the original games, in anticipation of Shenmue III.
DigitalFoundry got some exclusive pictures and animations from the scrapped game.
Story goes, the project was starting to take too long and cost too much for Sega Sammy. as is common with Shenmue games, as history shows. But they probably feared the games couldn't be released on time before Shenmue III (which, ironically, just got recently delayed). And this project would have cost as much as a new games instead of a remake...
Oh well...
As fans we can only dream... and wish for a new crowdfunded campaign, maybe..
One of the biggest Kickstarter successes, and one of my personal longest-awaited sequels, Shenmue III's got a new release date. The game's been basically pushed far away a year after the recently released remaster of Shenmue I and II.
Things are taking shape nicely, the game's looking far nicer now. There's still some work to put into it, I'm sure.
It’s almost - ALMOST!! - like Shenmue III’s a reality. Almost!
Here’s my PS4 copy next to my original Dreamcast copies:
Also, bonus swag!!
Reversible cover!
Gorgeous!!
And a double-sided poster!
(I’ll put it right next to my NiER ones.)
I
never noticed how well the PS4 front art goes well along the classic
European Dreamcast label. Just look at the mockup manual inside the PS4
edition next to my DC copies:
I can’t believe how nostalgic it has become now in 2018 playing Shenmue on my PS4...
Finally some news regarding the resurrected kickstarted Shenmue III right on time for GamesCom 2017! It's about time!
But..
O..kay.
The environments do look ok. But the character models and animations.. not so much (Andromeda, anyone?). But from what Yu Suzuki said, they're still working on those and this was only meant to be a quick update for the kickstarter bakers.
Fanmade stuff can be just as good or better than professional stuff.
Case in point, Shenmue.
Some fans have been disappointed by Ryo's (placeholder stock) face in the upcoming Shenmue 3. Even Yu Suzuki himself apologized for that. And while everyone's been asking for a Shenmue 1+2 HD re-release, they won't be able to do that because Sega still has the rights to do that (and they don't seem interested in anything non-mobile games/Sonic these days).
So fans took upon themselves to recreate the original Shenmue in Unreal 4!
This won't become a real thing, because the sheer size of the logistics behind such a huge adventure game (all the quests, interactions, scripting, etc) would require a huge entire team (and the millions it cost back in the day). But for now it gives us a nice look at the kind of visuals we'd wish for such a project. (Although I'm sure Sega would just to a bare-minimal facelift upscaling if they'd ever port it for HD systems..)
Need more proof that fans always have the best intentions in heart and can do just as good if not better than the actual studios?
Capcom's getting worse by the year. They're now revamping Resident Evil 0 because if they would ever get to do RE2 they'd have to actually do the remake properly from scratch (while RE0 is not that old a game). No wonder fans have been making full blown remakes of Resident Evil 2 in Unreal 4 as well:
This "Resident Evil 2 Reborn" looks fairly nice! I didn't think I would like to see a classic tank-controls RE updated with the RE4 controls scheme, but it actually sounds nice now that I see it in motion! (Imagine all the work that Capcom would have to do to get to these results? Don't count on it...).
And if you don't like the idea of shaking things up, some other fans have been keeping the original game and only upgrading the visuals as well:
Looks awesome!
They fans are doing a lot better than what the actual publishers have done these last few years. I wonder who will receive a seize and desist first? Capcom is known to stop fan projects like these, so...
Since Shenmue 3 just reached it's kickstarter deadline, Yu Suzuki and the crew put together this fun lil' recreation of Shenmue 2's (near) ending scene:
Granted, it looks kinda silly/cheesy/dated (zoom in for Dat Ass!!), but that's because they basically based it on the original Dreamcast scene.
I'm just happy to see this great gaming series revived!
Let's start from the beginning. For ages now Outrun creator Yu Suzuki has been wanting to make the third and final Shenmue. Meanwhile "Sega Playmore" has been getting worse by the year. Since they've essentially become Sega-Sammy they've been only re-released old games digitally and making the yearly Sonic game releases. On the Shenmue front: Why bring back a game that cost so much in the past when they basically replaced that IP with Yakuza nowadays?
So Yu Suzuki keeps getting interviewed about Shenmue 3, even though he's been moved to a smartphone games division now. And he mentioned the thought of relying on crowd-funding to make the game.
It seems like Sony partnered up with Sega for the occasion - the game will come on PS4 and PC. But they're only partially funding and helping it. So here they are on Kickstarter now.
This is a legit new Shenmue sequel, not some random spinoff. The campaign is asking for $2 million, so they haven't won it. AND IT ALREADY REACHED 1 904 912 $ as I write these lines!!!
The game's expected for a possible release date of December 2017.
We already got a FF7 remake and The Last Guardian out of E3 this year. All we need now is Half-Life 3, and the apocalypse might just be right around the corner!!
Here's the post in which I talk A LOT about the adventure genre.
Sure, adventure games seem to be coming back lately, with the LucasArts remakes and Telltale Games Studio's success...
But they've never really been away. It's indie studios like Autumn Moon (ex-LucasArts' Bill Tiller), Revolution Software (Broken Sword series) & Péndulo Studios (Runaway series) that kept the flame alive during the whole 2000s while nobody wanted to make these games anymore.
Adventure games. Be it Point-and-clicks or not.
The genre is often misattributed to games like Tomb Raider or Uncharted, for exemple.
I prefer to call those action games, platformers or even action-adventure.
No, those ain't real adventure games.
You fight like a guy who's trying to explain me how adventure games were and how they ended up today!
The adventure genre grew up side by side with what we call now RPGs.
While the consoles had games like Phantasy Star, Final Fantasy and many more 8-bit RPGs, home computers developed a parallel genre, less action-based since the controllers were keyboards (and later, mouses) and much more story driven.
