I was thinking we could also do a video about the fans of Shenmue, to show how the series was able to bring lots of people from different backgrounds together, and what we've been able to achieve thanks to the influence of the series. Things like people visiting and promoting Yokosuka in real life, Reuben Kee's music work, Kitchen brothers teaching kids in Guilin, and general support to get S3 off the ground...
Tomboz's Shenmue Fan Marketing Video Ideas and Coordination
- Thread starter spud1897
- Start date
- Joined
- Aug 21, 2018
It's driven a lot of life choices for a lot of people.
In my case, the girl I'm going to marry I would not have met if it weren't for Shenmue, so I have a lot to thank it for! It fueled my interest in Japan at a young age which carried on into my adult life and eventually led to meeting her.
Maybe I should buy a few more copies...
- Joined
- Jul 27, 2018
I was under the impression that this was meant to focus on fans - mainly from the Forum. While the idea of having 'Youtubers' involved for exposure is nice, I still don't want to go over board and leave behind the members of this site.
I don't quite understand what I'm meant to input now, but I'll start thinking of ideas.
I don't quite understand what I'm meant to input now, but I'll start thinking of ideas.
- Joined
- Aug 22, 2018
Agreed. I think getting youtubers on board to promote the new game would provide great exposure, but that it would be a different project to the one we’re talking about here.
As far as I’m concerned, we’re planning to make a series of videos to highlight all of the things that are great about Shenmue with a view to selling the series to potential new players. Unless a significant number of forum members indicate a desire to do something different with these videos, I don’t plan on making any drastic changes to that plan.
In terms of what you can input now, a few sentences about the thing you love most about Shenmue and why would be useful.
- Joined
- Jul 11, 2019
I'd love to take part !
Terrific, Peter! Ooooh, and what's thing YOU love the most about Shenmue?
Guppy
Level-Headed Mud Spider
- Joined
- Jul 27, 2018
I wrote an extensive review for the first game before and posted it in the old forum years ago, and if I condensed it into few words as possible then the thing I love most about Shenmue is: we as players don't simply control an avatar, we live his life.
By the way, if you need any translation done in (Brazilian) Portuguese I definitely can help you with that. Or Spanish (I won't pass for a native but grammar would be on point), if you need any extra hands.
高野和泉
"SAKURA FESTIVAL!"
- Joined
- Jul 27, 2018
- Location
- Tomato Convenience Store, Golden Qr.
Just my 2 cents as well,
-Remember to highlight the uniqueness of every npc. Also remember that if you see a repeated NPC anywhere, there's usually a background/story/or world building reasons behind why he's there that adds another layer of immersive awesome-sauce.
-And the mass replay-ability by making it almost impossible to repeat a prev play-through unless you noted every step U took.
It's a notch above new-game+ mode featured in most games do to pad in replayability.
-Remember to highlight the uniqueness of every npc. Also remember that if you see a repeated NPC anywhere, there's usually a background/story/or world building reasons behind why he's there that adds another layer of immersive awesome-sauce.
-And the mass replay-ability by making it almost impossible to repeat a prev play-through unless you noted every step U took.
It's a notch above new-game+ mode featured in most games do to pad in replayability.
- Joined
- Aug 22, 2018
Project Update #1
First and foremost, a big thank you to everyone who has offered to help out with the project and to those who have shared their thoughts on what makes Shenmue great. There have been some really nice answers which have helped to give a good idea of what should go into the first video.
With this in mind, I think we are now ready to begin gathering audio files and so I'd like as many people as possible to answer the following questions and record their answers.
For example, if your favorite thing about Shenmue is the way that the music helps to give each area that you visit in the game its own distinct feeling while also helping to punctuate key story events, you might answer question one something like this...
As people's answers to question one will be used to introduce each topic of the video, it would be best if you could begin your answer with 'My favorite thing about Shenmue is...', 'The thing I love most about Shenmue is...', 'I think the best thing about Shenmue is...' or something to that extent. Answers to questions 2-7 can begin simply with 'The combat is...', 'Shenmue's combat...' or something along those lines.
When it comes to actually recording the audio, it would be best to find a place with as little background noise as possible. The audio levels may need to be boosted during the editing stage and so even the slightest bit of background noise could cause problems. As ridiculous as it may sound, I find that a closet makes a great recording space as the clothes help to dampen any unwanted sounds and they are usually quite well isolated in terms of background noise. Any quiet space will do though.
Using the recorder app on your cell phone should provide sufficient quality, but as well as avoiding background noise, it's important to speak loudly and clearly when recording. If your audio is too quiet, it increases the chances of background noise becoming an issue as the levels will need to be increased. I will be able to remove a little bit of background noise in the editing process providing you leave a few seconds of silence at the beginning or end of your recording so please try to do this if you can.
After making your recording, please drop me a PM and I will provide you with an email address to send it to. Alternatively, you can upload the file to somewhere like https://gofile.io/ and pm me the link.
I look forward to hearing your responses.
In other news, I have finished my first draft detailing the history of Shenmue and would appreciate any thoughts or feedback. I've tried to keep it as impartial as possible while including facts and events that I think are an important part of the Shenmue story. I'd be particularly interested in peoples' thoughts on how it could be shortened as it's a bit longer than I would have liked at present but would also welcome any constructive criticism in terms of the writing style and content.
First and foremost, a big thank you to everyone who has offered to help out with the project and to those who have shared their thoughts on what makes Shenmue great. There have been some really nice answers which have helped to give a good idea of what should go into the first video.
With this in mind, I think we are now ready to begin gathering audio files and so I'd like as many people as possible to answer the following questions and record their answers.
- What is your favorite thing about Shenmue and why? (2 or 3 sentences)
- What do you think about the characters in Shenmue? (1 sentence)
- What do you think about the music in Shenmue? (1 sentence)
- What do you think about the combat in Shenmue? (1 sentence)
- What do you think about the environments in Shenmue? (1 sentence)
- What do you think about the depth of Shenmue? (1 sentence)
- What do you think about the realism of Shenmue? (1 sentence)
For example, if your favorite thing about Shenmue is the way that the music helps to give each area that you visit in the game its own distinct feeling while also helping to punctuate key story events, you might answer question one something like this...
... and then answer questions 2,4,5,6 and 7.
As people's answers to question one will be used to introduce each topic of the video, it would be best if you could begin your answer with 'My favorite thing about Shenmue is...', 'The thing I love most about Shenmue is...', 'I think the best thing about Shenmue is...' or something to that extent. Answers to questions 2-7 can begin simply with 'The combat is...', 'Shenmue's combat...' or something along those lines.
When it comes to actually recording the audio, it would be best to find a place with as little background noise as possible. The audio levels may need to be boosted during the editing stage and so even the slightest bit of background noise could cause problems. As ridiculous as it may sound, I find that a closet makes a great recording space as the clothes help to dampen any unwanted sounds and they are usually quite well isolated in terms of background noise. Any quiet space will do though.
Using the recorder app on your cell phone should provide sufficient quality, but as well as avoiding background noise, it's important to speak loudly and clearly when recording. If your audio is too quiet, it increases the chances of background noise becoming an issue as the levels will need to be increased. I will be able to remove a little bit of background noise in the editing process providing you leave a few seconds of silence at the beginning or end of your recording so please try to do this if you can.
After making your recording, please drop me a PM and I will provide you with an email address to send it to. Alternatively, you can upload the file to somewhere like https://gofile.io/ and pm me the link.
I look forward to hearing your responses.
In other news, I have finished my first draft detailing the history of Shenmue and would appreciate any thoughts or feedback. I've tried to keep it as impartial as possible while including facts and events that I think are an important part of the Shenmue story. I'd be particularly interested in peoples' thoughts on how it could be shortened as it's a bit longer than I would have liked at present but would also welcome any constructive criticism in terms of the writing style and content.
The Journey of Shenmue.
Anybody who has played Shenmue knows that it tells the story of a young martial artist named Ryo Hazuki as he embarks upon a quest for revenge following the murder of his father, but there is much more to the Shenmue story than just vengeance. In order to fully understand the story of Shenmue, we need to understand the story of its development - and to do that - we have to go back to the mid-nineties.
After a number of poorly received hardware releases and huge financial losses, managers at Sega were desperate to create a new IP that would help to improve sales of the struggling Sega Saturn and claw back some of the money spent on hardware development throughout the early nineties.
The man who they chose to spearhead this project was a games designer named Yu Suzuki. Suzuki had been responsible for a number of highly successful games for the company, including arcade classics like ‘Hang On’, ‘Out Run’ and ‘Space Harrier’, although perhaps his greatest achievement at that time was the critically acclaimed ‘Virtua Fighter’, which many industry professionals cite as the first fighting game to truly utilize 3D graphics. With a proven track record of delivering groundbreaking games, Suzuki was the obvious choice for the role.
Development began for the Sega Saturn in 1996 under the codename ‘Project Berkley’. Suzuki had originally planned to create a Virtua Fighter RPG, combining the fighting mechanics of Virtua Fighter with elements of 1980’s RPG games and an expansive open world. As more features and ideas were implemented however, the game broke free of the Virtua Fighter branding and became what would eventually be known as Shenmue.
As work on the game continued, so did the poor sales of the Saturn, prompting Sega to begin development on a new piece of hardware in one final attempt to maintain their place as one of the leading console manufacturers in an increasingly crowded marketplace.
The Sega Dreamcast was the most powerful console on the market at the time of its release, with nearly ten times the processing power of the Sega Saturn. When Suzuki heard about the capabilities of the new machine, he made the decision to switch the development of Shenmue from the Saturn to the Dreamcast, allowing him and his team to further push the boundaries of console gaming.
The game incorporated many new features and concepts that would go on to help shape the open-world genre and change the way that many people thought about games design. It featured realistic open environments, a fully voiced cast of NPCs, each with their own unique personalities and daily routines, and a wide array of mini games and activities, even including in-game ports of some of Suzuki's previous projects.
It was perhaps Suzuki’s meticulous attention to detail that stood out most though, with the player able to interact with almost every item in the game and historic weather records from the Yokosuka area being used to deliver a true to life experience for players. These things combined to create a living, breathing world unlike any game that had come before it.
After three years of development, Shenmue released for the Dreamcast in December of 1999 and went on to sell more than 1.2 million copies worldwide. The game's depth and realism were widely praised by both critics and players, with IGN calling the game an unmissable experience for both casual and hardcore gamers alike.
This praise came at a great cost though. At the time of its release, Shenmue was the most expensive video game ever created, with Suzukui later telling journalists that the team had spent around $47m producing and marketing the game.
Some of that budget went towards developing assets for the game's sequel, which was released for the Dreamcast in Japan and Europe in 2001. The game boasted a larger cast of NPCs and improved graphics while also addressing many of the criticisms of the original game, with players now able to save anywhere and skip time to progress the main story. Unfortunately, a Dreamcast release of Shenmue 2 would never reach shelves in North America.
With the release of Sony’s PlayStation 2 and the impending arrival of Microsoft's Xbox, Sega decided that it was time to throw in the towel and the decision was made to halt production of the Sega Dreamcast in order to focus on Software development.
A deal was later made with Microsoft to bring Shenmue 2 to the Xbox, and the game released in Europe and North America at the end of 2002 to moderate success.
A third Shenmue game was rumoured to be in development for the Xbox in 2003, but these rumors turned out to be false. Shenmue fans eagerly awaited news on the future of the franchise, but as the years passed, news about the game went very quiet.
Shenmue 3 became one of Sega’s most requested games, and although they acknowledged the popularity of the series on several occasions, there was no word on if or when a new Shenmue game would be released.
Fans of the series began to launch campaigns in the hope of bringing about a sequel, including a campaign by the BBC series VideoGaiden and a monthly tweetathon organized by a group of fans which ran for more than three years and saw thousands of people taking part.
More than a decade after the release of Shenmue 2, Yu Suzuki gave a talk about the series at GDC 2014, going into great detail about the development of the series and his outline for how the series would have progressed. While informative and interesting to fans of the series, it was not the news that they had been hoping for.
After that, things went silent.
Then, in June 2015, just as it was starting to look as though all hope for the future of the series was lost, this happened...
[E3 footage]
Suzuki took to the stage at the Electronic Entertainment Expo in L.A. to announce that he would be crowd-funding Shenmue 3 through Kickstarter. The project became the fastest Kickstarter project to raise one million dollars, doing so in less than 2 hours, and had met its funding goal of two million dollars after just eight hours and 44 minutes. By the time the campaign had finished, Shenmue 3 had raised more than $6.3m making it the sixth most funded project and the most funded video game in Kickstarter's history. The game would go on to raise a further $800,000 in donations through Paypal and Alipay, leading to a final figure of $7.1m.
Development of Shenmue 3 began in July of 2015 with many of the original team reprising their roles, including writer Masahiro Yoshimoto, character designer Kenji Miyawaki, composer Ryuji Iuchi and the English and Japanese voice actors for the game's protagonist Ryo.
Over the next four years, the scope and scale of the project continued to grow, thanks in part to deals with Shibuya Productions, Epic Games and publisher Deep Silver, allowing Suzuki to create something far greater than his original expectations for the game.
After years of uncertainty, anticipation and hope, the wait is almost over.
So, 'what's Shenmue?' On the one hand, it tells the story of a young man who travels across Asia to avenge the murder of his father, but it's also the story of passion and perseverance. It's the story of a man who will stop at nothing to realise his vision and a fan base willing to go to extreme lengths to help him to achieve this. It's a story that now, almost two decades after the release of the original game, is ready to continue.
Anybody who has played Shenmue knows that it tells the story of a young martial artist named Ryo Hazuki as he embarks upon a quest for revenge following the murder of his father, but there is much more to the Shenmue story than just vengeance. In order to fully understand the story of Shenmue, we need to understand the story of its development - and to do that - we have to go back to the mid-nineties.
After a number of poorly received hardware releases and huge financial losses, managers at Sega were desperate to create a new IP that would help to improve sales of the struggling Sega Saturn and claw back some of the money spent on hardware development throughout the early nineties.
The man who they chose to spearhead this project was a games designer named Yu Suzuki. Suzuki had been responsible for a number of highly successful games for the company, including arcade classics like ‘Hang On’, ‘Out Run’ and ‘Space Harrier’, although perhaps his greatest achievement at that time was the critically acclaimed ‘Virtua Fighter’, which many industry professionals cite as the first fighting game to truly utilize 3D graphics. With a proven track record of delivering groundbreaking games, Suzuki was the obvious choice for the role.
Development began for the Sega Saturn in 1996 under the codename ‘Project Berkley’. Suzuki had originally planned to create a Virtua Fighter RPG, combining the fighting mechanics of Virtua Fighter with elements of 1980’s RPG games and an expansive open world. As more features and ideas were implemented however, the game broke free of the Virtua Fighter branding and became what would eventually be known as Shenmue.
As work on the game continued, so did the poor sales of the Saturn, prompting Sega to begin development on a new piece of hardware in one final attempt to maintain their place as one of the leading console manufacturers in an increasingly crowded marketplace.
The Sega Dreamcast was the most powerful console on the market at the time of its release, with nearly ten times the processing power of the Sega Saturn. When Suzuki heard about the capabilities of the new machine, he made the decision to switch the development of Shenmue from the Saturn to the Dreamcast, allowing him and his team to further push the boundaries of console gaming.
The game incorporated many new features and concepts that would go on to help shape the open-world genre and change the way that many people thought about games design. It featured realistic open environments, a fully voiced cast of NPCs, each with their own unique personalities and daily routines, and a wide array of mini games and activities, even including in-game ports of some of Suzuki's previous projects.
It was perhaps Suzuki’s meticulous attention to detail that stood out most though, with the player able to interact with almost every item in the game and historic weather records from the Yokosuka area being used to deliver a true to life experience for players. These things combined to create a living, breathing world unlike any game that had come before it.
After three years of development, Shenmue released for the Dreamcast in December of 1999 and went on to sell more than 1.2 million copies worldwide. The game's depth and realism were widely praised by both critics and players, with IGN calling the game an unmissable experience for both casual and hardcore gamers alike.
This praise came at a great cost though. At the time of its release, Shenmue was the most expensive video game ever created, with Suzukui later telling journalists that the team had spent around $47m producing and marketing the game.
Some of that budget went towards developing assets for the game's sequel, which was released for the Dreamcast in Japan and Europe in 2001. The game boasted a larger cast of NPCs and improved graphics while also addressing many of the criticisms of the original game, with players now able to save anywhere and skip time to progress the main story. Unfortunately, a Dreamcast release of Shenmue 2 would never reach shelves in North America.
With the release of Sony’s PlayStation 2 and the impending arrival of Microsoft's Xbox, Sega decided that it was time to throw in the towel and the decision was made to halt production of the Sega Dreamcast in order to focus on Software development.
A deal was later made with Microsoft to bring Shenmue 2 to the Xbox, and the game released in Europe and North America at the end of 2002 to moderate success.
A third Shenmue game was rumoured to be in development for the Xbox in 2003, but these rumors turned out to be false. Shenmue fans eagerly awaited news on the future of the franchise, but as the years passed, news about the game went very quiet.
Shenmue 3 became one of Sega’s most requested games, and although they acknowledged the popularity of the series on several occasions, there was no word on if or when a new Shenmue game would be released.
Fans of the series began to launch campaigns in the hope of bringing about a sequel, including a campaign by the BBC series VideoGaiden and a monthly tweetathon organized by a group of fans which ran for more than three years and saw thousands of people taking part.
More than a decade after the release of Shenmue 2, Yu Suzuki gave a talk about the series at GDC 2014, going into great detail about the development of the series and his outline for how the series would have progressed. While informative and interesting to fans of the series, it was not the news that they had been hoping for.
After that, things went silent.
Then, in June 2015, just as it was starting to look as though all hope for the future of the series was lost, this happened...
[E3 footage]
Suzuki took to the stage at the Electronic Entertainment Expo in L.A. to announce that he would be crowd-funding Shenmue 3 through Kickstarter. The project became the fastest Kickstarter project to raise one million dollars, doing so in less than 2 hours, and had met its funding goal of two million dollars after just eight hours and 44 minutes. By the time the campaign had finished, Shenmue 3 had raised more than $6.3m making it the sixth most funded project and the most funded video game in Kickstarter's history. The game would go on to raise a further $800,000 in donations through Paypal and Alipay, leading to a final figure of $7.1m.
Development of Shenmue 3 began in July of 2015 with many of the original team reprising their roles, including writer Masahiro Yoshimoto, character designer Kenji Miyawaki, composer Ryuji Iuchi and the English and Japanese voice actors for the game's protagonist Ryo.
Over the next four years, the scope and scale of the project continued to grow, thanks in part to deals with Shibuya Productions, Epic Games and publisher Deep Silver, allowing Suzuki to create something far greater than his original expectations for the game.
After years of uncertainty, anticipation and hope, the wait is almost over.
So, 'what's Shenmue?' On the one hand, it tells the story of a young man who travels across Asia to avenge the murder of his father, but it's also the story of passion and perseverance. It's the story of a man who will stop at nothing to realise his vision and a fan base willing to go to extreme lengths to help him to achieve this. It's a story that now, almost two decades after the release of the original game, is ready to continue.
Last edited:
- Joined
- Jul 27, 2018
- Location
- France
Just a thought :
If voices are recorded along a script, it could probably be effort light to make
a transcript and/or closed captions to go with the video.
If voices are recorded along a script, it could probably be effort light to make
a transcript and/or closed captions to go with the video.
- Joined
- Aug 22, 2018
The fan video won’t be scripted, although I’ll be transcribing it and passing it over to the translators to knock together subtitles once it’s finished (I’m still not sure if we will have multiple versions of the video with embedded subtitles or just one video using YouTube subtitles). The rest of the videos will be scripted and once the scripts have been finalized and recorded, they will go to the translators too. This will probably be one of the last steps though as things often get cut or moved around in the edit stage.
Thanks for taking a look. If anybody else has any thoughts, please do share!
Last edited:
ys.
Joined: Mon Jun 30, 2003 11:38 pm
- Joined
- Aug 3, 2018
It seems that you will take care of audio but IF needed I could possibly help out a bit. I don't focus on voice overs but have recorded, mixed and/or mastered a few commercially released albums (removing background sound is often needed when working on drums or vocals). So if someone else doesn't have time I can at least take a look (I recently recorded tracks for a band and am in the mixing phase now but should have some time if nothing unexpected shows up). I also have some audio restoration tools if needed. And yes, if there's no other option, recording voices in front of an open closet is a good tip. I know someone who recorded a few vocal parts for a great sounding album that way.
Last edited:
DigitalDuck
Quack!
- Joined
- Aug 2, 2018
- Location
- Lincs, UK
- Favourite title
- Shenmue
- Currently playing
- Shenmue
- XBL
- DuckProgrammer
I'm away from home right now but I'll be able to record next week.
Jigen
Man Mo Journeyman
I can provide some video editing.