Original Shenmue Developer Complains About Re-Release Bugs

“As a developer on the original games, the last thing I wanted for the re-release [of Shenmue I & II] is for them to be worse than the originals,” Sega’s Eigo Kasahara said during IGN Japan’s Tokyo Game Show 2018 live stream.

[SegaGamer]

It pains me to say it, but he's completely right. The bugs on release are horrible. For some, I am sure it ruined the overall experience for them. Things would have been better off if the game was delayed by a few months. Without the patches, Shenmue 1 is broken in many areas, it's still broken now with the PC version (which is ahead of the console version when it comes to patches)

I can't yet call this collection the best version of Shenmue, not until these bugs are removed.

“I’ve been putting up a fight with the overseas studio that developed it, insisting that they fix everything. If they tell me they can’t fix something, I tell them to fix it anyway.”

I love this attitude. You need to push for the best with these games. It's taken a lot of fighting just to get them released at all, I don't want to see this opportunity wasted.

[Chocoburger]

Agreed! When Sega announced the HD remasters I was overjoyed seeing as how I love both these games. But then when Sega did not state who was porting these games AND announced that they were coming out in less than half a year's time, I began to worry.

Almost every single HD remastering ported by a team different from the original creators has been a sloppy, bug-riddled mess of a port. Now I'm not trying to be too harsh to D3T studio, only 10 people worked on this port, for probably a year at most, this is entirely Sega's fault. They should have done this in-house and should have given it the proper time and care it deserves.

Once again, Sega hurting themselves because they have to rush out releases. It actually makes me glad that they're not publishing Shenmue III, they'd obviously rush that one out as well, buggy, sloppy and incomplete, then if it had bombed in sales due to poor reviews for being incomplete Sega would blame the dev team, the IP, or the fans for not buying it.
(*sigh*)

[DigitalRaptor]

SEGA Japan wanted nothing to do with Shenmue, so it's funny seeing people agree with and praise what this guy is demanding, when in reality this is not how the game development business is handled in the western world, particularly not in the UK, where D3T are based. I get his frustration, but it doesn't seem like he understands this.

"Fix everything".... I mean what even is that demand? From someone who didn't even manage this project in the first place so he's in no position to make these demands. First of all, it took some really good will from SEGA Europe to get these games green lit and produced at all, and SEGA as a whole didn't really give D3T the resources that they needed from the very start. For example read this interview ( https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/... ), which claims that SEGA gave them the source code where the comments in the code were in Japanese, so they had to use Google Translate to even get a leg up on deciphering 15 year old code written and annotated by Japanese devs. It wasn't fair on this team, SEGA pushed the game out before it was finished and they didn't even have the professionalism or class to provide them the support they should have had, such as a translator or a bigger budget for a bigger team.

They are a tiny team, when it should have been assigned to a team that could actually manage it. I'm not saying that the devs are completely blameless, I mean they took on the task and signed a contract for it, but the guy seems to think that D3T are not continuing to work on the game and put out patches for it long after the release. It's already a lot better than it was at launch, and they're continuing to work on patches. It can't be easy. SEGA are the ones who really should be held accountable. I'm ashamed of them for this.