It’s been nearly a decade since Shenmue II left fans with a cliffhanger that still lies unresolved. Now series creator Yu Suzuki and publisher Sunsoft are set to take players back, albeit in an entirely different way, with a new mobile game that just launched in Japan: “Shenmue Gai.”
Suzuki and co. want to bring the free-to-play game to PC (as well as iPhone, Android, and Facebook in the future), as well as release it worldwide, but most of those plans are tentative at the moment — as evidenced by the lack of an official English title for the game. “We haven’t decided about the name yet,” says Suzuki when asked about a possible Western release. “The direct translation of Shenmue Gai is ‘town,’ which is not very attractive. ‘City’ sounds a little more contemporary. Shenmue ‘World’ would be better… I’ll do some more research. ‘Street’ is a good image but it sounds a little small. Use ‘Shenmue World (title pending)’ for now.”
