Three new still shots of Shenmue 3 have been released, showing off more of the game's detailed environments.
Screenshot 1: Evening Dining in Bailu Village
The first screenshot is a night scene of customers seated at an outdoor table. In the background an elderly man (perhaps the proprietor) is seated at a table laden with sausages, cake and other food items. The customers are turned in his direction - they seem to be getting hungry.
Screenshot #1
The heavy wooden beam and hanging rope in the foreground can be recognized as being the Bailu village well, as seen in this capture from E3 B-roll footage earlier this year:
Fan-snapped photos and hand-held recordings of a brand new Shenmue 3 trailer on show at Gamescom 2019 have been flying around the internet, and now a direct feed of the trailer is available - and it looks magnificent!
Titled "A Day in Shenmue", it includes scenes of combat, arcade games, exploration and even some interactions with Ren (the rain pouring down during this scene makes for a striking atmosphere). The voices of this version are in English.
We will be writing up an analysis of the trailer's content in a future post.
The trailer was also announced in a Kickstarter Update which included a photo of Yu Suzuki at the Shenmue 3 booth, where he will be continuing to hold signing sessions.
This is the week of Gamescom 2019, with a series of press events already having taken place throughout the day (with some glimpses of Shenmue 3 which we will cover in the next post!). The actual show properly kicks off on Tuesday August 20th, with the first day being for trade and media only.
Yu Suzuki has also of course traveled to Germany for the event, and after arrival took some time to visit the city of Aachen, located an hour's train ride to the west of Cologne. Koch Media has shared photos of his visit to the city's old town and historical center.
Based on clues in the photos, we can even identify some of the locations.
Yu Suzuki poses next to a sculpture of a horse.
This horse is one of a number of galloping horses in a bronze sculpture outside Aachen Central Railway Station.
Our report a couple of months back on an easter egg that lets Ryo unleash a punch resembling Street-Fighter's "Shin Shōryūken" against Goro in a harbor QTE scene stirred up a storm of interest from fans, and that post has become our most-viewed post of all-time.
And now, the same legendary Japanese fan who tracked down that easter egg has shared a video of how to unlock a new one that lets Nozomi show off her previously unknown martial art talents in a free battle!
It is astounding that a 20-year old game still has new secrets to be discovered.
Don't take our word for it - watch below to see a side of Nozomi you never knew existed!
According to the fan who made the discovery, who goes by the handle nullpo, a hint about such an easter egg first surfaced in summer of last year (2018) - presumably also courtesy of the former developer who teased the existence of the Shin Shōryūken punch around that timeframe.
With not much more than this to go on, he has been spending his spare time over the last four months analyzing the game's code and eventually succeeding in identifying (and reproducing) the conditions to enable it.
An exciting announcement has been made with news that the Shenmue 3 trial version reward on PC will be coming out in the second half of September.
The English version of the announcements explains that it will be a stand-alone act set in Bailu village and is estimated to last for about 1 hour, but will offer additional replay value with "lots of activities to experience" even after completing the main objective. It will also come with a pdf play-guide.
For comparison, here's an extract from the message in Japanese is as follows (my translation):
"In the trial version, which will be set in the game's first area of Bailu village, you will be able to play up to the completion of a specific scenario. The expected amount of available play time will be one hour, and replay will be possible after clearing the objective. You'll be able to try all kinds of different activities until the trial comes to an end".
Update: I got in touch with the Shenmue 3 team for clarification on whether the time limit replies to a single game or the entire trial, and they provided the following additional information:
First, you can replay the game as many times as you want, and there is no expiry date per say.
The in-game cycle goes from about 8:30AM to 9:00PM which takes about one hour to complete. At 9:00PM the trial ends, at which point you will have to start over from the beginning. Although we cannot make any promises on these next points, you could, for example, still play it next year.
The trial version will not be supported in the future, however, we believe it will remain in your Epic library.
(These clarifications will be notified officially "next chance").
Every month Phantom River Stone holds a poll among our patrons to choose a topic for the blog in the coming month. The results are in for August's topic. After tallying the votes (including accumulated votes from previous months), the winning topic was...
Nagoshi's involvement with bringing an end to Shenmue's development (anecdote from 4Gamer interview with Hisashi Suzuki)
In the late 1990s, the Shenmue project continued on and on seemingly without an end in sight. Upper management became increasingly concerned about when it would be ready for release.
We'll be translating a section of a 4Gamer interview with Hisashi Suzuki (no relation to Yu), a senior executive at Sega who was on the Board of Directors from 1999. He recounts that the Shenmue project was eventually reined in with the intervention of Toshihiro Nagoshi (nowdays chief creative officer at Sega).
Today we welcome back contributor James Brown (visit his channel SkillJim on YouTube) with another guest post on a fascinating topic, this time talking about the Shenmue promotional stamp rally that was held in Japan back in 1999. Not only that, but he has obtained an actual rally book that is packed with stamps and information, and scanned its pages to share with everyone. Over to James!
Back in 1999, prior to the release of Shenmue on the Dreamcast, Sega of Japan really went full force with various marketing campaigns to advertise Yu Suzuki's open-world epic. Along with events such as the Shenmue Premiere, tie-in's with brands like Timex and even convenience stores such as Lawson's was another event that took place that has never really been well-documented - at least not in English.
An article in Dreamcast magazine (July 1999) detailed the upcoming event
This event was known as the Metron Stamp Rally '99: Shenmue Journey, and was based around the Eidan subway network (which we'll refer to here as Tokyo Metro, to which it was renamed in 2004).
Events like these are quite common in Japan, and collecting ink prints made by rubber stamps is still quite a big thing today - you can find stamp and ink stations at many of the locations and tourist spots around Japan. These stamps are usually themed on the location in which they are found, and you can stamp your book, or sometimes with the provided paper, as a memento of your visit.
Shenmue 3 was one of the games featured at yesterday's 2019 China Digital Entertainment Expo & Conference ("ChinaJoy"). ChinaJoy is a digital entertainment expo held annually in Shanghai and is is the largest gaming and digital entertainment exhibition in China and Asia.
A Shenmue 3 promotional trailer was played, which was the one shown at this year's PC Gaming Show at E3: "The Hidden Art Returns" - but this time with Chinese captions.
This was followed by a pre-recorded video with a message from Yu Suzuki to fans. As well as giving an update on the activities being carried out in the lead-up to the release on November 19, he also talks about the freedom of play style that Shenmue offers to the player, and how this reflects on the personality of the player themselves
We've added English captions to Yu's video message, so check it out below (note that the video quality is degraded due to capture from the live stream):
Transcript
Hello everyone. I'm Yu Suzuki, the director of Shenmue 3.
Shenmue is an open-world type of game set in China. I have always held great admiration for China's expansive scenery, history, martial arts and more. I have put all those feelings into Shenmue 3, and for me, it is a real honor to be able to bring Shenmue 3 to you.
Recently I have been focusing on checking how it plays. I'm having it play tested by many different people in order to fine-tune the game. What sets Shenmue apart from other games the most is that 10 players will have 10 different ways of playing. The player has a high degree of freedom so the games won't play out the same. And the player's own personality will really come through. A Shenmue that's yours alone, is here.
To express it another way, Shenmue is a mirror that reflects yourself.
I'd like people to take their time, and play through this game slowly.
