The Story Of: Shenmue
When one of gaming’s most celebrated designers decided to create a cutting-edge console RPG, the Result was one of the most ambitious Projects of all time. Yu suzuki tells us how the original classics were made – and how he’s Reviving the series today
Yu Suzuki takes time out from finishing Shenmue III to discuss the incredible journey of Ryo Hazuki
Considering its short life, the Dreamcast is a machine with no shortage of excellent games, but none of them have quite the same association with the console as the
Shenmue games. Part of that is practical
– for almost 20 years, the Dreamcast was the only machine on which you could experience the original game, and therefore the complete tale. But the association goes deeper than that, as the game is reflective of the console that hosted it. Both Shenmue and the Dreamcast were incredibly ambitious projects that were ahead of their time in many respects, and both left players with the feeling that business was definitely unfinished, thanks to the premature discontinuation of the Dreamcast and the unresolved cliffhanger ending of Shenmue II. But where Sega’s return to the hardware market feels as distant a prospect as ever, Shenmue is on the brink of a remarkable revival thanks to the undying support of its fans.
The Shenmue games are 3D action adventures, which are based on an original story concept by Yu Suzuki – the founder of Ys Net, and best known for his time at Sega, where he was a programmer, director and producer on hit arcade games such as Space Harrier, Out Run and Virtua
Fighter. When asked what the very earliest influences on the creation of Shenmue were, Suzuki replies “They would be the games of Apple II such as Wizardry and Mystery House, as well as Virtua Fighter.” Suzuki had enjoyed the Apple games while studying, and wished to create a game in that spirit. However, the Virtua Fighter connection goes beyond that simple inspiration. The first two Virtua Fighter games were smash hits in Japan, and many projects were in the works to capitalise on this success – spin-off games, merchandise and even an animated TV series. However, the big Virtua Fighter side project was Suzuki’s own desire to create a Virtua Fighter
RPG, which would follow the story of Akira Yuki.
Of course, RPGS aren’t a tremendously arcade-friendly genre so AM2 would have to work with home console hardware, rather than the cutting-edge arcade hardware it was accustomed to. At the time, that meant working with the Saturn. Very little information about the Saturn version of the game has been made available to the public, with the most revealing being some video footage included as a bonus feature in Shenmue II. Much of the available footage is comprised of cinematic scenes (displayed in-engine, as in the Dreamcast game) with a little environmental exploration thrown in too. Though some details are naturally different, plenty of recognisable characters and scenes are shown, from the initial confrontation with Lan Di in the Hazuki family dojo to Ryo’s first encounter with Guizhang, and the discovery of the hidden basement. Some designs look rather close to the final vision, and it’s amazing how many scenes were developed.
While much about the game is a mystery, one thing is obvious – Shenmue would have been a graphical masterpiece by the standards of the Saturn. Character models and environments showed a level of detail that puts most of the system’s 3D games to shame, and there’s a cinematic flair to the story scenes that few developers of the time possessed. We’ve often wondered how such visuals were possible on a console which is notoriously difficult to work with, especially when it came to displaying 3D graphics. “I would think one main factor was that I personally did the direction and coding by myself,” says Suzuki. “At the time, very few tech people understood the true meaning of 3D.”
Ultimately, the Saturn version of Shenmue was never completed, as Sega was already planning a new console. In 1997, Suzuki decided to move the game to that system. “We started to see various possibilities in the Dreamcast while the development moved forward. We decided to move to the Dreamcast because we were confident the potential of Shenmue would increase tremendously with it.” While it’s not uncommon for games to switch generations during development, Shenmue looked to be in a fairly advanced state as the footage also shows off plenty of material