The story of the creation of Shenmue
Project Berkley (the original name of Shenmue) was originally created for the 32-bit Sega Saturn console, but after the death of the console (rumors are that Sega gave up this console because she wanted to focus on the Arcade market, which, as history showed, did not pay off too much) the game was removed from the Saturn's publishing list.
The first news about the Dreamcast version of Shenmue was released in the fourth quarter of 1998. The game was announced as Virtua Fighter RPG, the characters were announced as eRPeG, featuring characters from the Virtua Fighter series, and Akira was to play the lead character.
The Virtua Fighter creator (Yu Suzuki !), one of the most famous person in the world of electronic entertainment, called God by someone, took on the development with his AM2 team. In October 1998, rumors about Virtua Fighter RPG turned out that it was actually nothing but Project Berkley and that the game has been in development for 3 years.
Yu Suzuki announced that he wants to create "a living breathing world" and I like to say that this "living world" has been created. On November 6th 1998, at Sega's press conference, Project Berkley was officially confirmed.
Yu Suzuki called the game FREE which stands for "Full Reactive Eyes Entertainment" and announced that it would be the original fusion of eRPeG, action game and adventure game.
On November 28 Japanese customers received a CD with videos and artwork from Project Berkley for each copy of Virtua Fighter 3tb released in Japan.
On June 24 1999, "What's Shenmue?" Was released in Japan.
Sega added this tiles to each new Dreamcast sold in Japan. It was a playable demo where you played as Ryo Hazuki and had to find Mr. Yukawe. The demo takes about 20 minutes and this is the first time you could explore a virtual Dobuite and watch its inhabitants.
An interesting fact is that in "What's Shenmue?" when pressing "X" Ryo can crouch. This ability was removed from the final version probably because it was not useful in the game.
One Month Before the Tokyo Game Show, Sega announced that each copy of the limited Shenmue edition will be accompanied by a fourth CD with a passport disc. The release date for the limited version was October 28, 1999.
One of the last promotion of Shenmue by Sega Japan was the dedication of the entire stand at the Tokyo Game Show to the game, where you could receive various gadgets related to the game, you could meet voice actors dressed up as characters appearing in the game or see a motorcycle that it rides live (Ryo's friend, Naoyuki).
In December 1999, "Shenmue - Yokosuka Chapter" hit Japanese stores, but only 100.000 Happy Japanese persons who placed the pre-orders could enjoy this beautiful game. Along with the game, they received an additional CD with the game music called "JukeBox music CD".
Shenmue was launched in the United States almost a year later after its launch in Japan on November 7, 2000, and the Europeans were awarded the title in December 2000.
After Shenmue-Yokosuka arrived, Sega announced that she was working on "Shenmue: The Movie". It is a 90-minute shortened transcript of the game (English dubbed Japanese subtitles) without additional animations. The interesting thing is that the Dreamcast is the first console that was used as a tool to create the movie.
This is the way Shenmue has gone to become a guest in our Dreamcast readers. It went this way with a game that gives with a very strong feeling, a feeling that I cannot define, one thing is certain.
This game will stay in the heart of every Dreamcast owner.
