Ryuji Iuchi End of Year Q&A Stream

James Brown

James Brown

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Some of you may remember last year we were gathering questions for Iuchi-san to answer live on his end of year stream. This was very successful and he was overwhelmed with questions, which was a great problem for him to have, and he was very appreciative!

Incase anyone is unfamilar, check out his profile here on Sega Retro - https://segaretro.org/Ryuji_Iuchi

Please leave a question for Ryuji below, it can be anything, ranging from his time working on the series, his music, a particular song, or his general life.

We'll forward these questions to him, and with a bit of luck @Switch will be able to give us a translated overview of his answers :)

Thanks guys, looking forward to all of your questions!
 
Is it possible we could hear the unreleased song you had to scrap from using?

Who was your inspiration for wanting to learn music and eventually become a composer? (I am not really sure if any of these have ever been asked of him, as I shamefully have yet to watch the parts you put out in the above post, I promise I eventually will)
 
Do you have envisioned an ending theme for Ryo's final battle with Lan Di? As I imagined god willing you will be the composer for the rest of the series. I don't think it should go to anyone else.

(damn, I don't think I can think of anything else right now)
 
Some questions i thought now.

1. How many instruments do you play?

2. What types of music do you listen and enjoy?

3. About music... What are you listening to these days? what artists?

3. What are your favorite moments in the Shenmue games?

4. What are your favorite characters in the Shenmue series?

5. How many songs you composed for the Shenmue series?

6. How was your experience playing the Shenmue games? you are a big Shenmue fan?

7. How is the process of making a song for a game?

8. What is your advice to people that want to learn how to play an instrument?

9. What are your favorite songs in the Shenmue games? The Shenmue soundtracks are masterpieces to me, thank you for everything.
 
Some other questions from me:
  • Most of the songs in Shenmue were compressed in order to be played with the Dreamcast sound chip and use less space on disk. Were you, the composers, involved in that process or was it handled by other programmers? Were you satisfied by how the tracks ended up sounding with that technique? (For example, your beautiful track from Shenmue II known as "Wizard Trees" was revealed to have an Erhu lead in its Shenmue III version titled "Not Even a Moment")
  • Do most of the tracks for Shenmue games have an actual song title? Did you think of a title before delivering it to the team?
  • Of course I don't want you to reveal anything, but are you aware of any story bits for future Shenmue installments, by virtue of having been in the development team?. Like, for example, were you asked or did you compose a song for an event or location that hasn't been reached in the first three games, but you know about?
  • The same question could be asked about known cancelled segments of the story, like the boat chapter, the train trip, the extra Guilin content on Shenmue II, or the Baisha or Shanghai episodes.
  • Through his Twitter account, your colleague Osamu Murata recently said he was "almost alone" among the composers during the Shenmue II development time. But we know you composed some tracks for Shenmue II and even III, so do you recall when did you actually wrap up your work? Was it many months before Shenmue II release? (on sept 2001)
()
  • Assuming you have played Shenmue III, how did you feel on your music use? Was there any track that you felt specially appropriate for some setting or event in the game? Or specially happy to be finally unveiled?
  • Do you have any favourite music from other Sega games from the Dreamcast era? Were you in touch with other Sega composers at that time?
Hoping for a great interview, as always. And thanks to Iuchi-san for dedicating time to fans!
 
JCJ said:
Some other questions from me:
  • Most of the songs in Shenmue were compressed in order to be played with the Dreamcast sound chip and use less space on disk. Were you, the composers, involved in that process or was it handled by other programmers? Were you satisfied by how the tracks ended up sounding with that technique? (For example, your beautiful track from Shenmue II known as "Wizard Trees" was revealed to have an Erhu lead in its Shenmue III version titled "Not Even a Moment")
  • Do most of the tracks for Shenmue games have an actual song title? Did you think of a title before delivering it to the team?
  • Of course I don't want you to reveal anything, but are you aware of any story bits for future Shenmue installments, by virtue of having been in the development team?. Like, for example, were you asked or did you compose a song for an event or location that hasn't been reached in the first three games, but you know about?
  • The same question could be asked about known cancelled segments of the story, like the boat chapter, the train trip, the extra Guilin content on Shenmue II, or the Baisha or Shanghai episodes.
  • Through his Twitter account, your colleague Osamu Murata recently said he was "almost alone" among the composers during the Shenmue II development time. But we know you composed some tracks for Shenmue II and even III, so do you recall when did you actually wrap up your work? Was it many months before Shenmue II release? (on sept 2001)
()
  • Assuming you have played Shenmue III, how did you feel on your music use? Was there any track that you felt specially appropriate for some setting or event in the game? Or specially happy to be finally unveiled?
  • Do you have any favourite music from other Sega games from the Dreamcast era? Were you in touch with other Sega composers at that time?
Hoping for a great interview, as always. And thanks to Iuchi-san for dedicating time to fans!
Click to expand...
Some fanatstic questions here, excited to hear some of those being answered!
 
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Have you ever considered putting on a concert to showcase the music of Shenmue to a wider audience? If so, how could fans help to make this a reality?
 
You can watch the full Q&A stream above.

Here are quick links to Ryuji playing live music:

Christmas on Dobuita Street -

Forest 5 -

He also intermittently played little bits of other games, I think Ys...worth a watch of the whole stream anyways thanks to @Switch's live translations in the chat.
 
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