A look back at when Yu Suzuki "retired"

Peter

Peter

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Jul 14, 2018
Thank you to Team Yu on Twitter for retweeting the article from TSSZNews!

It was around this time 10 years ago that Yu Suzuki retired from Sega, after over 25 years of service. You can read the TSSZ article below:

http://www.tssznews.com/2009/04/04/yu-suzuki-retires-shenmue-iii-in-jeopardy/

Also, an article from Kotaku regarding the retirement:

https://kotaku.com/shenmue-creator-yu-suzuki-retires-as-creative-officer-5197880

It's easy to forget that this wait for a game that will be released in just 4 months, took such a long time to come to be. It's easy to say the number, but to have actually felt time go by, year after year, with nothing but disappointment cannot be emphasised enough.

How things have finally turned around since 2015, and long may it continue. For a final throwback to a decade ago, here's a link to the old forum topic, when the articles above were released:

http://shenmuedojo.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=38931
 
It's been an incredible journey, honestly. Not just for Shenmue III, but for Yu-san too.

There were some seriously dark times for the series when it felt like all hope was lost, but consider how much worse it must have been for Yu. Mothballed by SEGA for close to a decade, projects cancelled, and then stepping out into the world as an independent developer at a time when Japan was an incredibly harsh environment for them - unless you were making mobile games. A creator being unable to create is honestly a sad fate indeed.

As many long nights, relentless schedules, and tough decisions have been involved in making Shenmue III; I get the feeling like he wouldn't trade the experience for anything in the world.
 
This is the type of thing that reminds me of just how lucky us Shenmue fans are. We all remember the dark times where Shenmue 3 was nothing but a pipe dream. Much has changed since then with Yu going on his own, Kickstarter, Shibuya, Deep Silver etc and the potential of Shenmue 4.

We are 4 months away from that impossible dream and let's not forget that not too long ago we couldn't even discuss screenshots, videos, and previews on this game!
 
He gets to finish the dream he always wanted to, which is very rare for folks to do that many years later.

I hope he always does Shenmue--even at his age, I hope he takes the producer/director chair for Shenmue IV(and V, if it goes to that).

I liken that to how I feel about certain movies, like Indiana Jones. If it had no Harrison? Not interested. It won't have the same appeal.

Same with the upcoming new Terminator film--James Cameron has a much larger hand in this one, so I'm much more interested.
 
No one can finish the true shenmue vision. Yu has to be the one to do it. SEGA reconizing this was a huge key factor. They know the demands/fan request/SNS campaigns was huge but letting anyone else handle the series would back-fire...tremendously ontop of the insane production cost they'd incur.
 
I always worried Yu Suziki would pass away before he ever got the chance to finish the series. Life is short and sometimes unexpected. Shenmue 3 never would never have happened if not for the fans, so many things happened over the years that would have made others give up. I never gave up but others had much more faith then I did and made more effort like with the 'Save Shenmue' campaign.

Our lives were never the same again when Shenmue 3 got announced. The game looks very promising but I really hope it doesn't disappoint, I'm sure it won't. I'm just saying. Not long now guys.
 
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