Shenmue II: The story goes on... music

24Nathan

24Nathan

Joined: Fri Apr 09, 2004 11:13 pm
Joined
Jul 27, 2018
Location
US
Okay, so I encountered this oddity in 2014, during a playthrough of Shenmue IIx. Let me give a brief introduction:

I first got Shenmue II a few weeks after its release along with an Xbox. I don't remember the exact date, but it had to have been an early version of the console. When I played Shenmue II on it, I noticed the same music differences everyone else did, like these:

Fast forward a lot of years and playthroughs, and that original Xbox's disc drive was having major issues properly ejecting without some "help". So I got another one from a friend. Also got another copy of Shenmue II as a gift. I was using this copy of II and the new original Xbox to play the game again in 2014, and suddenly, I had a realization...what was commonly referred to as the "Dreamcast" version of the ending music where Ryo and Shenhua finally see the giant mirrors was playing on my Xbox copy of the game:
It for sure happened. I took a crappy cell phone video of it and sent it to LanDC as I was talking with him one day. I scoured the disc itself, case, and manual for any difference, thinking maybe it was a revision of Shenmue II that was not very well known. I couldn't (and still can't, even with that copy compared to another one I bought after my original was stolen) see any difference whatsoever. So my theory is that for some reason, the Xbox hardware was the only issue. I am not a technical person, so someone here may destroy that thought, but it is the only solution I can think of. I am currently playing through Shenmue II (my third copy) on yet another Xbox (other one was stolen as well), and will see if this happens again, as well as if the other offending tracks are different from the "Dreamcast" versions.

I found some information on Xbox revisions:
http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=367210&seqNum=2
http://xboxdevwiki.net/Hardware_Revisions
http://www.racketboy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=755098

Does anyone else happen to have a IIx save file somewhere near Guilin so we can test this?
 
Ah, I remember something like this coming up on the old forums.
Are you sure you remember right that it sounded like this when you first played it? I mean it would be easy to assume to have heard it like in the video, after such a long time.

No other video of Shenmue II on the Xbox seems to have the music sound like that, it always plays like on the Dreamcast from what I found.
You have to take into consideration that these old Xbox recordings were done by @LanDC hacking the game to play them on the spot, iirc.
Who knows what kind of issues this may have caused for the sound to play correctly. @LanDC might be the best person to ask again.
 
There were no issues with my old recordings. That's just how they sounded. Several tracks in Shenmue II Xbox are just different. My initial thought was that emulation was simply dodgy, mainly due to missing instruments, reversed stereo, lack of reverb effects and things like that. But what's odd are some tracks have entirely different structures on the Xbox version, even adding instruments. Take the Unused 3 track for instance. The Xbox version adds an erhu that is nowhere to be found on the Dreamcast version.


 
I'm positive I heard it differently. 99.9% positive. I can possibly even dig up the old cell phone video.
 
LanDC said:
There were no issues with my old recordings. That's just how they sounded. Several tracks in Shenmue II Xbox are just different. My initial thought was that emulation was simply dodgy, mainly due to missing instruments, reversed stereo, lack of reverb effects and things like that. But what's odd are some tracks have entirely different structures on the Xbox version, even adding instruments. Take the Unused 3 track for instance. The Xbox version adds an erhu that is nowhere to be found on the Dreamcast version.


Click to expand...

When you hear them seperately like that, it almost sounds as though the Xbox version has pulled the wrong instrument midi or whatever to use out of a list, and instead of say something like the Piano instrument, Xbox weird emulation or a mistake in the code is pulling the Chinese violin thingy by mistake and it's virtually re-creating the sound structure...but with the wrong instrument, if that makes sense :p?
 
I see what you're saying but I don't believe that's the case here. There's even additional data in the first 10 seconds of the Xbox version. There is no instrument playing in the first 10 seconds on the Dreamcast that correlates to what the erhu in the Xbox version is doing.

Edit: Actually give me just a bit and I will analyze the tracks further to prove what's going on.
 

Okay, so I removed all of the instruments from the Dreamcast version except for the piano and synth. Clearly, the composure of the erhu playing on the Xbox version is entirely different than what we hear here. If it were simply an instrument swap over the piano, it would sound not only entirely different, but would be a complete mess since there are way more notes being played. This concludes that the Xbox version is different on purpose.
 
Interesting stuff.
I wish someone like 8-bit Music Theory would do an analysis video on the music of Shenmue.
 
Found it!
For reference, here are both the Xbox and Dreamcast versions of this track:

Also, notice how since I saved in the Stone Pit, it no longer lists the date and time on the loading screen? Maybe that has something to do with it? Maybe if you save in the Stone Pit, it takes a different path so to speak, and ends up getting the different version of the music? I don't know. @LanDC, did you ever find the DC version of that track in the Xbox game files?
 
Had to play them side-by-side to even hear the difference between Dreamcast and Xbox versions, but there's a longer pause in the music before Shenhua's speech in the Dreamcast version than the Xbox version, and your video syncs with the Dreamcast version. Just to check that it wasn't a problem with the recording, I compared with one of my videos and it syncs with the Xbox version. So it definitely seems to be playing the Dreamcast version of the music.

I'll have a check later today and see if saving in the Stone Pit makes a difference. I know from my experiments that the game gets really screwy from Rocky Area onwards, so it wouldn't surprise me.
 
It's contagious!

I loaded up the save latest in the game I had (just before the start of Yellow Head Bldg.) and started running through the game to get to the Stone Pit.

I usually use the clock in the corner as a visual cue when skipping the second floor of the Yellow Head Bldg. (using the map glitch). The clock wasn't there. It wasn't there on loading screens either.

I managed to get all the way to the Dou Niu fight and beat him, and then... the game crashed.

So that was an interesting attempt.
 
Weird, the only time I've had the game crash (on Xbox, haven't played my DC version yet), was when I tried to map glitch into the dock that gets closed off permanently for renovations once you reach the Green Market Quarter and Joy tells you about it.

Are you saying your clock never appeared once inside the Yellow Head Building?
 
24Nathan said:
Are you saying your clock never appeared once inside the Yellow Head Building?
Click to expand...

Yup, I saved so I can reproduce it anytime. The clock never reappears, every loading screen just shows the name of the area in the centre (like it does when you reach the top of Big Ox Bldg.).

It's pretty easy to get the game to crash if you're trying; and the Xbox version has a habit of crashing where there would normally be a disc swap (saving the game sometime between swaps seems to mitigate it - even without reloading it).

Going to have another go at seeing if saving in the Stone Pit makes the timing of the ending music change.

EDIT: On loading the previous save file it seems that the clock consistently disappears on entering the Yellow Head Bldg.
 
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That is interesting...on all counts! I'll research with my current IIx playthrough as well. Maybe it is to avoid having to send Ryo home to sleep? But I can't remember my game ever doing that...

Also, I have never gotten IIx to crash. But I did play with a disc and console purchased new at release.
 
24Nathan said:
That is interesting...on all counts! I'll research with my current IIx playthrough as well. Maybe it is to avoid having to send Ryo home to sleep? But I can't remember my game ever doing that...
Click to expand...

The game doesn't normally remove the clock when you reach the Yellow Head Bldg. - it does disable your curfew (once you enter the Yellow Head Bldg., Ryo never needs sleep again, even if you glitch your way out of it again). The only times it removes the clock are in the Baihu area, on the rooftop, in Rocky Area, and in the Stone Pit.

I don't know what I've done to change that, but now I have the power to lock the world at any time of day I choose! Mwahahaha etc.

24Nathan said:
Also, I have never gotten IIx to crash. But I did play with a disc and console purchased new at release.
Click to expand...

It's a known problem, I think there's possibly a memory leak that's cleaned up on saving.
 
UPDATE:

Playing Shenmue IIx. I decide for fun while finding a place to hide from Dou Niu while snooping in Yuan's room to just wait and see what will happen. First, I saw a short little scene where he says Ryo has some nerve, then proceeds to pick him up by the throat and throw him to the ground. Don't think I have seen that before.

Then...the scene resets in Yuan's room where I have to pick a hiding spot, and the music changed! For context, it should be this that plays:


But then, it changes back to this after failing to find a hiding spot in time (~3:40):


I'm very curious as to why this seems to happen. If my Dreamcasts would just quit dying (going to save up for a modded SD card one), I would test this on my PAL copy.
 
Going back to this...

The rerelease is also playing this strange Xbox version of the music. At first I thought it was yet another case of poor instrument coverage but it was so different that I just remembered this thread and checked it again and yes, it is just like that butchered variant.

Gives the theory that there was an updated pressing of the game a new spin, with the rerelease using the old source code.
 
Something to fuel this yet again!

As mentioned in the mod forums, while looking for the Guilin arrival erhu music I found a prerecorded version of this very music piece were talking about here in the Dreamcast's files. Curiously, it has the same timing and melody changes featured in that one Xbox version and Shenmue I & II.

 
Guess that this is, yet again, a case where some old assets found their way into the Xbox port...

I think that this prerecorded version is the oldest iteration of the music. At some point they decided to do it with samples in real time, because it ultimately sounded better than that 22 kHz stream. Logically it was a very direct transfer of the melody, still lacking that incredible climax we later got. They probably changed the music to add that very late, possibly after the cutscene was done.

The foundation used for the Xbox version simply didn't seem to include many last minute changes that were made to the Dreamcast game. It is of course bizzare that only some Xbox discs have the wrong music. Maybe it was for once an error they found and fixed with later pressings. We'll probably never get an official answer to that...
 
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