With the upcoming release of Shenmue III, Sega has finally announced a Shenmue HD collection which will give players the chance to play through the first two games on Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC.
The cult classic series which first appeared on the Sega Dreamcast and then later the original Xbox has a strong following that praises the game for its niche gameplay mechanics, rich storytelling, and semi-open world structure. It has its fair share of haters due to the control scheme, tedious tasks, and more but the series has been regarded as one of the best game franchises ever made by several large media outlets.
With all that said, a much larger audience will be able to experience the game when it moves away from the Dreamcast and OG Xbox and broadens its reach to a whole host of new massive platforms. Sega made the announcement last night at a press conference last night, afterward, all of the Shenmue fans went wild.
Both games will be bundled together physically and digitally for $29.99 on Xbox One, PS4, and PC. These games are simply ports of the old games, they’re not full-blown remasters so the graphics aren’t going to be super top notch. Some new additions will be in the collection such as updated textures and higher resolutions, updated controls, time-skipping, new UI, and the ability to play with Japanese voice over if you desire.
Shenmue III is still slated to drop in the second half of 2018 so we could see this collection drop right before it releases, possibly in the summer/early fall. As of right now, Sega says they’re only focused on these versions for the collection and haven’t announced any plans for a Nintendo Switch version.
The Shenmue trilogy will be available in its entirety on PlayStation 4 and PC this year, nothing has been announced for an Xbox One version of Shenmue III.
