Never-Before-Seen Shenmue Concept Art Unearthed and Shared Online

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Fans of the Shenmue series have something to look forward to! An upgraded version of the third game is coming to PlayStation 5 later this year, and there’s also a special Collector’s Edition available for pre-order – I’ve already got mine!

While fans anticipate the release of Shenmue III, the dedicated Shenmue Dojo community has discovered a collection of previously unseen artwork from the early days of the series, when it was first conceived as a role-playing game based on Virtua Fighter.

Dedicated fans may remember that Yu Suzuki first started working on this game for the SEGA Saturn, intending it to be a story-driven expansion of his popular 3D fighting series.

The artwork shows characters that appeared in the Dreamcast games Shenmue and Shenmue 2, and also includes some characters that were planned but ultimately didn’t make it into the final versions of the games.

The game features both black and white sketches and full-color artwork. The Shenmue Dojo team has also translated the original Japanese notes, which is a fantastic addition!

We purchased the artwork for ¥301,000 (about $1,480) from a Japanese auction. Luckily, a fansite generously shared high-quality scans of all the images, which we’ve included in this article with their permission.

If you enjoy the Shenmue series, you should definitely check this out. Even if you’re not familiar with the game, the artwork itself is fantastic and worth a look at these rediscovered sketches.

The Shenmue Dojo team thinks there might be even more hidden content to discover, and we plan to add more scans to this article as we find them!

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2026-05-01 09:06