One of the Best Video Games Ever Is Finally Back From the Dead

One of the best games ever is finally back from the dead.

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Complex Original

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I remember buying Shenmue at my local Best Buy solely because it had multiple discs like Final Fantasy 7. When I actually got to playing the game, I was caught off guard. I was amazed at how impressive and realistic it looked. As I got more invested in it, I spent less time mastering combos from Marvel vs. Capcom 2 so I could focus on Ryo Hazuki’s story of revenge. I became a fan. Naturally, I bought the second one—both the PAL version on Dreamcast and the Xbox version. After cruising through that game, I hungered for the final installment of the epic trilogy—only it never came.

Finally, after 14 years of false starts and failed promises, Shenmue III is happening.

This week, during Sony’s E3 conference, creator Yu Suzuki’s words to a feverish crowd were everything: “We can unfold the continuous story," he said. "Shenmue III will be the story you have waited for. The fate of Shenmue is in your hands now." What came next was really one of those “pinch me if I’m dreaming” moments: Suzuki revealed that Shenmue III was headed to Kickstarter with a goal of $2 million. People actually cried in the audience because it was so beautiful to hear.

But a moment of realism—that’s a lot of money to fund a game many had either forgot about or thought would never exist. The Shenmue series is a cult classic, but how big is its reach exactly? 

Turns out, pretty damn big. In just over six hours, the Kickstarter reached its goal of $2 million (as of now, it has $2.9 million and counting) with 30 days still to go. There was so much traffic going to the crowdfunding site that it broke. #Shenmue3 became a trending topic in a matter of minutes.

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Keep in mind that the original Shenmue cost $70 million to make, so fans are expecting the developers to go big with the funds they’re about to accumulate in the next month, and $2 million probably isn't close to what they need to really make this thing pop. However, the trailer featuring our protagonist Ryo Hazuki and his travel companion Shenhua already looks gorgeous. 

In popular culture, there are certain video game titles everyone is familiar with—your Final Fantasies, Call of Duties, and Street Fighters. And while those games have massive fanbases in their own right, none possess the loyalty—and more importantly, the patience—of Shenmue fans. Released in Japan (December 1999) and later North America (November 2000), Shenmue was praised for its concept of FREE (Full Reactive Eyes Entertainment), the first of its kind for the Dreamcast. The lush environments that took place in 1986 Yokosuka allowed for deep exploration in a sandbox city, as gamers uncovered the story behind the murder of Ryo’s father at the hands of the game’s antagonist Lan Di. Though not without its set of faults, Shenmue gained a following for its attention to detail and how it gave players freedom to interact with NPCs (non-playable characters) in a virtual world, a concept that hadn’t yet been executed on a mainstream scale—remember, this was before the explosion of Grand Theft Auto III. The game sold relatively well, with over 400,000 copies sold in the US.

Shenmue’s quirks were a major part of the game’s popularity. Hell, Just Blaze has even shared his fondness of the game. Besides the badly dubbed English, players were able to collect toys from vending machines (including Sonic the Hedgehog figurines), get lost in the arcade’s throwbacks (Space Harrier, Hang On), and engage in insane Virtua Fighter-style fights like the 1 versus 100 battle near the end. And true fans of Shenmue distinctly remember Ryo’s forklift job at the harbor while he goes on his exhausting search for sailors.

Shenmue II, released in 2001 exclusively in Japan and Europe, expanded on the same ideas while continuing Ryo’s story in Hong Kong. We got more of everything. You learned more about Lan Di and why he killed Ryo’s father and encountered some new characters, such as the motorcycle enthusiast Joy and Shenhua, who appeared in Ryo’s dreams in the first installment. You learned more about the meaning of Shenmue. You learned more about the significance of the Phoenix Mirror and the Dragon Mirror. There were even more fighting sequences, QTEs (Quick Timer Events), toys to collect, mini-games, and side-quests than the original. 

While it’s hard to nail down the success of Shenmue II in Japanese and European markets, North American gamers couldn’t wait to get their hands on it. At the time, GameStop and EB Games were both selling European versions of the game with accompanying boot discs so they could run on US Dreamcasts. Eventually, a year later, Shenmue II was released on the Dreamcast’s spiritual successor Xbox with a full English dub, additional gameplay features and better graphics. As the Dreamcast was reaching its final days, the Shenmue series managed to make it on a next-gen console. After the sequel’s success, rumors swirled for years about a possible third Shenmue that could appear on the next cycle of consoles (Xbox 360, in particular), but it never happened. Finally, when Sega trademarked Shenmue last year, it was a glimmer of hope that something special could be on the way.

The importance of Shenmue III is two-fold. One, fans have waited almost a decade and a half for answers after Shenmue II’s cliffhanger ending, and two, the Shenmue legacy will actually be able to continue. It’s a final send-off to all the times Suzuki and his team looked for creative ways to innovate the series with the roadblocks in funding game development for a third installment.

Shenmue Online, which was an attempt at an online MMORPG (Massively Multi-player Online Role-Playing Game) with characters from the story, never got past its development stages due to legal issues between Sega and developer JC Entertainment. It had Kikizo’s Adam Doree uttering these words, “As for Shenmue, I would have to say at this stage, it is worth forgetting about.” Other spin-offs, like the smartphone game Shenmue City, released as a Japan exclusive, only gave a small satisfaction to fans who felt an appropriate sequel would save the series. 

“Shenmue has the image of grand scale,” Suzuki told Famitsu.com in 2010. “But making something of grand scale requires appropriate preparation. I want to make 3 with the same volume as in the past. There have actually been a lot of requests from fans for 3 as well. There were even petitions signed by tens of thousands of people. I wanted to carry out my obligations for the series."

Shenmue III’s announcement for PC and PS4 has been a long time coming. Similar to any beloved series that deserves a reboot, there are still things to ponder in the coming months. Can Shenmue III gain a new following after being stuck in video game purgatory? Can it compete against established series like Mass Effect, Fall Out, Borderlands and Grand Theft Auto? And can it be a financial success and generate enough funds to possibly set up further installments? These unanswered questions and more are just the tip of the iceberg.

But like many of us who cried over Shenmue’s return, we need closure. The moment we've been waiting 14 years for is now.

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