The original Shenmue and its sequel Shenmue II could well be on the receiving end of some high definition TLC in the near future if new domains registered by SEGA are anything to go by. As reported by TSSZ News (via Destructoid), a collection of different domain names pertaining to the series have been registered by SEGA Europe, including one labeled Shenmuehd.com. ShenmueRemastered.com has also been nabbed, along with Shemnuegame.com (the typo isn’t a mistake on our part), all three of which were registered back in September of last year.
While nothing is ever set in stone, this is the clearest indication yet that SEGA intends to release remasters of the original Dreamcast games at some point in the future. Last year, SEGA Europe’s head of marketing John Rooke confirmed that it still held the rights to both titles, adding that one of the company’s key aims going forward was to “go back to what the brand used to stand for…the buzz around Shenmue 3 shows that people love our legacy.”
If such re-releases truly are on the cards, we can only imagine that they’ll be made available before – rather than after – the release of this year’s Shenmue III. Assuming series creator Yu Suzuki and the team at Ys Net stick to their plan of a late 2017 launch, SEGA has plenty of time to get the remasters out the door in order to capitalize on the series’ resurgence in popularity.
Yu Suzuki made a surprise appearance during Sony’s E3 keynote conference in 2015 in order to announce a Kickstarter campaign for Shenmue III, which proved to be extremely successful. While no gameplay footage has been shown since then, Suzuki has provided several updates for the project, having just recently released a series of screenshots for the long-awaited sequel which you can see up above.