Gaming culture has all sorts of cryptids, games that are announced or teased but don’t seem to be coming out anytime soon. Recently, however, a lot of those cryptids are crawling out of the woodworks. The release of the first part of the Final Fantasy VII Remake is in reach, another Half-Life game was announced, and now, Shenmue III has come out.

Shenmue is an action-adventure series directed by Yu Suzuki that launched on the Dreamcast in 1999, with the sequel releasing in 2001. The first two Shenmue games followed Ryo Hazuki on a quest of vengeance for his father’s death. Of course, that plot was stopped abruptly due to the lack of a sequel. At the time, the first Shenmue was the most expensive game made, chock full of ambitious elements to give the impression of a living, breathing world. The series is also known to be the originator of “Quick Time Events,” which has been a staple in many action games going forward. To players today, Shenmue‘s world and gameplay are somewhat comparable to the Yakuza series.

At Sony’s 2015 E3 conference, Yu Suzuki took to the stage to announce a Kickstarter for Shenmue III. This Kickstarter ended up generating $6.3 million from 69,000 (nice) backers and, at the time of writing, is the most successful video game Kickstarter on the site. The game originally aimed for a 2017 release, but has had multiple delays. Additionally, it was also originally supposed to be available on Steam, but the developers accepted an exclusivity deal with the Epic Games Store, upsetting some players and further stoking the controversy surrounding Epic Games Store exclusivity.

So, on November 19, 2019, 18 years since the original release of Shenmue II, Shenmue III has been released to continue Ryo’s tale on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and the Epic Games Store. For fans that want a refresher or people new to the series, a remaster of the first two games was released last year on all modern platforms except for the Switch.

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