For those that never got a chance to play Shenmue back on the Sega Dreamcast, there may be hope.
At last year’s E3, the crowd went absolutely wild with the announcement of Shenmue 3. And deservedly so — the first two games were beloved, and were a cinematic hallmark for the time. But because the first and second Shenmue games were on the Dreamcast, not everyone got a chance to play them.
In a YouTube video answering fan questions, a user asked about the possibility of Shenmue being remastered. “Of course we would love to release these tomorrow” said Sega’s Dan Sheridan, but “sadly it’s not as simple as porting the games to the current platforms as we would need to ensure that any HD remaster lived up to the quality of the original titles.”
But what does living up to the quality of the original titles entail? “There are further complications from licensed products that were included in the original games,” Sheridan said. Because these licensing deals would need to be renegotiated, it adds another layer of legal complexity before resources can be thrown at remastering.
Sheradin did admit that Sega is “currently investigating how to make it a reality.”
Shenmue isn’t the first rerelease to run into licensing issues. When Capcom tried to bring Mega Man Legends to the PlayStation Network, it too ran into contractual problems with license holders. Capcom was able to get these issues resolved and did eventually release Mega Man Legends on the PSN, to the surprise of many.
Of course Sega could go back and replace the licensed assets with fictional ones instead. But for the time, it was novel to see real-life products in a video game, and Sega may have wanted to preserve that.
Back in 2014, a fan did release a video showing what an HD remaster of Shenmue would look like. If Sega’s probable remaster looks anything like the video below, consider us sold.
Acer’s Predator Atlas 8 finally has a US release date and price, several months after the company first showed off the handheld in May. The highlight is the Intel Arc G3 Extreme chip inside, which has been adopted by only a couple of other consoles besides the Atlas 8. This version will go on sale exclusively at Best Buy on November 1 for $1,299.99.
Acer originally said the Atlas 8 would arrive in North America in October, but left pricing open at the time. The launch came amid the ongoing DRAM crunch, which has made memory more expensive across the PC industry and complicated pricing for hardware makers.
Gaming laptops and I have a complicated relationship. One of my first gaming rigs was an Acer Predator that was already outdated when I bought it. I was a broke college kid, and that was the best I could afford. So trying out high-end gaming laptops is always fun. But ASUS' ROG Zephyrus G14 is a lot more than a laptop that can run AAA games. It is portable, so you're not lugging around a 2.5kg machine everywhere you go. It is built well, none of that plastic chassis, and can even function as a normal laptop outside of just gaming.
Google Play is borrowing one of the Nintendo Switch’s most useful little tricks. A new Sidekick tool called Playbacks captures a short clip after something interesting has already happened, sparing players from running a screen recorder throughout an entire game.
Playbacks is part of Google Play Store v53.8 and keeps saved clips on the phone. Google first announced it earlier this month, but the new Play Store update marks its arrival for players. Anyone who has watched a perfect win vanish because the record button came too late already understands the appeal.