Shenmue 3 Announcement at E3 2015
By Nate Hohl
As a kid, I had a deep infatuation with both video games and martial arts, so it’s probably not that surprising to hear that the Dreamcast title Shenmue, a martial arts adventure game set in 1980’s Japan, quickly became one of my favorite games on the platform, not to mention one of my favorite games ever.
My love of the Shenmue series was so deep that I actually wound up spending a decent chunk of allowance/birthday money I had saved up to purchase a European copy of Shenmue 2 for the Dreamcast and a PAL disc so that I could play it on my American console (Shenmue 2 never came to Dreamcast in the States, only to the original Xbox which I also played it on).
I played through both Shenmue and Shenmue 2 multiple times as a kid, but as anyone who also played them likely remembers, the story didn’t end with Shenmue 2, pretty much guaranteeing that Sega intended to make a third game. Sadly, the poor sales figures of the first two games left the fate of the third game in a state of perpetual limbo, and as the years passed by, my hopes of ever getting to complete the Shenmue saga faded more and more. It was a disappointing reality to face, but as I got older I understood more and more that the Shenmue series’ immense cult popularity wasn’t enough to greenlight a third game, no matter how strong it was.
Imagine my utter surprise and amazement then, when, during its 2015 E3 press conference, Sony made an announcement that would have sent 12-year-old me into a state of utter hysteria: Shenmue 3 was finally happening thanks to a collaboration between Sony, original Shenmue series creator Yu Suzuki, and Kickstarter. Needless to say, the Kickstarter campaign met its initial funding goal within minutes of going live, and you can be sure I was one of the many fans who happily put money down to make our long forlorn fantasy of finally getting to play a third Shenmue game into a reality.
Even now, I still find it hard to believe that I will soon get to play Shenmue 3. It’s a dream I have carried within me ever since I was a young boy, and in a weird sort of way, it feels like a rite of passage that I am finally seeing through to completion, even if it took me 17 years to do so (yes, the original Shenmue was released way back in the year 2000). Obviously it’s still too early to tell whether that 17-year wait was worth it, but either way it’s at least comforting to know that good things do indeed come to those who wait.