Last year, the world's biggest-selling magazine on cinematic entertainment, Empire, ranked the Top 100 Video Games of All Time. The top five are titles so legendary that even the most casual of gamers will recognize them: The Last of Us, The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time, World of Warcraft, Final Fantasy VII, and Metal Gear Solid, respectively. Crouched in the shadows of these giants on pillar #7—just behind GoldenEye:007 and just above Red Dead Redemption, Grand Theft Auto V, Halo:Combat Evolved, and Skyrim—is our meek, neglected orphan, Shenmue.
For nine years, Shenmue held the Guinness World Record for "Highest Production Value in a Video Game", until it was finally dethroned by Grand Theft Auto IV in 2008. Two generations of consoles arrived in those nine years, along with such games as Metal Gear Solid 2–3, Halo 1–3, Call of Duty 1–4, and Final Fantasy VIII–XII. And yet none of them, for all their resources and ambitions, could hurdle the bar set by Shenmue nearly a decade earlier.
Most big-budget games have a development period of 1–3 years (Call of Duty, Halo, Assassin's Creed, Uncharted), and for modern-day, content-rich RPGs (Final Fantasy, Fallout, The Last of Us, Red Dead Redemption) the development period is typically 4–5 years. Shenmue took six years of constant development to create, starting way, way back in 1993―an unthinkable scope at the time. It took so long to make that the system they were designing it for (the Sega Saturn) died halfway through, and the team was forced to start from scratch with Sega's new system, the Dreamcast.
So, let's take a closer look at what we now know. Lots of ambition, lots of time...and lots of money. It might be difficult to tell this now, but in the 90s, Sega was a god in the world of gaming. In 1993, when Sega controlled a whopping 65% of the console market, they seemed invincible...and they must have felt that way too, because they dedicated an unprecedented 70 million dollars to a top-secret development called Project Berkeley. Their goal? To make a supergame unlike any the world had ever seen. To captain this titanic endeavor, Sega chose their in-house wonderboy, Yu Suzuki. What Miyamoto is to Nintendo, or Hideo Kojima is to Konami, Yu Suzuki was to Sega. He was nothing less than a prodigy in the world of arcade games, creating such revolutionary titles as Hang-On, Out-Run, and After Burner. One of his games, Virtua Fighter, was the first video game to go on permanent display in the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History in Washington D.C.. (His work would make another appearance at the museum decades later, when Shenmue was featured in the Art of Video Games exposition in 2013). Not only did Sega infuse its ambitious enterprise with a genius and enough money to fund a small army, they gave their pet project six years to come to fruition. When most games spend as much time in development as Shenmue, its usually because they are trapped in the dreaded Development Hell, a bureaucratic limbo where a game is stalled at a light that can't choose between red, yellow, or green. Yet this was not the case with Project Berkeley. Every workday of those six years was utilized to its fullest. Suzuki traveled the world to do research at ancient temples and foreign cities, while back in Japan, scores of master craftsmen—everyone from martial artists, to sculptors, to movie directors—toiled away under meticulous orders. Sega even pieced together their own full-sized orchestra to produce a complete cinematic score for the project. The music was released in a 2-disc album all to its own, and will be released again on vinyl in September 2015. While you continue to read this article, listen to this sample from the stunning soundtrack and try not to get goosebumps:
So? After combining all of these ingredients—tens of millions of dollars, years of slaving away by countless artisans, the insightful direction from the Leonardo DaVinci of video games—what did the final product look like? Before we take a look at it, take a moment to consider the other cutting-edge games that were also released in 1999, the same year as Shenmue:
Final Fantasy VIII [Sony PlayStation]
Super Smash Bros. [Nintendo 64]
Silent Hill [Sony PlayStation]
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater [Sony PlayStation]
Soul Calibur [Sega Dreamcast]
Counter-Strike [PC]
Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation [PlayStation/PC/Dreamcast]
All of these games were considered the greatest products that the industry could boast at the time—the cream of the gaming crop. Now, keeping in mind that all of these titles were in the same 1999 Toy's R' Us Christmas catalog, take a look at what Shenmue brought to the table, all of it generated in-engine:
Shenmue [1999 Sega Dreamcast]
Shenmue Passport [1999 Sega Dreamcast]
Shenmue II [2001 Sega Dreamcast]
Meet Ryu Hazuki, Shenmue's protagonist. After witnessing the murder of his father by a villainy-looking fellow, he sets out on a relentless campaign for revenge.
Welcome to Yokosuka. A real-life city in Japan, where the majority of Ryu's investigation takes place. As you can see, its about as charming as a tire swing in a junkyard.
And yet...if you are willing to explore, you'll come to find that, behind all the chainlink and concrete, that every alley and drab building beats with a warm heart.
The ambiance in the game is very flexible, and any environment can cover a wide-array of moods depending on what point in the story the player is at.
Even though you are monitoring Ryu's every waking second, you never see him eat or drink or use the toilet. But that doesn't mean he can't if you ask him to. From spending your limited money on pointless things like potato chips and light bulbs, to dialing random numbers on the telephone to see if anybody picks up, there is no rock you can't overturn, no matter how pointless.
Many of the characters you meet have a pre-existing relationship with Ryu, but the others, if you pester them enough, may come to know you over time.
Shenmue takes place in 1986, during a time when culture was scrambling to find a new look, in a part of Japan that was struggling to find its own place between Eastern and Western cultures. Even though the setting of the story seems to be undergoing an identity crisis, the result is an environment that is both engrossing and unique.
Ryu's journey is all about discovery. From the moment the player first picks up the controller, she is exploring a Russian doll from the inside out. The first minutes are used to investigate every crack and crevice of Ryu's cramped bedroom, which opens into a large house that in turn opens up to a sanctuary, then a street, then a neighborhood, then a town, then a city, then Hong Kong. By the time of the story's abrupt end, Ryu is exploring the vastness of China's wild.
Much of the game is about unraveling mysteries. No question is more pressing to the player than "WHO IS THIS FRICKIN GIRL?" The entire intro is devoted to her, her face is plastered on everything from candy bars to cassette tapes, and she frequents Ryu's dreams. Yet the player never meets her until the final moments of the second game, which never even made its way to American Dreamcast owners.
And these dudes drop LOOT on kickstarters.
Can't wait for the game tho.
feeling anymore in games as far as advancements in graphics & gameplay. Now, we just want a fitting conclusion to the trilogy. That's my expectation going into this game.
