What’s Shenmue?

Part II: The Death of the Dreamcast and Shenmue’s Uncertain Fate

March 1999: Yu Suzuki ponders the tech behind Sony’s Ridge Racer tech demo for the upcoming PlayStation 2.

The impending launch of Sony’s PlayStation 2 loomed heavily over Suzuki and the development of Shenmue.

Shenmue would go on to sell 1.2 million copies, but it was not enough to recoup either the $47 million budget ($70 million in 2015), nor the “killer app” that would save the Dreamcast from the console most gamers were waiting for, the PlayStation 2. After having collaborated with Sega on the Dreamcast (Windows CE was offered as an operating system for developers to use, though it saw little use outside of PC ports to the console), and Bill Gates’ offer of helping Sony with the PS2 rebuffed, Microsoft announced their first entry into the console market with the Xbox at the March 2000 Game Developer’s Conference.

During a presentation of Shenmue for the West at the same GDC, Yu Suzuki quipped that after 3D scanning character busts for the game they had to reduce the polygon count as “after all, we’re not making games for the PlayStation 2”. With Nintendo announcing the similarly powerful Gamecube that August, it was clear that there was no country for old hardware.

Suzuki’s self-deprecating joke regarding his console’s capabilities gets laughs at GDC 2000.

While Sega stopped supporting the Dreamcast with their final release for the console in 2007, Karous, companies such as Hucast continue to publish games for the Dreamcast to this day, and a dedicated community of indie developers take advantage of the ease of coding for the system as well as its lack of software protection to program games for the cult system.

On the 31st of January 2001, Sega announced that they would be discontinuing the Dreamcast on the 31st of March, and leaving the hardware business altogether, becoming a third-party developer and publisher for other companies instead. Virtua Fighter 4 would be released for the PS2, Sega’s mascot Sonic would find a new home with former rivals Nintendo, and sequels initially intended for release on the Dreamcast such as Jet Set Radio Future would be developed for the Xbox.

I watched this over and over as I waited for the rest of the QuickTime trailer to load on my 128K ISDN modem, racking up the hourly Internet bill.

Still, Dreamcast fans could look forward to Shenmue II. With the bulk of development already completed before the release of the first game, Shenmue II was released in Japan on the 6th of September 2001.

When I saw this clip of a kung fu school in another Shenmue II trailer, I thought the “slow-motion” was a great cinematic touch. It was in fact the Dreamcast hardware being pushed to the limit and the frame rate struggling as a consequence.

Taking place in Hong Kong’s Aberdeen, Wan Chai, and Kowloon, with the final disc of the game set among the beautiful scenery of mainland China’s Guilin, there were rumours in early 2000 that the second game’s voice acting might be in Cantonese, though Suzuki would later confirm that the initial release would be in Japanese. Shenmue II’s world was 3 to 4 times the size of Shenmue’s Yokosuka, and would cover chapters 3 to 6 of the 11-chapter story. Still, cuts were made, most noticeably the 2nd chapter of the saga.

This short “Side Story” comic by Kenji Miyawaki, Shenmue’s main character design artist, was included as a bonus feature with the Xbox version of Shenmue II.

“I heard there used to be “Chapter 2 — the Boat” between “Chapter 1 — Yokosuka” and “Shenmue II,” but actually, II begins with the scene Ryo disembarks from the boat.
There, the mother with a girl mentions something on the boat, doesn’t she?

Yu Suzuki: Yes. “Chapter 2 — the Boat” included in the original scenario has disappeared
completely.

Masaya Matsukaze: Yeah, that’s right. The Boat! In fact, Chai reappears. He’s survived being
knocked off into the sea at Yokosuka harbor, and fights with Ryo as an unseen opponent on the boat. There was a scenario like that.

Q: Was the scene shot?

The Elbow Assault is an iconic Shenmue martial arts move, with Ryo taught a devastating Counter variant in the second game.

Masaya: Yes! We shot it pretty flamboyantly. In fact, some people Ryo meets on the boat were supposed to see him again in the later scenario, saying like “ah, you’re the one on that boat…,” and the story would expand from there.

Yu: Confronting Chai was a nice situation. We’ve finished the designs of the boat completely, including the height of the deck, the length of the rails, everything.
The escape route was arranged, too. Some spectacular action scenes were planned to unfold, you know.

Masaya: All the motions were captured, too. I opened the door of the cabin and then the story went so theatrically!

Q: Then, you had to cut those scenes tearfully?

Yu: Well… I cut them without trouble. “Impossible to fit? OK, cut it,” just like that.”

Dori-Maga, 7th September 2001

After Sega and Microsoft, Moore would lead EA’s Sports division.

Fans in the West could not wait for the game to come to their shores. But barely a week after its Japanese release, on the first day of the Tokyo Game Show Sega announced that Shenmue II would not receive a US release. In January 2011 a former Sega employee going by the online handle “DonnyK” revealed to Assembler Games how close a US Dreamcast version was to release:

We had a final, tested, and approved Shenmue 2 for the US that was scrapped and never came out. The producer came around and got ever single burn and returned them to [Sega of Japan]… It was the same as the PAL version with American localized text (color vs colour) kind of thing.

There was both outrage and confusion from the Dreamcast community, and it would later come to light that Peter Moore, then president and COO of Sega of America, was jockeying for a position at Microsoft, and offered the exclusive North American release of Shenmue II as a bargaining chip. Years later Moore would recount a story that a TSA agent at Chicago O’Hare International Airport once told him, “I don’t need to see your passport. You’re the asshole that gave away Shenmue to Xbox.”

Thankfully, Shenmue II still came out in Europe on the 23rd of November, 2001. The Hamed Center didn’t import many European games, but in mid-December an uncle from the UK came over to Abu Dhabi bearing gifts. To this day Shenmue II remains the greatest Christmas present I have ever received.

Cutscenes in Shenmue II were presented in letterboxed widescreen, further adding to the filmic feel. Towards the end of this video a little girl and her mother can be seen thanking Ryo; this is the same girl as briefly captured by Chai in Chapter 2.

Unable to contain my excitement and wait for the 25th, I played through the game from morning until night for the following few days, often getting to use my dad’s projector, greatly adding to the theatrical experience.

Arriving in Aberdeen, Ryo quickly has his bag stolen along with all his money. Gone are the home comforts of the Hazuki Residence, the maternal mutterings of Ine-san, the friendly greetings from small-town friends and neighbours; Ryo is lost and alone in this foreign land. Not everyone is out to swindle the naïve young Japanese man, though; with the help of a feisty young lady named Joy, Ryo finds a seedy hostel to stay in and a job down at the docks, this time carrying crates without the aid of a forklift.

The player can decide that manual labour is for chumps and to instead gamble with dice, pachinko boards, or take up arm wrestling with Mexican wrestlers and Mongolian fighters.

You can never have too many falling leaves.

The elderly continue to be a great source of martial arts wisdom, and Ryo is again oblivious to the opposite sex’s flirtations. The young Hazuki can still choose to spend his Hong Kong dollars in the arcade, with Out Run and After Burner joining Hang-On and Space Harrier from the first game.

Shenmue II also features secret Duck Races.

Sadly it seems that Ren’s Japanese voice actor is no longer in the business, making it unlikely he will return to play him in Shenmue III.

Suzuki (centre) at the Ming Dynasty Tombs in Beijing, from his trip to China in 1993. The woman on the left is his tour guide Ms. Zhang. Her grandfather’s collaboration with the Japanese in World War II saw her parents persecuted and ultimately killed during the Cultural Revolution. Her older sister would later join the very same Red Guard that killed their parents. Originally planning to create a character called Zhang Hongyu based on Ms. Zhang for Virtua Fighter 3, Suzuki would instead draw inspiration from her life story to devise the tragic origin tale of the orphaned Xiuying Hong in Shenmue II, whose elder brother sets out to join the Chi You Men to find out who murdered their parents.

The second disc of the game sees Ryo under the tutelage of the mysterious Xiuying in Wan Chai, who has the young man airing out books and catching leaves in an attempt to clear his mind of thoughts of revenge. It is at this point that Ryo crosses path with Ren of Heavens, the lovable rogue who is the Shenmue series’ Han Solo; claiming to be “only in it for the money”, he surprises with acts of altruism before seemingly going back to his self-serving ways, leaving the player unsure of his true moral nature. Bringing some much-needed wry wit and laconic humour after hours of Ryo’s solemnity and single-mindedness, Ren remains a fan favourite. During the countdown Twitch stream for the Shenmue III Kickstarter in July 2015, Yu Suzuki revealed that while the character was initially created to be more villainous, the development team ended up falling for Ren’s charms and making him more morally ambiguous and likeable.

Ryo executes the Counter Elbow Assault under Xiuying’s watchful gaze. Upon mastering moves in Shenmue II, characters flash dramatically on screen.

This sweeping intro to Kowloon was clearly inspired by the 1998 Tower of Babel tech demo that Suzuki produced for the Dreamcast’s unveiling.

The Walled City in the 1980s, before its destruction in March 1993.

Though Aberdeen and Wan Chai alone are huge in comparison to Shenmue’s Dobuita, Shenmue II’s third disc sees Ryo venture to Kowloon Walled City, home to a series of crumbling tower blocks sprawling in both area and height, a “wretched hive of scum and villainy”. The pace for the next few hours of the game is relentless; earning money defeating various street fighters, Ryo quickly catches the eye of a talent scout.

Rousing free-roaming music from Shenmue II.

Ryo then takes on a series of skilled opponents, and it is in these heart-pounding one-on-one battles that the series’ Virtua Fighter roots are most apparent. The end of Disc 3 sees Ryo and Ren ascend a towering decrepit skyscraper, taking out gangsters floor by floor (now reminiscent of 2011's The Raid), culminating in an epic rooftop fight. Compared to the slow pace of the first game, here Shenmue II hardly gives the player time to catch their breath, and it remains my favourite gaming experience to date.

A planned chapter between Kowloon and Guilin set on the Li River was cut from Shenmue II. The river, also known as the Lijiang, flows from Yangshuo to Guilin. The Yangshuo mountains can be seen on a scroll in Shenhua’s home in the final game.

A lot of scenes got left out [of Shenmue II], because right as we neared the end of development I added a whole lot of extra content. Even using the best compression techniques of the time, there was too much for it all to fit. Even so, at the end we increased the content by about an extra 30% of the total game, for the area of Guilin where Shenhua appears.

In some ways Shenmue shares similarities with fighting-based games, but in the last half of the game in Guilin, where Shenhua appears, there’s no fighting at all. So I feel that I’ve been able to bring out the true Shenmue spirit there.

Yu Suzuki, Dori-Maga, 7th September 2001

From 2:15 to 3:05, Kenji Miyawaki, Shenmue’s character designer, explains how a village on the way to Guilin was cut despite being nearly completed (fans discovered the assets by going through the data on the game’s discs) as it interfered with the flow of the story.

After the white-knuckle ride of Kowloon, Shenmue II’s final disc sees Ryo venture into mainland China (an intermittent chapter on a train was cut at the early planning stages of the Shenmue project, while a Li River chapter would be removed during development). Verdant fields where butterflies dance around flowers stood in stark contrast to the grime and filth of Kowloon’s crumbling Walled City. Marking points on a map so as to not to get lost in the labyrinthine Guilin forests, Ryo comes across a village girl named Shenhua. Her image ever present in Shenmue’s promotional materials, to finally meet this mysterious character was surreal. For the next hour or so the player talks to her as they walk through the woods together, with gameplay reduced to conversational choices and the odd QTE that saw Ryo jumping over rocks in a river.

While some found the interminable walking and talking to be mind-numbing, others found peace and serenity in these moments, with République developer and former Metal Gear Solid 4 assistant producer Ryan Payton declaring it to be “one of the greatest video game experiences of all time”. It is here also where the game subtly starts to delve into the fantastical; I won’t reveal more for fear of spoiling some of the finest moments of Shenmue II, but will leave you with this note from the game’s creator:

“When we made Shenmue II, we knew it was the last one… We decided to go out with a bang — that’s why there are those fantastical elements in there! Also, in China and in Japan, there’s a strong belief, like in England and with Stonehenge and the druids, we get energy from the spirits and the trees and nature. It’s called ki, and it translates as feeling and emotion. It’s not the same as fantastical fairies and demons — it’s more to do with a natural, basic power. We’re considering bringing that element into Shenmue III.”

Yu Suzuki, October 2015

Yu Suzuki: For me, I don’t consider that “Shenmue” came to an end with the demise of the Dreamcast. I have an emotional attachment to the game. And so, I hope to meet up with you all again one day.

Masuya Matsukaze (Ryo’s voice actor): Let’s meet next time for “Shenmue Returns”. (laughs)

Takumi Hagiwara (Ren’s voice actor): Absolutely. I hope we can.

Dori-Maga, 7th September 2001

A 90-minute compilation of the first game’s cutscenes with the English voice acting and some gameplay footage was released in Japanese cinemas on the 20th of January 2001. It was included as a bonus DVD with the Xbox version of Shenmue II to familiarise newcomers with the series (the DVD contains both the English and Japanese audio tracks).

While American retailers like GameStop imported the European Dreamcast version of Shenmue II, often selling it along with a “boot disc” that would allow American consoles to play the game, sales of the sequel did not match its predecessor. The Xbox version of Shenmue II came out in North America on the 28th of October 2002 and boasted a smoother frame rate, but had blurrier visuals and arguably inferior English dubbing (though a dedicated few have ripped the audio and created an English-voiced Dreamcast version). Despite having bought an Xbox in the vain hope that it would be home to Shenmue III, to this day I do not own an Xbox copy of the second game. Across both platforms Shenmue II only managed to sell 600,000 copies, half that of its predecessor.

Tastes were changing in the West, with new titles such as Halo and Splinter Cell far exceeding Japanese games in both sales and popularity. While I had great fun with Bungie and UbiSoft’s efforts, a sense of magic and wonder seemed to be lost. As Sega would start to publish Western-developed games like Football Manager and the Total War series, and with Square Enix focusing on sequels to Deus Ex and Tomb Raider, it seemed only Nintendo remained steadfast in keeping up the old guard. Shenmue had no place in this brave new world, if it ever had a place in gaming at all. To gamers who even remembered it in the years that passed since its release Shenmue was that weird Dreamcast game where you asked around for sailors and drove a forklift, a quirky footnote in Sega’s history.

What’s Shenmue?