Sega has revealed that a Shenmue 1 & 2 bundle will be released to the PlayStation 4, PC and Xbox One on August 21. The bundle will contain a modern port of both games that were announced at E3 this year. Besides the Shenmue games, Sega is also creating ports for Yakuza 0, Yakuza Kiwimana and Valkyria Chronicles 4.
Shenmue first released all the way back in 1999 on the Sega Dreamcast. After the successful launch of the game, Sega followed the series up with Shenmue 2, in 2001 which was released on the Dreamcast as well as on the original Xbox. After that, the series disappeared until 2015 when series creator Yu Suzuki raised more than $6.3 million on Kickstarter
The ports of Shenmue 1 & 2 are handled by British developers d3t. In the FAQ section, Sega describes the porting process to be an “incredible effort” and are clearly thankful to d3t for the work they have done. The Shenmue 2 port will be made with the Xbox game instead of the Dreamcast one due to technical reasons. The Xbox game also had some additional functions that will be included with the port. The ports of both games will also include a whole number of new functions, such as:
- Choice of Japanese or English speech in both games
- Saves can be carried over from Shenmue into Shenmue II on all platforms
- Saving anywhere in both games
- HD resolution rendering
- Updated UI
- New post-processing effects for both games
- Full controller support and configurable mouse and keyboard for PC users
- Full Achievement support for both games on all platforms
You will be able to move the character with the analog stick instead of having to use the d-pad like with the old games. The games will only be able to run at 30Hz due to assumptions that are made in the coding, which means that 60Hz is off the table. The camera in the game will be at 16:9 but cutscenes will stay in the original 4:3 format as it would have probably been too much work to rescale all the cutscenes. The bundle is already available for pre-order on Steam as well as the Xbox Store, but not yet on the PlayStation Store. The bundle will only cost you $29.99
