Neverending Shenmue thread

**36chambers** · 07-07-2007, 08:10 PM

NEVERENDING...

I still remember how pissed off I was after finishing Shenmue on the Dreamcast and having to wait for ages for Shenmue II. Damn you Suzuki, your doing it again!

**Jet Set** · 10-17-2007, 04:03 PM

Shenmue Online is cancelled.

**J-DON** · 10-18-2007, 11:48 PM

are both shenmues availiabe on xbox (and therefore xbox360)

**Jet Set** · 10-20-2007, 02:38 PM

Both Shenmues are avaible on the Dreamcast. The Xbox got Shenmue IIX, Shenmue II was cancelled in US territories due to this. Early versions of the Xbox game included an extra dvd with Shenmue The Movie. A movie consisting of the CGI images from the first game edited together to create a sort of introductory movie.

**Jet Set** · 01-09-2008, 07:08 AM

This was published by Surfer Girl back in November.

I heard something back in March or April about a Shenmue title for Wii, but I have not heard anything since about it and doubt that there is any truth to that. Despite announcements to the contrary, I've heard from quite a few people that Shenmue III has never actually entered production. To my knowledge, Shenmue Online is the only Shenmue title currently in development;

Shenmue Dojo has some other nice write ups in the production hell Shenmue Online went through.

I got a detailed response from Zach about the development problems that plagued Shenmue Online. (Hellraiser)

"hello
Originally it was a korean company that worked on the project. but disputes over profit eventually lead to a bad breakup. It was then sourced to Interserv Taiwan, which meant that the Shanghai facility would end up working on the bulk of the project. I was the only American working at Inteserv Shanghai at that time. I had the notion that Sega treated the Chinese outsource workers at cheap labor, and had no problem changing their designs and layouts for the game on the fly. Since labor cost was so cheap, Sega thought they could get away with it. Normally you would not be able to get away with such things if it was an American Video game company, because any major changes would set back the project months, if not years, and cost an additional 2-4 million dollars more. (ie. Starcraft Ghost).

I worked on the motion capture and character skinning (binding the 3d model to max character studio bones). The motion capture (fight scenes) was a bitch because the Taiwan quick check lady kept on denying and returning our edited motion capture saying that it was inaccurate. The only reference the animators were given were videos reference of the motion capture actors. None of the animators ever played Shenmue on the old dreamcast. actually none of the animators even liked fighting games. Nobody seemed to know what the taiwan Quick checker wanted, (MAJOR communication problem), and Interserv was too cheap to fly her over to Shanghai and have a meeting with us. One of the Art directors ended up helping us, and even the mo caps he personally passed ended up being rejected by Taiwan QC lady.
I also talked with many of the environmental modelers and they all said the project sucked ass. What's worse was a coworker worked on the mini games, and he had to work overtime, midnight to even 2 in the morning, for a month. He looked like a zombie every time I saw him. And at the end the mini games were changed so his work was all for nothing. He was not one to lose his anger easily, but that time he almost lost it.

Anyway, I left Interserv on good terms about a year ago. Last I heard from my coworkers is that Interserv is no longer working on Shenmue. Interserv had aobut over 200 employees when I left. There was also a huge talent drain at Interserv because the workers despised the new manager, who took all the powers away from the beloved art director, and so a majority of the artists decided to all leave at once. I don't know if Sega is going to finish Shenmue online. But if it still decides to go on, do realize it will at first only be for the Asian markets.

regards
Zach

ps. 3d Studio Max version 5.x was used because Shenmue online was using an outdated older game engine. and max 5 was most compatible. during year 2005-6 the latest max version was max 7 and max 8. to prove I worked on the project here is a link in winrar of 2 generic characters and their CS bip files. Anybody that knows 3d Max CS will know what to do with these. www.yuandadaily.com/zach/shenmue.rar

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Zach posted at Sept 18th, 2007:

"I worked on the Shenmue online project in Shanghai at Interserv. The game had so many problems, from environment models, to 3d motion capture cleanup, to it’s mini-games. It was a real-time fighting game forced onto a online game, so you can imagine how fun it would be with lag. with the mocap it ended up with interserv using interns to help with the editing and skinning. There was just so many characters that needed skinning, and rigging, and then Sega decided to change the models, which resulted in all the characters needed to be re-skinned with max 5. hahah rofl.

Two words that described the failure of this game: ” POOR PREPRODUCTION”. You know, garbage in, garbage out, or like my art instructor said back in art college, ” if you don’t get the preproduction down right, you’re just polishing a turd.”"

Also, http://www.metacritic.com/games/plat.../shenmueonline

this site has a release date of Jan 1, 2008 for Shenmue Online.... Oh boy..

In all it looks like it's a going to be a hard bargain to revive the series and finish it. This is going to be gamings The Cure. SEGA is being the biggest bitch here. Making too much money of sorry ass Sonic games. This story though, http://games.kikizo.com/news/200508/...p?f=141_p1.asp, Hold weight according to the writer. It was not them who lied, but the company.

Yu Suzuki has very little involvement in the Shenmue 3 project, and that's something that may come as a surprise to many Sega followers. What we learned in relation to Suzuki-san is pretty interesting, but all that could be confirmed was that, "since Suzuki left AM2, he is off the core Shenmue series, which remained at AM2" - and despite the fact that Shenmue.com is still linked from the website of Suzuki's would-be Sega studio, Digital Rex, it seems all that is now irrelevant and, presumably, simply out of date. Our source clarified, "the series is under the AM2 portfolio. Shenmue remains at AM2 while [Suzuki] pursues other things."

I don't know how this willl turn out. To my understanding it has always been Suzuki's brainchild. Luckily the whole story is already done. Which alot of people already suspected with the Project Berkely vids going beyond the Shenmue II Ending.

Maybe someday