The Shenmue and Shenmue II remasters will both be locked to 30fps. According to Sega, that’s the result of “hard coded assumptions” embedded in the original versions of the games, which left no room to scale the remasters up to 60fps.
Shenmue and Shenmue II were released in 1999 and 2001 respectively for the Sega Dreamcast. Shenmue II was ported to the original Xbox in 2002, and it’s this version of the game that’s been remastered as it offers a handful of advantages over the Dreamcast version. There are also “some graphical differences” between the two versions.
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In an FAQ from SEGA, a question asking whether the games will run at 60fps states that “throughout the engine, game code and scripts there are hard coded assumptions about a fixed 30Hz frame update rate, so that game needs to run at 30Hz.” That’s a slightly flimsy explanation, especially when you consider that fans of the series have been working out how to get Shenmue to run at 60fps on the Dreamcast for several years now.
The Shenmue remaster release date is August 20 (August 21 in Europe). The remastered version of the game will offer a choice of English or Japanese voice track, as well as the ability to carry saves over from Shenmue to Shenmue II, and modern controller support.