Shenmue 3 Kickstarter Announced At E3 2015

In light of the last two posts here, we realise we're running the risk of this place becoming The Shenmue Junkyard...but news of this magnitude cannot be ignored. After years - 14 years in fact - the third and final chapter of Ryo Hazuki's quest to find (and possibly kick the face and ass of) Lan Di is finally going to become a reality. It seems all the years of 'save Shenmue' tweets and speculation have actually paid off as Yu Suzuki took to Sony's E3 2015 conference to reveal a Shenmue 3 Kickstarter project with a goal of £2 million. At the time of writing, Kickstarter has been experiencing issues due to the number of people trying to access the Shenmue 3 page, so we're pretty confident the project will reach it's target in a matter of hours let alone days.
Still scanning for sailors.
As with all Kickstarter projects, there are several different levels of pledge, ranging from $5 all the way up to $10,000 - one of which will furnish the backer with the genuine Ryo Hazuki leather jacket worn during the original Dreamcast press campaign, while the other will offer the backer the opportunity to have a private dinner with the development team. Both of these top tier pledges have already been snapped up, however.

The video featured on the Kickstarter page is clearly a work in progress and features a slightly re-designed Ryo, but his nonchalant voice acting remains intact as does the familiar musical score, so it'll be interesting to see how faithful to the previous games the final product turns out when it hits in late 2017.

Hopefully, Suzuki will limit (or completely leave out) the tedious crap from Shenmue 2 (like moving boxes around a warehouse for minimum wage) and deliver a fitting finale for the series. Also, we'd just like to confirm that the Junkyard has backed the project, so if it doesn't reach it's target, don't blame us (it will).
We know.
Want to be a part of the history of Shenmue? Check out the Kickstarter here.

Update: Shenmue 3 has been successfully funded.

6 comments:

fanat said...

It's already funded at $2,049,396 and every 2 seconds it grows with 50-100$ omfg

CD ageS said...

Yup. This is one for the record books. Wonder how much additional funds they would receive if they proposed a stretch goal to get a Shenmue 3 port on the Dreamcast? ;)

BlueSwirl said...

I backed it the second I heard about it! I cant believe it, I almost gave up on the idea of this ever happening, almost!

Tom Charnock said...

Yeah, I was the same - I backed it at about 4am using the light from my phone to see my debit card number haha! Only $5 though...I've got five kids to feed (I haven't).

pcwzrd13 said...

Too bad I died after the announcement so I won't get to play it. Haha!

Father Krishna said...

So happy. Have duly dusted off one of my old Dreamcasts and about to rock Shenmue 1&2 for the bazillionth time. Great to see the DCJY still going strong! Big love to Tom, Gagaman(n) & Caleb. From Father Krishna. X