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Yu Suzuki doesn't have as much time as he used to. For the past five years, the director and designer famous for classic Sega games such as Out Run, Afterburner and Virtua Fighter has been making the daily 90-minute commute to his small office in Ebisu, a district in Tokyo's Shibuya ward, to tinker with ideas and designs. To call his life leisurely would be a stretch, but he's been out of the public eye for much of that time, working on mobile games that never made their way to the west, and on ideas that never made their way to fruition. In June this year, Suzuki made his return to big-name games development in the grandest possible way. I'm still not entirely sure it was for real. When Sony held its E3 conference this summer, it was creeping up to 3am in the UK, and the darkness was already beginning to thin outside Eurogamer's Brighton office as the sucker punches were being landed. First, Square Enix silenced years of fan requests as it announced the Final Fantasy 7 remake was in production, and it was coming to PlayStation 4. But that wasn't the real show-stopper. As cherry blossoms began to fall on-screen and a Chinese flute started to play, it became apparent that something very strange, and something very special was about to happen. Shenmue 3, Yu Suzuki's open-world sequel that's been in the wilderness for so long it's turned into a modern-day myth, was set to become a reality.
"Before I came on stage, there was Final Fantasy 7. It was such a huge reception from the crowd! I was really worried how people were going to take it." I caught up with Suzuki during last month's Tokyo Game Show, where we talk amid the tinkle of delicate coffee cups in the New Otani hotel's top-floor cafe. Wearing a fleece jacket emblazoned in logos for the UK motorbike company Norton, there's still something of the old rebel about him, even if it's been softened with age. "When Final Fantasy came on, people were like 'raaaaagh,'" Suzuki says, his face lighting up with a smile. "When it was Shenmue, it was more like 'squuuuueeeee'. People all over were coming to give me congratulations, to pat me on the back. It was unreal."
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