Whats your Shenmue story?

[BruceWayne911]

I'm not sure if this has been started before but here goes. I'd like to hear everyone's story on discovering Shenmue, here's mine.

Its was my 12th birthday and I had all my friends over playing video games. As I'm opening all my gifts I come across a Dreamcast called Shenmue. It was given to me by a friend name Fred. I asked him,"What's Shenmue"? He just looked at me and said,"Don't worry about it you'll like it". A few days later I'm at home bored so I decide to check out Shenmue. From the opening cutscene I'm hooked looking at the screen like WTF is going on. Lan Di had literally killed Iwao with a hadouken lol. As I start to play the game its pulling me in more and more trying to figure out the mystery of why Ryos father was killed. The game was completely different to anything I had ever experienced. After beating Shenmue I ran to the internet to find out if Shenmue 2 was a reality. I chose XBOX as my next gen console solely to play Shenmue 2.

Shenmue 2 was the same as Shenmue but much better in everyway(IMO). After beating Shenmue 2 I ran to the internet again to see if Shenmue 3 was happening but sadly I couldn't find any factual news. I did find the Shenmue Dojo(Shenmue Dojo.net back then) and I got to communicate with a whole community of people who felt the way I felt about Shenmue. This was a pretty big thing back then because when talking about your favorite game I would always say Shenmue and everybody would look at me and say,"What's Shenmue"? I also got educated on Shenmue Dojo because I had no idea who Yu Suzuki was and how ambitious the franchise was. Even a few years ago I just found out that you can beat Chai when you fight him at the arcade, I always lost that fight. Or how in Shenmue 2 you can fight the Tomato Convenience store girl.

I want to give a special thanks to Shenmue Dojo for always be available these past 20 years with Shenmue news and topics. Also a special thanks to the Shenmue community for never giving up let's make Shenmue 3 and beyond a reality.

 

[code l name]

There was this thread which people shared their stories of discovering Shenmue. With the imminent release of Shenmue 3, I think it’s a great time to revisit this question.

My story is a little unique. Like many of you, I had been a life long gamer although my allegiances had always been with Nintendo. To say I was a diehard fanboy would be putting it mildly and after playing to death my N64 I was eagerly anticipating release of the GameCube in late 2001. At the time I lived in New Zealand and a lot of my friends had been raving about Dreamcast. I’m can’t recall the exact circumstances but shortly after Sega decided to suspend production of the Dreamcast I bought a second hand machine. I do recall doing research and figuring out what games I wanted on the system and I remember reading a review from IGN of Shenmue. There was picture of Ryo looking up at the giant crane in the harbour that’s indelibly stuck in my head. I couldn’t believe the visual quality, scale and the unique setting immediately captured my attention. The interesting thing was when I bought the machine it was after the PAL release of Shenmue 2, so I had both games together.

The reason this sticks in my mind was my first time playing through Shenmue I got to the harbour and encountered the groundhog day glitch. I spent maybe a week working at the harbour trying to get to next story beat without luck (I’m sure I must have consulted Gamefaqs, but clearly didn’t get right answer), frustrated I booted up Shenmue 2 and played a chunk of HK chapter. In retrospect I can’t believe my 16 year old self did that, but that’s how the games drew me in. Ocarina of time was first video game where I felt truly transported to a different world, but Shenmue took that to a scale I frankly haven’t experienced since through its immaculate attention to detail, carefully constructed setting and rich world and cast of characters.

Shortly afterwards I was looking online looking for information and found original Dojo. There’s been amazing group of posters here that’s kept the love for series going, especially during many dark years. With recent preview at E3 I have to still pinch myself sometimes and realize in not so distant future all of us will get continuation of this story that really came together for me by a strange set of coincidences.