Earlier this week, Shenmue III co-producer Cédric Biscay of Shibuya Productions shared a few photos taken at Yu Suzuki's development studio YS Net, during his visit to Tokyo for the Shenmue III project.
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| Yu Suzuki with Cédric Biscay. On the wall behind is the Guiness World Record certificate for "the most money pledged for a Kickstarter videogame" achieved by the Shenmue III Kickstarter in 2015. |
The tweet text is as follows:
"We are working hard with Yu san ! #shenmue3 #tokyo #Japan" (link to tweet)
He also shared this photo of Ryo Hazuki's jacket, hanging up in a drycleaning bag. This one-of-a-kind jacket was worn by the Japanese voice actor Masaya Matsukaze during promotional events for SEGA back at the time of the original Shenmue 1 and 2 games.
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| The backer reward jacket at YS Net. |
The tweet message is:
"The original Ryo’s jacket is waiting for a new owner ! #Shenmue #shenmue3" (link to tweet)
Originally the jacket was offered as a $10,000 reward during the Kickstarter campaign, but due to the pledge being withdrawn it was moved to Slacker Backer as a $8,000 reward tier where it was quickly selected by a new backer. And now reward preparations are underway, with backer survey emails having been
sent out recently to all backers.
I wasn't able to locate a photo of this exact jacket from the original days of the Shenmue promotion, but here is a 2001 photo showing Masaya Matsukaze on stage as Ryo in a similar one; presumably more than one was made.
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| Masaya Matsukaze (right) with Takumi Hagiwara (left) in costume as Ryo and Ren at the 2001 AM2 Summer Festival. |
Cédric also tweeted a third image, showing a banner inscribed with a picture of a forklift and the signatures of Shenmue fans from around the world, suspended from hooks on a dividing panel. The picture is accompanied by and message of thanks to all Shenmue fans:
"The Shenmue community is in the center of the project ! Thank you so much for your support regarding #Shenmue3 . You rock !!" (link to tweet)
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| The banner was a message of support to Yu Suzuki and team on behalf of the Shenmue fan community. |
The banner's creation was organized by Shenmue fan Chao Yu (who goes by "yuc02" on this blog) who presented it to Yu Suzuki at Gamescom 2017 on behalf of the community. The message of encouragement in the center means "Don't give up!" or "Give it your all!"
It's wonderful to see this community-signed banner hanging proudly at the YS Net studio, and the appreciation towards the community from Cédric and Yu can be felt in the words of the message.
Speaking of Gamescom, although no information about Shenmue III's presence has been confirmed so far, this year's event from August 21st would make for a good candidate: Cédric has indicated he will be attending through an earlier tweet that said "
Let's meet at #Gamescom2018 ;)" and this date also coincides with the release of the Shenmue 1 & 2 collection. We will post any updates on this topic to the blog.
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