If you’re a fan of the first 2 Shenmue games released on Dreamcast and XBox, respectively, you’ve no doubt been right along with me in using up all your birthday wishes for the last 14 years on the 3rd installment to come along and finish the epic journey of Ryo Hazuki and his quest to bring his father’s killer to justice.
Well, my friends, the wait appears to nearly be over!
In an E3 announcement tonight by Director Yu Suzuki, Shenmue 3 will in fact be made and funded through KickStarter.
Thank you, Suzuki san!
Check out the announcement video here.
Shenmue 2 was released in 2001 and came to a rather abrupt ending, leaving players longing for the end of Ryo’s adventure. 14 long years later, Suzuki and developer Ys Net have begun a campaign to crowdfund the project and to say that it’s going to happen is a bit of an understatement.
So far, it looks like much of the original production team will be back to work on the game, including original script writer, Masahiro Yoshimoto, composer, Ryuji Iuchi, and the voice of Ryo himself, Masaya Matsukaze!
As of 11:45pm EST, the KickStarter campaign has already raised OVER $1 Million of its $2 Million goal and the page even temporarily crashed shortly after opening to backers. Did I forget to mention that the project was opened after 9pm EST? There are stretch goals for more content but they currently cap at $.5 million, which I predict will be surpassed quickly.
There is little doubt fans of the series will indeed be able to complete the saga as the tentative release date is late 2017.
If/When the project is funded, it is planned for release on PC and PS4.
Written by InfiniteKnife
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My personal favorite games are those in the Survival Horror and Sports (baseball) genres, but I can find at least a game or 2 in just about any category that I love to play.
I grew up on Nintendo consoles (NES and SNES) and have been an Xbox guy since the first one was released in the early 2000s. It’s hard to stay away from the classics as the 16-bit era is probably still my favorite overall.
