Shenmue

The main character of the game, Ryo Hazuki ( 芭 月 涼 Hazuki Ryo:) , upon returning home, witnesses the death of his father. An insidious murder was made by a certain Lan Di ( Chinese trad. 蓝 帝 ), before that, he took the mirror of Dragon from Father Ryo. Ryo decides to avenge Lan Di for the death of his father and sets off on an epic adventure in the wake of the killer.

Trying to find Lan Di, Ryo finds himself in many unpleasant situations that arise in the majority due to the fact that Lan Di is a rather authoritative person in the ranks of the Yakuza. But from most situations, Ryo hardly comes out with the help of friends, good luck, or with the help of fights.

Snow in the city of Yokosuka .

The leader and producer Yu Suzuki specifically for this game came up with a new genre - FREE (Full Reactive Eyes Entertainment), that is, the player can perform various actions.

One of the important components of the game is fights. Ryo's main style is jujutsu , but since you can learn new techniques as the game progresses, the style of fights gradually becomes mixed. So, for example, among the techniques there are elements of "street battle", aikido, wrestling, etc.

Another feature of the game is the abundance of the so-called "Unlooked Scene", inconspicuous scenes, the manifestation of which requires certain conditions. This elementary gameplay is found in many games, but in Shenmue there are a lot of them. These scenes do not affect the plot of the game.

Yu Suzuki introduced a new gameplay element known as Quick Time Events . Typically, the player needs to press the desired buttons shown on the screen to complete the correct action.

In addition to fights, the player can play mini-games such as Space Harrier and Hang-On or darts , etc.

The game has a change of time of day. In addition, the game may rain, snow, etc.

Passport

In all versions of the game there is a disc called "Passport". It contains some game files: music, videos and icons for Visual Memory . There are some videos that help the player to master the game.

Passport used support for Dreamarena online services for Europe and SegaNet for North America. However, on January 1, 2002, all Internet features of the passport became unavailable.

The director, screenwriter and producer of the game, Yu Suzuki , stated several times in an interview that in the early stages of development, the game used a traditional RPG style based on the storyline and characters of the Virtua Fighter series of games. The main character instead of Ryo Hazuki should initially be Akira from Virtua Fighter . Ryo is different from Akira, but there is a very clear visual similarity between them. As the game progressed, the characters became original and the storyline moved away from Virtua Fighter .

Shenmue was originally planned as a "killer" for the Sega Saturn console . Although the console was very powerful for its time, it was difficult to work with, and the development of the game was very slow. Yu Suzuki noted how difficult it was to get the most out of the console, but he was very proud of the image quality on a 32-bit system . Initially, the game was supposed to go to the Sega Saturn console as a mixture of Virtua Fighter and RPG ^[2] , but after the failure of the console ^{[3], the} project was stopped. However, Sega had already begun work on a new console called Katana, later renamed Dreamcast , and Shenmue's work quickly resumed with renewed vigor. In the game you can see the brand of Katana cigarettes - this name means a tribute to the former name.

Project Berkeley

When Shenmue was in development, the game was known as Project Berkley . In 1998, Sega demonstrated a demo of the game to showcase the features of the Dreamcast console.

Shenmue was one of the first interactive cinema games in the world. The scoring was recognized as innovative, as not only the main characters were voiced, but also unplayable . In addition, it was possible to change the scoring. Each character, regardless of whether he had a significant role in the game or not, was drawn with detailed accuracy. The game also includes cinematic elements of the game known as Quick Time Events . The musicians Yuzo Kosiro and Takenobu Mitsuyoshi worked on creating music.

The music for Shenmue was written by musicians Yuzo Kosiro and Takenobu Mitsuyoshi . The musicians Ryūji Iuchi, Takeshi Yanagawa and Osamu Murat also contributed. The soundtrack was performed live at the first Symphony Music Concert in Leipzig , Germany in 2003.

In total, several albums were released devoted to the game. The first one, Shenmue / Shenhua ( я ェ ン ム ー / 莎 花 ), was released by PolyGram on December 20, 1998. It included only 2 tracks, and the album itself was distributed as an advertising gift, dedicated to Christmas ^[4] . Another album released by PolyGram, the Shenmue Orchestra Version was released on April 1, 1999 ^[5] .

On December 24, 1999, in Japan, more than 100,000 customers who pre-ordered the game received a music album with it that was never released anywhere else. It was called Shenmue Jukebox ( シ ェ ン ム ー ジ ュ ー ク ボ ッ ク ス Sammu: Ju: kubokkusu ) , was published by PolyGram KK and included 10 tracks ^[6] . 23 on March 2000 the year label EMI Music Japan was released soundtrack Shenmue OST ~ Chapter 1: Yokosuka ~, or Shenmue OST ( Jap. シェンムー一章横須賀オリジナルサウンドトラック Sammy: iti sho: Okosuka Oridzinaru Saundotorakku). It contained two CDs and 39 songs from the game ^[7] .

Shenmue received overall high marks from critics. On Game Rankings, the game has a rating of 89%, but critics are sharply divided: many took the game as a masterpiece, others found it indulgent and boring. The Gaming Target , which gave the game a perfect 10 out of 10 points, described the visual part of Shenmue as “the greatest in-game graphics ever seen on the console” ^[16] .

RPG Fan magazine left a less favorable review, giving it a 68% rating, writing that “ Shenmue is really a test game. The world and its complexity are impeccable, probably the most impressive, real and interactive world I have ever seen ” ^[18] . The game received an award for "excellence for interactive art" in 2000 at the festival "Media Arts" ^[22] .

In some reviews, the main drawback of the game was its pace, complaining that it was too slow. This was especially emphasized by the GameSpot website in its review ^[14] . Several other gameplay critics praised the game. In the United States and Great Britain , Official Dreamcast Magazine awarded the game a maximum score of 10 points out of 10 possible ^[17] .

In 2012, GamesRadar placed Shenmue in 4th place on the list of “Best Dreamcast Games of All Time” ^[23] .

Sales

Given the high costs during the development period, Shenmue failed in sales. According to IGN , "in order for a game that costs an unprecedented $ 70 million to pay off, Dreamcast owners would need to purchase two copies in order for Sega to make a profit." The game was in 4th place in terms of sales for the Dreamcast console and one of six games that sold over 1 million copies ^[24] .

At the Game Developers Conference in 2011, Yu Suzuki stated that the game’s budget of $ 70 million was exaggerated by Sega and said that the game’s budget was only $ 47 million ^[1] .

On January 20, 2001, Shenmue: The Movie was released in Japanese cinemas. It lasts 90 minutes. The film is heavily connected to Shenmue and uses videos from the game, as well as several new ones, to link the game and the film together. The movie was later bundled with Shenmue II for the Xbox .

What's Shenmue?

What's Shenmue? is a demo version of Shenmue . It was available for pre-ordering the game. The Famitsu magazine version had an orange cover, unlike the blue one that subscribers received. The disc also includes 4 films included in the Shenmue game passport, which explains aspects of the game.

On April 14, 2018, the publisher of computer games Sega shared with the sites about computer games the news that this year a collection of games Shenmue I & II ^[25] will be released, the developers of the re-release of the games will be d3T Studio. The updated games themselves will differ from the original in that: they will support current consoles ( PlayStation 4 , Xbox One ) and computers ( Windows ), an improved interface, the ability to select a sound track in the game (which will now be two English and Japanese), the game will the ability to choose the old control (which was in the original game) and the new ones that the developers made. In July 2018, in the digital stores ( Windows Store and PlayStation Store ) where the games were sold, the release date appeared on August 21, 2018 ^[26] in the same month, the publisher confirmed that the games will be released on this line. On August 21, 2018, games were released ^[27] .

• Sega will resurrect Shenmue 1 and 2 on PC and current consoles
• Shenmue 1 & 2 will go on sale in a month and a half
• Shenmue 1 & 2 - Now Available

• Official site of the series (English) (Japanese)
• Shenmue on Sega Retro