Random Shenmue Thoughts

Fun Hypothetical

Had this series been what it was originally supposed to be -- Virtua Fighter RPG: Akira's Story -- and had it been a rousing success for SEGA. Do you think it's possible we would of seen other Virtua Fighter RPG games such as Sarah's Story or Pai's Story or Shun Di's Story using a similar FREE engine?
 
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I know this may sound trite to the dedicated fanbase here but the sheer amount of unique dialogue in the first game never fails to impress me.

With my recent playthrough I’ve been trying to talk to residents I don’t always converse with and I’m still finding new pieces of dialogue I’ve never heard in my countless times of playing the games in 20 years. For example I got to the point of looking for sailors but instead of asking around Doubita I ventured back to Sakuragaoka and encountered Mitsubishi Nomura, the taxi driver. He then tells me story of how the sailors after bars close in Doubita go to the park to continue to party. How they are loud, obnoxious and recently keyed his taxi.

I also encountered Yamagishi in Sakura park at same story point and Ryo passes on Ine-San’s well wishes and ask how his back is doing.

There‘s so much world building, small little character insights that are available but only the most ardent fans will discover them.
 
Do we think that the Shenmue Side Story comics are still canon to the games?

I'm going to go with "no". Niao Sun having a radically different design, Ziming now not being one of the Four Leaders (unless he's a subordinate or Tentei), and Yu stating that the boat chapter was instead reworked into Shenmue 3 (i.e. Big Merry Cruise DLC and Chai's return in Bailu) all seem to indicate that, similar to a lot of expanded universe material for other franchises, they might have been discarded.

Chai suddenly wielding giant Wolverine claws always felt a bit wank to me.
 
Do we think that the Shenmue Side Story comics are still canon to the games?

I'm going to go with "no". Niao Sun having a radically different design, Ziming now not being one of the Four Leaders (unless he's a subordinate or Tentei), and Yu stating that the boat chapter was instead reworked into Shenmue 3 (i.e. Big Merry Cruise DLC and Chai's return in Bailu) all seem to indicate that, similar to a lot of expanded universe material for other franchises, they might have been discarded.

Chai suddenly wielding giant Wolverine claws always felt a bit wank to me.
I’m still stubbornly going to consider them canon 😛
Yu’s comment about Ziming not being one of the 4 leaders really confused me, as in that pic of them it really looks like one of the shadowed ones is meant to be him. Either way, I hope his and Xiuying’s story isn’t forgotten about.
Also, when you get off the boat in S2, the mother comments to Ryo that he helped Xiaomei when she was scared on the boat, which seems to reference the side story comic’s events.
 
Guizhang Chen finally meets Master Lishao Tao aka Xiuying Hong

 
Ironically if there is one way I can relate to Yuan in Shenmue II, it's that I prefer cleanliness and order. I can not stand it when people litter or tag buildings. It's one thing if it's genuine art, it's another when it's some scribbles. To me, it's the equivalent of a dog marking their territory.
 
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I noticed in earlier screenshots of the game Ryo's hair is different in the back.

View attachment 11274
Below is Ryo's final hair design were it is spiky at the neck area.

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Yeah it’s pretty unique shot because if you look at the Saturn footage it looks like the first screenshot (not spiky at the back) yet the top screenshot was from early version of Hong Kong I believe, and from other media Ryo was already much like the final model.

Certainly odd.
 
Yeah it’s pretty unique shot because if you look at the Saturn footage it looks like the first screenshot (not spiky at the back) yet the top screenshot was from early version of Hong Kong I believe, and from other media Ryo was already much like the final model.

Certainly odd.
It's always neat seeing stuff like this.
 
I have a theory as to why Ryo's hair isn't spiky at the neck area. When Shenmue switched from Saturn to Dreamcast it was still under the Virtua Fighter RPG concept for a few months. If you look inside the final release of Shenmue an unused model of Akira is present in the game files. Here's an image of the unused Akira model.
1620393472100.png

Now if you look at the back of Akira's model you can see that the back of his head is identical to the beta picture I posted a couple of days ago.

1620393628174.png

My theory is Ryo's final head model was not finished when they took that screenshot, so they swapped Akira head on an almost finished Ryo model, so it could go out to websites as early as possible.
 
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