Revealed: Sega's cancelled Shenmue HD remake - with fully updated graphics (EuroGamer) Update 16/10 - Sega respond

Interesting...that type of toggle is rare in 3D remakes. Sadly I can see why SEGA could've seen the updated graphics as expendable. I mean, if the upgrade looked like a AAA game then it'd be a different story, but this type of "soft remastering" wouldn't have been a huge selling point for newcomers, I feel, even though it looks great in my opinion.
 
If the project was so complicated. why they didnt focus on the first game and sell it alone?
Demand and cost I would suspect demand wasn't high enough to justify the additional cost.
 
@dark1x do you know if the game's aggressive NPC pop-in was being worked on during the development of the "remake" version? That was something I was surprised still made it to release in the "remaster" version we have now.
 
I think it was likely leaked tbh but I'm guessing.

Yea i understand its a leak. I mean its beautiful & you cancelled it !!! then left it lying for someone to leak it & now we have this buggy port that makes me wince cos the audio is so terrible. I am grateful for the ports, its way better than having to mess around with an old DC or an EMU.

I just cant get my head round this. i thought the success of the kickstarter had laid all fears to rest.

This isnt the last bad thing to happen to this game, trust me. I sound like Fuka-san i know but it is cursed.
 
Yea i understand its a leak. I mean its beautiful & you cancelled it !!! then left it lying for someone to leak it & now we have this buggy port that makes me wince cos the audio is so terrible. I am grateful for the ports, its way better than having to mess around with an old DC or an EMU.

I just cant get my head round this. i thought the success of the kickstarter had laid all fears to rest.

This isnt the last bad thing to happen to this game, trust me. I sound like Fuka-san i know but it is cursed.
Haha no you don't. You make a valid point but it looked like it came down to cost and however we paint the game it lost Sega a shed load before.

It is very much a case of what could have been but I'm glad it's come to light. Who says the success of the releases won't allow us to see something along these lines or better in the future?
 
Truly a fascinating video/article, thank you for posting this.

Once the initial shock wore off, I realized I'm not too disappointed over this news. Certainly explains some of the problems with the release we ultimately got, but I've been having a great time playing through it despite the bugs. I just pray they fix the Command QTE system soon.
 
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Is the code now the property of Sega Europe? I wonder if Shenmue III sells well enough that they may take another stab at a Shenmue I & II "Kiwami"

Precisely. My perfect world scenario if Shenmue III sells well: Sega doing a remaster Triligy collection release. Frees up YsNet and Deep Silver to also do Shenmue IV sans kickstarter, perhaps even with a bit of Sega help. Now my pipedream seems slightly more plausible if there's already plenty of work finished on such an idea.
 
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I wonder if the performance issues were also part of the reason it got cancelled. Considering the frame rate issues we have even now with the remaster, it would have been a ton of optimisation work to get those new graphical features integrated properly into a two decade old engine.
 
Although that looks great, I’m not that upset by this. The version we got keeps the nostalgia intact.
 
Well, my initial reaction was "This would have been amazing, go to hell Sega" but then I actually read the article and watched the video, and whilst this is a respectable update that looks quite decent, I'm seeing something lost in translation here, as in the original feel of "Shenmue", that intangible Yu Suzuki/AM2 immersive and beautiful magic that made us fall in love with the games in the first place, not being there in this prototype build. As though the essence of Shenmue is lost. So my reaction changed a little from being incredibly disappointed and sad to slightly relieved? The ports we have are the real Shenmue, entirely in-tact from 1999/2001 and as has been said this would have been torn to shreds by the mass market. Unfortunately in the modern games industry you either go hard or go home nowadays, so either Yakuza Kiwami/Resident Evil 2 with the ridiculous budget behind them or gamers will just complain and blast the product in to the stratosphere. The point I'm making is however sad this is in a "what could have been" way, without Sega Japan/AM2 and Yu Suzuki returning to the helm this project could have immensely backfired, and that being said I'm starting to understand the potential reasons for its cancellation.

Given the Shenmue HD that we did get sold so well, a feat likely to be repeated or exceeded by Shenmue 3, I'm sure we'll see more Shenmue down the line, whether it be full-on Kiwami style remakes or at the very least Shenmue 4 from YSNet. So this isn't the end of the road, nor is it the end of the world. I also really do feel for D3T now and the response they received, given this was the hidden truth to their ambitions and love for the games behind the scenes.

We still have Shenmue 3 and very probably 4, and something tells me this won't be the last we hear from this particular idea either, dependent on how Yu Suzuki's sequels do. The series still has a bright and positive future.
 
Two things.

1) I got stick on twitter saying sega hates and has contempt for shenmue and this proves it. I think now they see shenmue fans as gullible fools.

2) could sega have leaked this themselves to drum up support for a HD remake to be released after shenmue 3? To Maximise profits from shenmue 1&2 as they know shenmue fans will buy anything. Maybe they cancelled this halfway through because the business side of sega said we can just rerelease the old games as ports then rerelease it again and HD remake. No way sega wasted money on a good portion of a HD remake to then not profit from it.
 
2) could sega have leaked this themselves to drum up support for a HD remake to be released after shenmue 3? To Maximise profits from shenmue 1&2 as they know shenmue fans will buy anything. Maybe they cancelled this halfway through because the business side of sega said we can just rerelease the old games and ports then rerelease it again and HD remake. No way sega wasted money on a good portion of a HD remake to then not profit from it.

Yeah this is super important too. To add my thoughts, Shenmue HD happened because Yu Suzuki ran a record-breaking Kickstarter, and Sega, purely operating as a business, just went where the money is. What I mean is that Sega's efforts with Shenmue are going to be almost entirely contingent on how Shenmue 3 and 4 do. If the Kickstarter hype and fever is repeated and the games sell enormously you can bet we'll get something along the lines of Shenmue 1 and 2 running on the Yakuza engine, or something to the effect of that budget and scope - but it's hazy and not definite, because YSNet's games would have to do extremely well for Sega to be motivated to attempt a project like that, needing proof there's significant financial return at the end of the road, as they suspected (and given how Shenmue HD sold, they were right) when they green-lit the remasters.

Point being is that a brilliant and ambitious Sega funded new Shenmue remake project won't just come out of nowhere, it'll come after the sequels, and the better they perform sales-wise, the more likely such a project would be.
 
d3t's work here is outstanding and, imo, very faithful to the original.
And there was a toggle switch to appease those who wouldn't agree!!!!
Which, in itself, is remarkable.

It looks like they got unstuck on the NPCs, which, really, shouldn't be a surprise. It appears to be difficult to make "Shenmue-like" NPCs... Shenmue III clearly demonstrates.


Edit: I should say that I would still consider this to be a "remaster". A remake, meaning, a game on a different engine, with different mechanics, different dialogue and acting, changed scenarios... I honestly wouldn't want Sega to do that, not without Suzuki.
As for Shenmue being cursed, I think the next chapter of this saga involves Shenmue III being released as a point-and-click adventure, with Yu casually remarking after release that the original build was actually an open world the size of real life China.
 
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Edit: I should say that I would still consider this to be a "remaster". A remake, meaning, a game on a different engine, with different mechanics, different dialogue and acting, changed scenarios... I honestly wouldn't want Sega to do that, not without Suzuki.

Yeah this is still more like a remaster than a true remake. Like you say, they should only do a full remake with Yu Suzuki involved.
 
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