He shall appear from a far eastern land across the sea, a young man who has yet to know his potential… And he’ll be driving a badass motorcycle.

Ryo Hazuki, star of the Shenmue series returns in his first playable appearance since Shenmue 2 to join the ranks of the SEGA All-Stars as part of Sonic & SEGA All-Stars Racing.

Ryo, protagonist of the Shenmue series and one of the most requested SEGA characters to make an appearance in All-Stars Racing, will be riding his borrowed motorcycle around classic SEGA themed race tracks. And when a motorcycle just can’t cut it, Ryo unleashes his All-Star move and is able to swap vehicles to his iconic forklift truck to charge and barge opponents out of the way!

The Shenmue series, the story of a son’s quest for vengeance, began life in 1999 as the killer-app for the SEGA Dreamcast.  Originally developed by the legendary Yu Suzuki for SEGA, Ryo has yet to gain his revenge but he’s certainly no stranger to motorcycle racing and is sure to make a formidable adversary for Sonic, AiAi, Dr. Eggman and the other All-Stars.

Enough talk… I know you’re dying to see the trailer, so here it is:

Thanks to everyone who played along with our clue reveal game on our forums, Facebook, and Twitter. The correct phrase is OBJECTS IN REAR VIEW DRAGON MIRROR MAY APPEAR CLOSER IN REALITY. This is a play on words between a car’s rear-view mirror and the dragon mirror in Shenmue. Congratulations go to Ryan/Sharky (aka Mulberry Tweedcork on our forums) who was the first one to figure it out! He did it within the first week, taking many of us working on the project by surprise. We’ll just have to make it lots harder next time!

We saw lots of comments on the internet about what people would do if Ryo was in the game. Scream, cry, buy the game day one, etc were all popular sentiments. But the most interesting one came from CVG.

Of course, if Ryo appears avec forklift …  we’ll be ripping out this page and washing it down with the office crate of Pisswasser while bowing to our new Sega overlords.

All I can say is…. we’re waiting.