In the west no, but in Japan it was a big name.
FF6 sold 2.5M copies at launch in Japan. So no, it was not the success of FF7, but they were still popular games.
My point was globally. Globally FF wasnt popular yet at the time.
We could make the same argument for Dragon Quest which sold ridiculous numbers in Japan too but the first three games localized in the West did not, hence their lack of interest in localizing the SNES DQ games.
Sources don't agree on this. Wikipedia puts it at $40M US, which is still large. $100M at the time seems too big, but whatever it was, it was a huge budget for sure.
Wikipedia isn't always accurate and can be altered. I forget where I originally sourced my info but the 45 million was Square's own budget money for development alone. The 100 million on top of that came from Sony for marketing. This was because they lured Square away from Nintendo after that humiliating split from Sony and Nintendo from their proposed Nintendo Playstation project.
Also even Sega of America had agreed to partner up with Sony around that time to make a console together but Sega of Japan refused, also mocking Sony. Mistakes and assumptions were made...
However, to say gamers didn't know about RPG's in the west isn't true. Super Mario RPG was really popular in NA. Even Final Fantasy sold decently, but lacked the really wide, mainstream appeal at the time.
I didnt say they were unknown. I said they weren't popular. Super Mario RPG was bought because it was Mario first and foremost. Also, it wasn't a Playstation game so there's that. Different audience. There were no high profile RPGs on the Playstation as of yet that were selling gangbusters.
As I mentioned I wonder if Shenmue would have been more successful and had a larger fanbase if it was released on PS2.
maybe. But the whole goal at that time for Sega was actually initially trying to get Microsoft to allow backwards compatibility for their Sega Dreamcast discs. When Microsoft didnt agree, they settled on allowing 11 Sega exclusives for the system launch, one of them being Shenmue 2.
For whatever reason, Virtua Fighter 4 was on PS2 instead of Xbox. I spoke about this a week ago or so and someone mentioned it was probably due to Dead or Alive 3's exclusivity deal with Microsoft funding that game and probably didnt want any direct competitors on its system. Though prior, Dead or Alive 2: Hardcore was on the PS2...
Shenmue 1 sold 1.2M copies on the Dreamcast, but what is its legacy? Even as the most KS game of all time it only had 80k backers and that's included the slacker campaign.
What happened to the other 1.1M people who bought it?
Too much time passed. Too much negativity within that time over the media. People moved on etc
Never mind all the people who didn't buy it but played it at a friend's, myself included, or pirated it (another reason DC failed, remember that boot disc?).
Nevermind the pirates. As mentioned in the past, it is said that in order for Shenmue to be a success and the DC not to die, everyone that owned a DC would have had to buy the game 3 times.
I don't think Sekiro or Uncharted are adventure games
They aren't.
You said Action Adventure. You didn't say Adventure.
Action Adventure is a different genre than Adventure. Those two are Action Adventure games.
Shenmue is an adventure game. There is some action in it to be sure; but it isn't enough overall to call it an action adventure game as the majority of your experience you are in adventure mode more than action mode.
but semantics aside there is no reason an adventure game has to be slow paced.
Most are.
In Japan, they use the term for even visual novels.
Shenmue 2 is decently fast paced and filled with action, a lot of people still hate it.
It absolutely is not. It is still very slow paced. In some instances I'd argue even more than the first due to how much bigger the environments are.
I get that it's not DMC or whatever, but most RPG's are at least as slow paced or more, often with far more grindy aspects. Dragon's Quest is starting to get mainstream appeal in the west and it's not exactly for the impatient.
no way. RPGs hit you with battles almost all the time how could you say they are slow paced? You fight right way in FF VI and FF VII and even in DQ XI
Shenmue definitely has parts of it that require patience, and that works best when it's aligned with its story i.e. carrying the books or catching leaves. I think that when a lot of people say that Shenmue requires patience though they are more referring to Shenmue 1's sometimes poor pacing, and far worse, forced waiting. The latter of which is just bad game design; full stop. I can't defend it even though it's in a Shenmue game and there is a reason why S2 and 3 don't have it.
Shenmue 2 absolutely has slow pace. The whole waiting for Chawang signs, the whole searching for the 4 Wude masters, the whole following NPCs when you dont know where to go etc. You're praising up Shenmue 2 while lamenting on Shenmue 1 when they both share the same qualities. Like I said, at times Shenmue 2 is even more slow paced than Shenmue 1 due to the size of its world.
There will always be people who don't like slow paced things, but I think that slow paced often gets conflated with boring and it doesn't have to be. Shenmue as a series showcases both sides of this at one point or another. People who don't like it just couldn't get hooked by the other redeeming qualities, unfortunately in spite of it.
True. Thats why I can say its 'a bad game'. Its just people didnt have the patience to fully appreciate and explore it.
Fair enough. But most of those games mix elements of other genres in to keep the game engaging to modern audiences. the traditional point and click adventure games or their equivalents i.e. Grim Fandango etc. did die out. There's a reason LucasArts and Sierra don't make them anymore.
Isnt Lucas Arts pretty much EA now? I wouldnt use them as an example
And Telltale games still exists forgot about them