With the highly anticipated Shenmue 3 on the horizon, wouldn’t it be great to play the original games in glorious high-definition? If rumors are to be believed, a Shenmue HD Remaster is currently in development with a release scheduled for later this year.
A source close to Atlus USA has told Rice Digital that Sega is planning to release an HD remaster of the first two Shenmue games. This comes as great news for fans, as currently the only way to play the games are on Dreamcast and the original Xbox.
Last year Sega revealed that it was looking into remastering the original Shenmue games and even registered ShenmueHD.com.
At E3 2015, series creator Yu Suzuki went up on stage during the Sony press conference to reveal the Kickstarter for a potential sequel. Suffice it to say, the Kickstarter was a major success, raising $6.3 million. Gamers can still pre-order the game via the official site, only adding to the development budget.
Shenmue 2 was released in North America in 2002. Since E3 2015, plenty of gamers have become intrigued by the series, but playing the original games has been difficult because of limited availability. The HD Remaster would greatly serve the upcoming Shenmue 3 by helping gamers catch up on the story.
Interestingly, the source could not confirm if the Shenmue HD Remaster would be making its way to PlayStation 4 or Xbox One. The source did say with confidence that it would be coming to PC via Steam.
Since its announcement, not much has been revealed about Shenmue 3. It’s currently slated to come out in December 2017 for the PlayStation 4 and PC, but considering the development team is relatively small, it’s possible that the project could be pushed into 2018, to the dismay of fans.
