Shenmue

aka: Project Berkley, Shenmue: Isshō - Yokosuka, Virtua Fighter RPG
Moby ID: 3558
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Special Edition

Description official descriptions

On a November day when the snow turned to rain, Ryu Hazuki arrives home just in time to see his father killed by Lan Di, a man Ryu's father obviously knew very well. Ryu attempts to stop Lan Di but is effortlessly beaten to within an inch of his life. After recovering from his injuries Ryu sets out to track down his father's murderer, as well as uncover his family's secrets and the mystery of the Phoenix and Dragon mirrors that Lan Di seeks.

Shenmue is a hybrid game that incorporates elements of life simulation, adventure, and fighting with light role-playing. The game is set in a 3D environment that can be freely explored by the player. Much of the gameplay involves talking to Ryu's friends and the various people around town, hoping to find hints or clues that lead to the next step in the story. Any details Ryu learns are written down in his notebook for future review. Ryu can buy items from stores or try his luck with capsule toy machines, but most items that can be bought have no purpose outside of filling his inventory. Ryu can also visit an arcade and play accurate versions of Hang-On and Space Harrier, as well as games like darts and pool.

Ryu is a trained martial artist, and while a true martial artist knows it is better to avoid a fight, sometimes it is still necessary. Ryu can train his moves, either by repeatedly doing them while training or by sparring with his friend Fuku-san, which constitutes the role-playing element of the game. The fighting system is similar to that of the Virtua Fighter series, although with toned-down air juggling. Ryu's training also gives him heightened reflexes, and sometimes during a cutscene the player will have only a moment to press a button (displayed onscreen) to get Ryu out of danger. Failing an input prompt is not always fatal, but whether Ryu survives or not depends on the danger he was in.

Included with the game is the Shenmue Passport disc. On this disc, players can receive tutorials about various aspects of the game like mini-games or the battle system, watch cutscenes they've already seen in the game, and listen to music from the game. This disc also includes the option to go online to a special site where players can review worldwide mini-game rankings, get hints for the game from Nozomi, review game maps of Yokosuka, trade uncommon items found in the game for even rarer items only available on the passport, and visit the official homepage. This service went offline along with the rest of SegaNet, and all online features are currently impossible to access.

Spellings

  • シェンムー 一章:横須賀 - Japanese spelling
  • 莎木 第一章 橫須賀 - Chinese spelling (traditional)

Groups +

Screenshots

Promos

Credits (Dreamcast version)

955 People (850 developers, 105 thanks) · View all

Composers
Words
Arrangers
Conductor
Orchestra
  • Kanagawa Philharmonic Orchestra
  • Shenmue Orchestra M-1
Kokyu
Yanchin
Vocal
Producers
Director
Recording, Mixing & Mastering Engineer
Promotion Staff
Recorded at
  • PolyGram Studios STUDIO-A
  • Avaco Creative Studios 301st
Mixed at
  • PolyGram Studios STUDIO-D
[ full credits ]

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 90% (based on 58 ratings)

Players

Average score: 4.1 out of 5 (based on 165 ratings with 8 reviews)

Graphical showcase concealing an average game

The Good
The initial "wow factor" of this famously expensive, extremely hyped-up game is very high. Immediately upon firing it up you begin to bask in the warmth of its visuals. The graphics of Shenmue are quite amazing. The game presents a fluid, detailed 3D world with some very impressive effects. The only thing that blew me away more around that time was Ultima IX, but Shenmue beats it in the smoothness of its character models. There are quite a lot of people walking around the streets of Yokosuka, and they are all different. Even the most unimportant characters, casual pedestrians, have each his or her own face, body, and clothes.

You can explore the game's world at your own pace. Mind you, it's not large at all, it's just busy; but hey, you can't demand too much from a Japanese adventure. At least here you have a reasonable freedom of movement, and physical actions are finally allowed. You can look at, touch and take some objects, including those unimportant to the actual story. You can talk to any character you meet. You can practice your fighting skills or go and play classic MegaDrive games for the whole day. You follow a certain schedule, meet your girlfriend from time to time, go to work and come home to sleep. Oh, and you can feed a kitten!

I liked some of the realism injected into the gameplay to fit the deliberately prosaic plot. You need money to buy a ticket to Hong-Kong, where you hope to track down the murderer of your father. So what do you do? Descend into a dungeon, hack some monsters and see how their dead bodies miraculously turn into gold? No, you get a job and earn the money!

I didn't hate the fights and the quick time events. I didn't exactly love them, either: they were, so to say, tepid - definitely not too off-putting and not particularly exciting. Without those action segments, however, the gameplay would have been significantly more boring. You literally sigh with relief when a fight breaks the overwhelming monotony of the game.

The Bad
Alas, Shenmue is a typical example of an overhyped game. People talked about groundbreaking concepts and revolutions in game design, but those were just words: the actual game is remarkably timid, shying away from any kind of serious concept and trying to convince the player to be satisfied with casual minigaming.

I'm anything but an expert in fighting games, and that's why my experience should really count here: I won all the fights in the game without any problem at all - and I haven't even trained! There is no challenge whatsoever in Shenmue. An even bigger problem is that the fights are not really fun - they are clumsy, repetitive, and way too infrequent to make a lasting impression. Indeed, Shenmue is much more of an adventure game with fighting sequences than the other way around.

And as such, it fails completely. The Japanese used to make good action games and their RPGs can be entertaining; but the overwhelming majority of their adventures are dull and pointless, being almost entirely devoid of true gameplay. Unfortunately, Shenmue is yet another one of those Japanese adventures: it just fools us into thinking it's more than that because of its free movement and fancy 3D. Seriously now: 90% of the gameplay in Shenmue consists of walking around and participating in uniformly dull conversations. There are no puzzles or challenging tasks of any kind. It's just running from one boring character to another and asking a myriad of unnecessary questions. In fact, even that doesn't matter: regardless of what you do, after a few days you get a call from a Chinese master, which completely negates all your previous achievements in the investigation - whatever they might have been.

It's like they didn't even try. And that's the game's ultimate problem: obviously, all the effort went into designing the visually impressive world, while gameplay was clearly an afterthought. There is absolutely nothing there that hasn't been done before many times and better. People went "oh" and "ah" at the sight of Ryo opening a drawer, forgetting they could open many more drawers (and find much more useful stuff) in simple RPGs of the 16-bit era. Once the novelty of seeing familiar actions performed in 3D wears off, you are left with paper-thin gameplay taking place in what is actually a small and restricted world. We are only talking about a few streets of a quiet town where you cannot even enter most of the buildings.

Another mystery, for me, was the praise directed at the story and the cinematic direction of Shenmue. At that point I could only ask: what story? Ryo's father was killed, so Ryo meets a couple of Chinese people who help him, earns some money and goes to Hong-Kong. This is, in all seriousness, the summary of all the important events that happen in the game. To get to them you'll have to endure days upon days of aimless wandering and inane dialogues. As for the game's dramatic qualities, they have been vastly exaggerated as well: the cutscenes are impressive only because they demonstrate the power of the game's engine. Otherwise, they are completely unremarkable and further undermined by bad voice acting.

The Bottom Line
Shenmue has lavish visuals and a few nice ideas here and there, but it's hard to understand why it was considered a revolutionary game by some people. It is, at best, a mildly entertaining collection of minigames superimposed on visual splendor without any actual gameplay backbone. The sequel is indeed more dynamic and more fun to play, but I'm not at all surprised the series was discontinued: the second game has already squeezed everything possible out of the nearly empty formula that tried to pass for a breakthrough in game design.

Dreamcast · by Unicorn Lynx (181780) · 2019

One of the best games ever made.

The Good
Shenmue has a very unique approach to its gameplay. The game is played out in real world days and nights, which pass by at around a minute real world time for every half hour game time. There are people in the town and its surroundings that go about their daily life, each one has their own unique routine. Day turns to night and back to day with stunning realism, loads of things in the game can be interacted with such as buying toys from gumball machines or playing games at the arcade. This is a very cool feature as you can actually play space harrier and hang on. When you do so, the game switches to a kind of emulator which runs the original arcade code identically to the original arcade hardware. Story wise this game sounds like nothing special at first glance, your father is murdered and you have to find the people who killed him. However, the way the story unfolds is beautifully done and thoroughly absorbing. Gameplay has several styles the main one being adventuring. You have to walk around town talking to people and gathering information, at certain times you'll get into a fight. In these situations you are treated to a kind of Virtua fighter battle mode which works beautifully and is loads of fun. There are also quick timer sections in which you have to press the directions that appear on screen in order to avoid danger in much the same way as the old Dragons Lair games. This may sound bad but it works well within the realms of Shenmue and is not overused. Audio, with the exception of the voice acting (more on that later) is perfect with sounds of birds in the distance and the bustle of the market place being perfectly realised. The quest is huge and since the story is part of something much bigger, doen't finish thusly leaving you hungry for more. Just as well then that a sequel is available November 2001.

The Bad
There are very few things that I didn't like about shenmue. The voice acting is poor with some very monotone performances which really hurt the feel of the game. This is a real shame. The problems extend to the dialogue which is often stilted and unnatural and can even mislead you a little. An example being that someone may say something that seems to indicate there is nothing more they can tell you yet further prodding releases even more info which was vital to continuing. This is a rare thing however.

The Bottom Line
Shenmue is one of the most beautiful games ever made. It is a form of RPG with adventure elements but cannot be put into any one category. This game is also unlikely to see the light of day on any system other than the Dreamcast which makes it the best reason to have one. Warnings do go out to those of you that don't like a slower paced game as you may find yourself getting bored. For the rest of you all I can say is you must have this game.

Dreamcast · by Sycada (177) · 2001

The soda-buying simulator

The Good
The level of detail is unsurpassed by any other Dreamcast game I have ever seen, period. This is the closest thing to walking down an actual street in a claustrophobic small Japanese town besides actually getting a plane ticket and just doing it. Also, the playable Sega classics in the arcade will have you yearning for the days of the single quarter game.

The Bad
Um... where's the game? Fight sequences are extremely rare until the later part of the game, which tries to make up for the lull by having you beat the drud out of about 50-60 guys. Until then you're treated to Ryo's burning hunger for vengeance taking the form of him wandering around town looking largely apathetic to the events around him. The plot advancement is pretty tepid, featuring you asking every single person you come across the same question again and again, some of which the player has observed in the intro. It's a pretty boring verbal scavenger hunt. "Have you seen a... car?" "Why yes, it was a... black car." And thus you start asking everybody if they've seen a... black car. Ryo's personality is bad enough, but the budget voice talent will have even the most die-hard dub fan turning on the original voice track with subtitles. Also, considering this is about a sixth of the intended product... not cool.

The Bottom Line
It's a fascinating attempt, and certainly one that took a whole lot of sweat and love from the developers. I just couldn't imagine forking over full price for it.

Dreamcast · by Vance (94) · 2002

[ View all 8 player reviews ]

Discussion

Subject By Date
I don't think this is a simulation game White Snail (122) Jan 3, 2021
Clear Game Save GNJMSTR (106) Jul 3, 2009

Trivia

1001 Video Games

Shemue appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.

Budget

In the 2008 Guinness World Records Gamer's Edition, the Dreamcast version of Shenmue is listed as the most expensive game ever to develop at $70 million.

Development

Shenmue started development on the SEGA Saturn. The Dreamcast and Xbox versions of Shenmue II both contain a video of scenes from the Saturn prototype, accessible when you beat the game and save your file. The scenes are impressive given the limited power of the Saturn. The working title was Virtua Fighter RPG and the protagonist Ryo was in fact based on Akira from the Virtua Fighter series.

The game was supposed to be quite longer than what it ended up to be. The game progressed further into Hong Kong and even had flashback sequences were you got to play as young Ryo. Due to time constraints and market pressure the decision was made to cut the game at the point were Ryo sets sail to Hong Kong, however lots of the mentioned sequences were already produced and included in Shenmue 2.

Inaccuracies

The game takes place in the mid-80s on a definite timeline, but the weather is inaccurate. There is an unlockable mode to play with the actual historical weather for that period of time.

Marketing

During promotions at Tokyo of the original Dreamcast version Sega used displays featuring real forklifts (as used in the harbour scenes) holding TV's displaying previews of the game.

Mini games

Shenmue features the ability to play Space Harrier and Hang-On, the original 80's arcade games made by Sega. Both games were also created and designed by Yu Suzuki.

References

Although the game takes places in the 1980´s, Ryo Hazuki has a Sega Saturn hidden under his TV set. Said console was not available in Japan until late November of 1994, but like the references to Sonic, Virtua Fighter and Virtua Racing games, these things have no effect in the game and where included to please Sega fans.

Soundtrack on vinyl LP

In summer 2015, a remastered recordings of the Shenmue soundtrack are released on vinyl LP by Data Discs. The recording contains 13 tracks from the game by the composers Takenobu Mitsuyoshi, Ryuji Iuchi, Osamu Murata and Yuzo Koshiro. The remastering was done by Shawn Hatfield (Audible Oddities). (Sources: Data Discs product description, LP at Discogs)

Awards

  • GameSpy
    • 2000 – Dreamcast Game of the Year

Information also contributed by Chris Chidester; David Mackenzie, J. Michael Bottorff, Juan Pablo Bouquet, Karthik KANE, Lain Crowley, Jo, tangledcontrolpads and Vance

Analytics

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Related Games

Shenmue II
Released 2001 on Dreamcast, 2002 on Xbox
Shenmue III
Released 2019 on Windows, PlayStation 4
Shenmue I & II
Released 2018 on Windows, PlayStation 4, Xbox One
Shenmue III: Battle Rally
Released 2020 on PlayStation 4, Windows
Shenmue III: Story Quest Pack
Released 2020 on Windows, PlayStation 4
Bright Memory: Episode 1
Released 2019 on Windows, 2020 on Xbox Series
Shenmue III: Big Merry Cruise
Released 2020 on PlayStation 4, Windows
Shenmue III: Complete DLC Collection
Released 2019 on PlayStation 4, 2020 on Windows

Related Sites +

  • Shenmue Dojo
    The biggest Shenmue fansite online with videos, music, artwork and everything else related to this great series.
  • The Hazuki Dojo
    A fansite that contains videos, fan fiction, downloadable material and all kinds of information for the dedicated Shenmue fan.
  • The Shenmue Legend
    Everything you could want from a dedicated Shenmue site plus more. All the info, on all Shenmue topics, no matter how obscure.

Identifiers +

  • MobyGames ID: 3558
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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Grant McLellan.

Additional contributors: Julian McKenzie, Zovni, Kaliban, Unicorn Lynx, Sciere, Joby Kuriako, Игги Друге, —-, Patrick Bregger, Jo ST, FatherJack.

Game added April 3, 2001. Last modified March 25, 2024.