Wednesday, August 31, 2016

Kickstarter Update #59: observations

Well, although the update video wasn't long at just over 2 minutes, it was worth the wait with live demonstrations of QTE scenes being created, one a reconstruction of Ryo jumping rocks to cross the river with Shenhua in Shenmue II, and one new instance of QTE gameplay from Shenmue III in the making.

I'll mention a few of the things that caught my attention as I watched.

Development Report "loading screen"
And we're looking forward to the next report already!
The first thing to strike me (apart from the snazzy space-themed shirt the presenter is wearing) is that the title screen is labelled "Development Report Vol. 01".  This suggests that today's video is the start of a series with similar updates to follow in the future. Exciting! The date stamp confirms that the footage is as recent as a week ago.

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Kickstarter Update #59 - From the Dev Room

Shenmue developer at workstation
Toiling away for us Shenmue fans
Wow, the much-anticipated update #59 for the Shenmue III Kickstarter is upon us, with a real treat in store for the fans in the form of an in-depth video of the development progress.

I can't wait to sit down and digest the video - then see what extra information can be combed out of it!

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Tuesday, August 23, 2016

A New Shenmue Blog is Launched

Welcome! This post marks the launch of this blog which will be centered around Shenmue: the open-world video game series created, directed and produced by famed Japanese game designer Yu Suzuki.
Ryo learns of the mysterious Phantom River Stone
 "The mirrors are made of Phantom River Stone found only in Bailu village."
My encounter with the Shenmue series came relatively late, well after its original release. Unlike some people who can speak fondly of Shenmue taking pride of place in their game console library as they were growing up, I first found out about the game after getting an early Dreamcast emulator running on my PC in order to play an old favorite, Typing of the Dead.

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