Nothing better captures the magic of Shenmue III than its save files. On one line, the current date and time; above it, the date and time this particular save will whisk you back to. Because that s what Shenmue is: time travel. The opportunity to visit a very specific moment in history. In the case of Shenmue III, China in the spring of 1987. Of course, it s time travel that doesn t fret about the butterfly effect – you spend most of your trip kicking in groins in a way that will surely curtail a few family lineages.
But this sequel is time travel of a second kind, too: a design throwback to 1999, when Shenmue was the cutting edge of blockbuster game development; then the most expensive game of all time, and one that remained so cherished that it raised 6.3 million dollars in a Kickstarter campaign. That’s 6.3 million dollars worth of permission to not change a thing, and so it has largely turned out. Does the ageing design hold up and can it make converts 20 years on? Here’s wot I think.