Shenmue
video game series
Shenmue is an action-adventure game series created, produced and directed by Yu Suzuki. Shenmue (1999) and Shenmue II (2001) were developed by Sega AM2 and published by Sega for the Dreamcast; Shenmue II was released in 2002 in Western markets on the Xbox. Shenmue III, developed by Suzuki's company Ys Net, was released for the PlayStation 4 and Windows in 2019.
The Shenmue games consist of open-world 3D environments interspersed with brawler battles and quick time events. They include elements of role-playing, life simulation and social simulation games, such as a day-and-night system, variable weather effects, non-player characters with daily schedules and interactive elements, such as vending machines, arcades and minigames. The story follows the teenage martial artist Ryo Hazuki as he travels through 1980s Japan and China in pursuit of his father's killer.
The original Shenmue was the most expensive video game ever developed at the time, with an estimated production and marketing cost of US$47 to $70 million, though some of the development also covered Shenmue II. The games attracted a cult following, but were commercial failures and further installments entered development hell. A social game, Shenmue City, was launched in Japan in 2010 and discontinued in 2011. Following a successful crowdfunding campaign, Suzuki developed Shenmue III independently. It was released for the PlayStation 4 and Windows in 2019.
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This entry incorporates text from “Shenmue” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.