Shenmue Adventure for 2009
Sega is taking its popular series to Wii in the form of an adventure spin-off, Shenmue Adventure. While we were initially told that Shenmue was going to be about Ryou´s search to solve the mystery of his father´s death, reactions to the first chapter seem to suggest that gamers mostly like Shenmue´s graphics, mini-games, and, most of all, collecting Gotcha-Gotchas. And so, the next chapters of Shenmue will ignore the father-murder sideplot, focusing on traveling to exoctic (and amazingly rendered) locations such as China and... Disney World. Ryou will basically be on a constant vacation, searching to amass the largest Gotcha-Gotcha collection in the world!!
Ryou in China
Arcade Games
Fans of Outrun, Afterburner, Power Drift, and G-Lock will be pleased to know that not only will they finally be able to own arcade-perfect conversions of these games in the next two installations of the series, but the games will also be forced upon people who normally wouldn´t play "retro-games!" During the parts where players are stuck between the rare fight scenes, they will be so starved for gameplay that they´ll resort to playing arcade games instead of actually trying to progress the game. Similarly, the in-game music will be so dull, players will once again be pleased to pay 100 yen to make the jukebox play Magical Sound Shower.
Ryou by Mt. Rushmore
Network Play
Along with all of the networked stuff in the first installation of the Shenmue saga, future chapters will include an endless supply of Gotcha-Gotcha toys accessed over the internet. To make this an even sweeter feature, Sega has promised to keep adding to the Gotcha-Gotcha machines until the year 2028 or until they have to resort to making Kid Chameleon toys, whichever comes first.
More Neat Stuff
An interesting fact about newer Shenmue chapters is almost all of their content is based on fan opinion surveys. These polls showed that the players´ favorite character was Shenhua. Obviously, players thought that voting for her might get Am 2 to actually put her into one of the games; however, Sega interpreted this as meaning that players liked characters who weren´t actually in the game. Recently, they announced with great pride that they have no intentions of ever introducing Shenhua to the actual plot. In addition, with each new installation in the series, they will introduce many new characters who Ryou will never actually meet. Conforming to data from the fan survey, most of these characters will speak Japanese with an American accent, one of the most annoyingly entertaining aspects of a video game ever devised. Disney World
Exciting Locations
One of the biggest complaints with the first chapter of Shenmue was the way it confined players to a very small world, allowing them to get to know all of the characters living within the game. This problem is solved in newer chapters as Ryou moves from one impersonal tourist spot to the next, staying just long enough to buy Gotcha-Gotchas and play arcade games.
So will they totally abandon the plot?
Well, yes and no. It will definitely take a back seat to more important things like collecting Saturn games and making prank telephone calls. (a great new feature) Nevertheless, the plot will still be present. After a shelling out the money a few more multi-disc installations (and it´ll cost extra if you want the 20-minute soundtracks in lieu of spine cards) we will eventually learn why Ryou´s father died: (Spoiler Alert!) Souryu wanted those mirrors. ...really badly.
And so, we should all be eagerly awaiting the future chapters of Sega´s masterpiece. Yes, these games won´t really be all that deep, but just look at these promotional pics we stole out of Yu Suzuki´s mailbox! While at first they may appear to be the crappy products of some deranged fan, we at The Video Game Humor Home Page believe that Sega has scrounged up the money to get the guy who did the official artwork for Earthbound to leave Nintendo to work exclusively on this major project. This is the high level of quality that we can only expect from Sega!
Sources : Sega Dojo et The Gaming Intelligence Agency
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