Shenmue 1 & 2 Remastered Coming to PC, PS4 and Xbox One

Sega has just announced they’re going to release the remastered versions of Shenmue 1 and 2 on PC, Playstation 4 and Xbox One this August. After gracing the PC audience with the long-awaited port of several Yakuza games, they’re going to dig deeper into their back catalogue in order to bring us the pair of Dreamcast cult classics on August 21st. There’s no mention of price, but judging by how they’ve handled these things in the past, it’s almost certain they won’t be full priced.

It’s not much of a surprise, really – Sega fans have long been clammoring for modern ports of much of what the company put out in the past, and Shenmue 3 had a massively successful Kickstarter a few years back. The demand is obviously there – the bigger surprise is that it has taken Sega this long to put things in motion. The work is being handled by d3t, an outfit of contracts who’ve worked on stuff like Burnout Paradise Remastered, a batch of Sega’s Mega Drive Classics, the PS4 version of Witcher 3, Lawbreakers, The Escapists 2 and much, much more. It sounds like we’re in good hands, but we’ll have to wait and see.

A glance at the FAQ they’ve set up reveals some technical details about the projects. For Shenmue 2, they went with the Xbox version, since it has some more features, like filters and a snapshot system. Both games will let you choose between Japanese and English voice-over, with saves carrying over from the first game to the second. You’ll be able to save your progress at any point, in both games. Since it’s 2018, both will have achievements/trophies, as well as full controller and KB/M support. When it comes to updates, expect new post processing effects, HD rendering and a new UI.

On the flipside, they’ll both run at 30Hz, since much behind the scenes is tied to that specific refresh rate. They’ll support 16:9 resolutions, but the cutscenes will be in the original 4:3 format, presumably on account of missing source files. They might seem dated to younger players, but it’s worth noting that Shenmue did the whole 3D open world thing two years before GTA 3 came out and made it mainstream. If nothing else, they’re worth playing for the historic value.