Shenmue Premiere Poster (1998) | Shenmue Merchandise

The Shenmue Premiere event was held in Japan and the end of December 1998 in Yokohama, with additional events through the New Year in cities through-out Japan. SEGA did not hold back on budget for these events: each lasted two hours, and were free of charge to attendees; and all attendees received a bag packed with Shenmue merchandise.

The expectation and excitement was huge, as it would be the first time the general public would get a decent look at Yu Suzuki's new game, one that had been the source of much speculation in the preceding months.

The large B2-sized poster below is one that was used to advertise the Shenmue premiere events. Most of the poster is occupied by a picture of Shenhua, with an informational panel further down with the words: "Whatever could it be, this emotion? The Shenmue Premiere." The name of the Director & Executive Producer is also shown: Yu Suzuki.

A poster for the Shenmue Premiere (image courtesy of Retro Import Gamer)

Underneath this are details of the dates and times of the event, with a map at the right showing how to access the convention hall for the kick-off event in Yokohama.

The text reads:

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Shenmue I & II Announcement Video (with English Subtitles)

The announcement of the planned 2018 release of Shenmue I & II for modern platforms was an awesome event for fans all over the globe.

• Related post: check out Switch's on-the-ground report of the presentation

With the live event being held in Japan, the primary language for the announcement was of course Japanese. Although "Shenhua" the official interpreter was present on stage for the main part of the announcement, not everything that Sega Sammy CEO Haruki Satomi said was translated - so we have added translated subtitles for those parts.

View the subtitled video below. A written transcript of the Japanese translations follows the video in this post.

Note: during the interaction Haruki Satomi makes one or two comments in Japanese that could be interpreted as being made at John Clark's expense. However I believe these were meant in a spirit of fun and were not intended to be disrespectful.

Transcript (Translations from Japanese only)

Haruki Satomi [HS]: SEGA FES 2018 starts from today. We held Sega Group's first one, as a trial, in November 2016. At that time, we ran a live show late at night over a period of 48 hours. Back then, "work-style reforms" and ""exploitative corporations" weren't really a thing, so the employees worked through for 48-hours.

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Toshihiro Nagoshi on Yu Suzuki | Sega Fes Livestream

Sega video game producer & designer Toshihiro Nagoshi was asked his opinion on Yu Suzuki in a Q&A livestream session earlier today.

Despite having some "huge arguments" in the past when they worked together, Nagoshi holds Suzuki in great respect.

Source: YouTube video (Japanese)

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Android: Guide to Downloading Kotodaman Outside Japan

Following yesterday's iPhone/iPad guide to downloading Sega's mobile game Kotodaman, here is one for Android users.

Kotodaman is based on the concept of forming Japanese words, with the UI also being completely in Japanese. However if you are interested in playing around with it anyway, why not give it a try!

• For information about the Kotodaman game: see our previous post here.
• For iPhone/iPad users: see our separate download guide here.

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iPhone/iPad: Guide to Downloading Kotodaman Outside Japan | Guest Post

Help is at hand for those not living in Japan who want to download Sega's new word-based RPG  mobile game Kotodaman (read more about it here), thanks to Phantom River Stone patron James Brown (visit him on Twitter or YouTube) who has written this guest post with step-by-step instructions on how to install the game on your Apple iPhone or iPad.

Kotodaman was released this week and, according to a recent tweet, generated 1 million downloads in just the first 3 days! The game is a free download - with optional in-game purchases - but unfortunately is only available on the Japan app stores. 

The game is based on the concept of forming Japanese words, with the UI also being completely in Japanese. However if you are interested in playing around with it anyway, we recommend giving it a try!

For Android users: we will be publishing a separate guide soon on a method for downloading Kotodaman outside Japan.

About the author

Hi guys, it's James Brown (SkillJim) here! You may not know me, but I've been a huge Shenmue fan and collector since its inception. Playing the Original Shenmue on Xmas day of 2000! I've been heavily involved with the community since then, and I'm currently part of the Shenmue Dojo team! Some of you may also recognise my name from the Sega Europe video where community manager at the time Dan Sheridan read out and answered my question concerning Shenmue 1 & 2 HD back in 2016! - I'm jealous of Switch for being able to see it announced live in person last weekend (considering I was in Japan only a week prior - doh! Look out for a future post from me all about my day exploring the Dobuita area with Switch!).

I don't contribute too much on Twitter, but if you would like to follow me, please do so :) -  @SkillJim - I also have a YouTube channel with Sega content, and hopefully really soon I'll be releasing a series of travel videos of my time visiting the great countries of China & Japan, and also the day I met Switch in Yokosuka, you can find my channel here - https://www.youtube.com/theskilljim - Thanks guys! 

It's with great pleasure that I present to you a guest blog post here on PhantomRiverStone.com!  A big thank you to Switch for letting me be featured! I hope that this post can be of some use to someone out there who may have heard about the Kotodaman game, yet didn't know how to go about downloading it from the Japan Apple AppStore.

As someone living outside Japan (in the UK), I was wondering how it would be possible for me to download this game onto my iPhone and potentially be able to play as Ryo Hazuki, which we unlocked in the campaign which Switch previously did a blog post about a while back!

• Help Ryo Hazuki Appear in SEGA's Mobile Game "Kotodaman"

So I did a little bit of research into creating a Japanese iTunes account and I want to help anyone interested in doing the same!

This is a lot easier to do if you have access to a computer or Mac with iTunes installed on it.

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The Announcement of Shenmue I & II | On-the-Ground Report

Sega's announcement last weekend that Shenmue I & II would be coming to modern platforms set the Shenmue community on fire. Interestingly, they chose to make the announcement at their SEGA FES 2018 event in Japan. While some fans around the world watched it on live-stream, many caught the news the next morning when they awoke.

I was lucky enough to attend the presentation in Tokyo. I recount my experience below.

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Masaya Matsukaze Prepares to Reprise Role as Ryo Hazuki

Another hint has been received that voice recording for Shenmue III may be set to commence in the near future.

This morning, the voice actor for the Japanese versions of Shenmue, Masaya Matsukaze, tweeted out an image of the Shenmue: The Movie DVD cover on a stand, accompanied by the message (my translation):

"Right!
Time to prepare for my part (^_^)"

よし！
役ずくり(^-^) pic.twitter.com/TgVWFFLCnR

— 松風雅也LINEスタンプ発売中 (@matsukazest) April 16, 2018

In the first two Shenmue games the Japanese voice actors themselves performed the actions for their own characters in the game, however at this point it has not been revealed to what extent this will be the case for the third game.

This morning's tweet follows the news from Corey Marshall, the English voice actor for Ryo, in response to a fan's query on Facebook in March that his recording was scheduled to start at the end of May (with the recording location to be in the U.S., as of the end of last year).

We will continue to keep our eyes peeled for further updates regarding voice recording.

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It's Really Happening! Shenmue I & II Coming to Modern Platforms in 2018

A day later and it is still taking time to sink in for many of us fans!

Following some teasing tweets from both SEGA Europe and Koch Media on the evening before the SEGA FES 2018 event in Tokyo, Shenmue fans have at last been rewarded for their years of hope and patience with an official announcement from SEGA that Shenmue I & II will be coming to modern platforms in 2018.

Here's a summary of information about the release (information gathered from GameInformer, Steam, Adam Koralik)

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