First Shenmue City Details Emerge

Spinoff being developed by Ys Net, supervised by Sega and released through... Sunsoft?

2010-11-01 16:15 / Anoop Gantayat / 3 Comments

We've heard little about Shenmue City ("Shenmue Gai" in Japanese) following its announcement for the Yahoo! Mobage PC social gaming service a few weeks back. Today, the game's publisher and operator (see below for who that is) at long last shared some details.

Shenmue City is a gaiden/sidestory style game in the Shenmue series, which currently consists of the original Shenmue (released December 1999) and Shenmue II (released September 2001).

Ys Net, a company formed by Shenmue father Yu Suzuki in November 2008, is developing the game as its first project. Sega is supervising the production. Sunsoft will be releasing and managing the game on both Yahoo! Mobage and its mobile counterpart, Mobagetown.

The game kicks off in Yokosuka, the setting of the original Shenmue. Players serve as the game's main character themselves and follow a story. The game promises a number of characters, along with compelling visuals. It will have a social aspect, although Sunsoft has not shared details.

Sunsoft opened an official site for the game today. The site shows many of the familiar faces from the first two Shenmue games along with such phrases as "Shenmue has returned" and "Come back this winter."

The site is currently lacking in content, but interested parties can pre register with the Mobagetown version of the game by scanning in the QR code at the site.

Joining the site, Sunsoft gave the game an official Twitter. As of this writing, the Twitter has no Tweets.

Service on Shenmue City begins in this Winter. Like most Mobagetown games, the game will be item based, meaning free to play but items incurring charges.

For those keeping score at home, the Shemue official site has been updated with a link to the new Shenmue City official site.