Your shenmue discovery story

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SCQ

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Jul 27, 2018
When and how did you discover shenmue? What was your first experience with the game?

Seeing a new fan in the introduce yourself thread post how they discovered shenmue and their first experience with the game made me curious about other member's experiences.

For me it was back in 2001, i was 9 or 10 and had been in France for a year when a friend bought it. But what he didn't know when buying it is that the game was exclusively in English so when he found out he kept on inviting me over to play through the game with him so that i could translate what was being said. In the end it seems like I enjoyed it more than him since i later got shenmue 2 and played through it at least 30 times while he didnt really continue with the series. Funnily enough, even though i discovered the series with shenmue 1 my first real hands on playthrough of it was around 2008, 7 years after I first discovered the series with first game and 5 years after bleeding shenmue 2 dry on xbox.
 
I first heard about the game from the Official Dreamcast Magazine in the UK. Straight away I was drawn into the hype and Shenmue was the first game I ever got on launch and I even pre-ordered it. This was especially surprising as I’m not sure where I got the money from. Back then I was on benefits and as broke as dirt.

I completed my first playthrough the same day, it took me 21 hours, which I did straight. I remember that as soon as I finished it, I put the first disc in and started playing again. I only lasted passed the first scene again and decided to go to bed.

Since then I have played through the first game many, many times, and I’ve played the second a fair few times as well. At the time of the first Shenmue I was a massive ‘Japan Fan’ I loved everything Japanese. So the chance to ‘live’ in a Japanese world was everything I could wish for and more. I think that in the first game I definitely saw everything, on later playthroughs I explored every little nook and cranny that I could!
 
Benwahwah said:
Since then I have played through the first game many, many times, and I’ve played the second a fair few times as well. At the time of the first Shenmue I was a massive ‘Japan Fan’ I loved everything Japanese. So the chance to ‘live’ in a Japanese world was everything I could wish for and more. I think that in the first game I definitely saw everything, on later playthroughs I explored every little nook and cranny that I could!
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I understand you, being a big fan of 80s and 90s martial arts movies when I was a kid is definitely what made me love shenmue II so much. It felt like being able to play those films with an incredible amount of freedom.
 
Ever since i was a kid I've always been a fan of fighting games. Throughout the years I've been discovering different games from its genre such as Street fighter, mortal kombat, tekken ect.

At one point i stumbled across Virtua Fighter 4 and i felt in love with the series. As time went on i kept researching the game and the people behind it. That's where i found out about Yu Suzuki and his games including Shenmue.

This is around 2010. It looked intriguing looking at videos so i did something a little balsy. I played it on a pretty mediocre version of Null DC.

Even with all the inaccuracies i felt in love and the following year i got the sequel on Xbox through eBay. Later of course i got a Dreamcast and such.

Looking foward to what the future bring with the series.
 
I first saw Shenmue on a Sky One TV show called Blam!!! that used to be on Sunday mornings. I remember it made their no.1 spot several weeks in a row, and the clips they showed absolutely blew my mind.

I've actually searched high and low for Blam!!! on the internet so I can relive those memories but all I can find is a single episode on YT and it doesn't feature Shenmue.
 
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Great thread for the reboot of the site.

The Official Dreamcast Magazine back in 1999 (pictured below) is the first time I heard about Shenmue. I can't remember if earlier issues had much about it but I had a subscription since the first issue.

My Shenmue Story:

I had no idea this community even existed until July 2015. Sadly, I was one that loved Shenmue but had given up on a continuation ever happening. I remember reading the Official Dreamcast Magazine with Ryo on the cover and wondering what in the world Shenmue was (I used to have every issue and demo disc). Little did I know that the series would turn into a lifelong favorite of mine.

The magazine previews and trailers that came on the discs were enough to entice me to preorder the first Shenmue. It was just one of those games that I couldn't put down (with the exception of sleep and work). There have been few games that really pulled me into the story in as close to a full immersion as I think a game has ever come. When it ended, I was disappointed as there was no ending, but was expecting it given the previews. I eagerly anticipated the sequel so I could continue the story. Then disaster.

Living in America, we were one of the only primary gaming communities to not get Shenmue II on Dreamcast and I had no intentions of buying an Xbox for the port. I cursed Sega for leaving us out, but it was them who truly cursed themselves as Sega has never been the same since the end of Dreamcast. I figured that my time with Shenmue was at an end until a couple of years later, a friend of mine in college had gotten into Dreamcast. He was about as hardcore a Dreamcast pirate as I had ever seen as he had download dozens of Dreamcast titles onto his computer... including the European version of Shenmue II. He offered to burn me a copy and I accepted in order to continue the story.

I had to read the subtitles in order to understand the depth of the story but it truly was a masterpiece; being an incredible continuation. I remember playing through it while my girlfriend at the time (now wife) watched me play. Once I was done and the cliffhanger left all of us up in the air, I started to hope to hear news of a continuation. As time dragged on, I had kept my Dreamcast primarily for the Shenmue games, but it seemed as though the story would never complete. I had given up hope of a continuation as Sega seemed to be in the gutter.

Then there were murmurings that Mark Cerni was in talks with Yu Suzuki about potentially reviving Shenmue on the PS4 back around 2013 or so. I was truly excited at the prospect but the murmurings went away... until E3 2015. Before the show, people were anticipating a potential Shenmue 3 announcement as they do every year and I remember posting that it would never happen; I had given up hope. Of course, when Yu Suzuki walked out on Sony's stage my jaw quite literally dropped.

They announced the Kickstarter campaign saying it was up to us fans for the future of Shenmue. Feeling a bit guilty about participating in pirating Shenmue 2, I put in $100 into the Kickstarter. My wife remembered how much I enjoyed the series and regardless that money was tight for us, she gave the "ok" for the $100 backing as my birthday gift. I figure it would cover the $50 I would have paid for Shenmue II as well as the $50 I would happily pay for the third game. Plus having my name in the credits of a favorite series was an incredible backer reward. I also donated $13 on the slacker backer campaign for the digital soundtrack.

I'm really excited to have been part of the Kickstarter and seeing both Yu Suzuki's and the fan's dream of the story continuing become a reality. I saw so many fans in the Kickstarter comments, many of which mentioned the Dojo here, that I decided to join this community. I look forward to anticipating the release of the HD Collection releasing in less than a month as well as the third game and having many conversations about how awesome a revival this has been for the series, Yu Suzuki and the fans in general. Here's hoping to their success and the continuation with Shenmue IV and potentially Shenmue V as a finale.


ShenmueDCMag.jpg
 
I subscribed to the US Dreamcast magazine while that was still being released, primarily for the included demo discs. It was the demo disc with the ~5 minute video showing/explaining the game that sold me on it. Prior to that I could have seen something about it but it wasn't inside my realm of interest so if there were any articles or news I probably skimmed past them. But with the demo discs, I always played every single demo and video on them. The scope and scale of things introduced in the video made me want the game and I ended up pre-ordering the limited edition from Sega.com's online store. I think that was the only place that version was sold. (There's a 5th disc inside the case with a few of the tracks from the in-game cassette tapes on it. Not actually a full soundtrack.)

My parents happened to get cable internet installed for the first time the same day that issue of ODCM arrived in the mail. I remember it because the same demo disc also contained the playable demo of Jet Set Radio where Professor K has his English voice but Beat & the other characters still have their Japanese voices. There was a story on the news that night about the local police trying to prevent Jet Set Radio from being released (or something like that) because of the depiction of graffiti, and I remember saying something about it while the cable guy was still there because I had already played the demo earlier that day and really enjoyed it. After that point, since we had just gone from dial-up to always-on internet it was pretty easy for me to follow the news so I was able to watch all of the trailers leading up to Shenmue II's Japanese release. I did burn a copy of Disc 1 (and just disc 1, since I didn't know Japanese and was waiting to buy the US release) to try it out ahead of time and I was really impressed. After the US release was cancelled, I put the UK release on my Christmas list and ended up getting it from my grandparents that year. It was ordered from NCSX, (per my instructions) which used to be a popular site to import game stuff back then prior to sites like Play-Asia existing. I would later go on to get my first GBA and Gamecube from NCSX as well.

I finished Shenmue II on Dreamcast 3 days after getting it, on December 28th 2001. I probably was able to blow through the first disc very quickly having tried the Japanese version prior to that, but I'm guessing I spent almost all of those 3 days playing it. I still have a backup of that save file from the first time I finished it, because I had one of those "Double Power" devices that you could use to plug DC memory cards into a PC and backup the save files from in addition to reformatting standard memory cards to hold an additional 40 blocks. I actually still have that thing, but none of my PC's have a parallel port anymore and I haven't bothered to get an adapter for it because there are other ways now of backing up & restoring memory cards.

Shenmue II is probably one of my most played games ever by time. I played it multiple times the first year I had it and then played both games roughly once a year around Christmas thereafter. Once I got to college, I think I only ended up playing them twice, and after that point my Dreamcast was packed in a box for several years before I eventually bought a VGA box and played it again. Then around 2014 I got a GDEMU board for my Dreamcast, dumped every single disc I own and played through them both again with great load times. I haven't actually played them from start to finish since Shenmue 3 was announced, just some random spots while tinkering with various side-projects. My controller is messed up with some kind of connectivity issue and I took it apart to fix it, wasn't initially successful, got distracted and haven't bothered to put it back together for the past year.

I'll begin again on August 21st with the ports.
 
I learned about Shenmue sometime late 2000 early 2001. I was in highschool and in my tech class one of the people i was teamed up with for projects was showing me dbz videos (had to download mpgs or .mov as no youtube at the time) . I saw him reading a website about shenmue and the 70 man battle and he was explaining you could drive a forklift, play arcade games and collect capsule toys which sounded amazing at the time.

I never had a Dreamcast growing up and was intrigued by this Shenmue game. I was able to get a xbox on launch day and a friend had a Dreamcast which I borrowed in early 2002 but he did not have Shenmue. I was able to try phantasy star online and a few other games, the Dreamcast seemed like a nice system.

Around August 2002 a situation happened that my parents separated and I left the Chicago area to live with my aunt in rural Florida. I had only my xbox and my harddrive on my computer was biting the dust. I used to use my xbox to watch dvds mainly. My mother was able to get a rental place and i went to the small mall in town to eb games i think was called at the time. I ended up picking up gameinformer and saw about rumors of shenmue 2 coming to the US as I knew it was a exclusive to Japan and Europe.

I followed the news and the OXM magazine had a demo where you had to do some QTE to save Yuanda Zhus representative.

The game was finally released and I rented a copy at blockbuster and became addicted, I found shenmuedojo I think via gamefaqs or neoseeker.

At that point all I wanted was that game for my birthday, my mother bought it for me for the xbox and I played it on an old tv she picked up from a garage sale and I used a radioshack tv tuner.

I had never played the first game until sometime 2004 when I bought a Dreamcast of my own and Shenmue I.

16 years later here I am.

This is actually my order of shenmue and the dreamcast in 2004
 

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Shenmue has been such a massive part of my life during vulnerable and formative years.

I first found out by my cousin and I going to the local game store in his town and he looked at the cover for Shenmue 2 Xbox and thought it looked like a cool game.

We rented it, and played it all night which turned into a week. Got through the game a couple of times.

When I got home, I looked up on the internet and found the first one was on Dreamcast.

I started saving up chore money to buy a Dreamcast. I was in 7th grade, made $5 a week. This was in 2002 after the dreamcast started dying, and my local Gamecrazy had one on sale for $50. The Dreamcast and Shenmue special edition copy were the first things I've ever saved money and bought all by myself.

My parents were divorced and going through a custody battle, and my dad eventually won. What helped me escape was Shenmue. I felt that Ryo was strong enough to get through losing a parent (albeit in a much more dramatic way than me) and it really inspired me.

My dad found my interest with the series very intriguing, and later that xmas I got an Xbox and copy of Shenmue 2.

From there my life has changed forever and I am deeply grateful for the impact Shenmue has had on my life.

Shenmue 3 has really taught me to never give up on hopes.

Looking forward to the future!
 
I remember that "Who's Nozomi?" TV commercial being one of my earliest, or perhaps first, encounters with the game. That series of commercials was very silly, and in hindsight contrasted with the tone of the game, but at the time they were enough to convey to me the grandiosity and sense of mystery that Shenmue possessed. It's all blurred together for me so I don't remember the specific details of buying it and having my first play through like some of you guys, but all of my Shenmue related memories are good ones so its something that I'll always be grateful for having found.

It makes me both jealous and happy every time I think of all the people who are going to get to discover Shenmue for the first time this year with the HD remasters. Is anyone here gonna use that as an opportunity to share the Shenmue experience with their kids?


 
Compared to all of these stories, mine is a little less impressive. I remember hearing about Shenmue back in 2016 and saw the first teaser for Shenmue III when it released. I really liked the music of the trailer and the visuals were great. But then, I forgot about the series. It wasn't until near SEGA FES of this year that I heard the name "Shenmue" again. There were many rumors of a rerelease of the first two games, and the rumors were greater due to SEGA already registering "ShenmueHD.com" as a domain. Then, on that fateful day, I saw the trailer for Shenmue I & II and was surprised. I decided that this year would be the time I get into Shenmue.

After that, I searched YouTube for videos on Shenmue, trying to learn everything I could before the rerelease came out. But then, a week ago, I couldn't wait anymore and played a bit of the first disc of the original Shenmue on the Dreamcast emulator Demul. I was so fascinated by Yokosuka, Dobuita, and all its citizens. I wanted to help Ryo find Lan Di and avenge his father. But, I stopped playing, because I didn't want to spoil myself and I wanted to get the game legitimately when the rerelease came out. Little did I know then that earlier this week I would go ahead and watch all the cutscenes for Shenmue and Shenmue II to learn the story. So much for not spoiling myself... :/

But now, I still plan on getting Shenmue I & II digitally on PS4. I want to support the Shenmue series in any way that I can, and I want to actually pay for the games this time too. Then, I'll be ready for Shenmue III next year!

Edit (8/05/18): I pre-ordered the physical version at GameStop, actually. I'm so excited!
 
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GYO6161 said:
Ever since i was a kid I've always been a fan of fighting games. Throughout the years I've been discovering different games from its genre such as Street fighter, mortal kombat, tekken ect.

At one point i stumbled across Virtua Fighter 4 and i felt in love with the series. As time went on i kept researching the game and the people behind it. That's where i found out about Yu Suzuki and his games including Shenmue.

This is around 2010. It looked intriguing looking at videos so i did something a little balsy. I played it on a pretty mediocre version of Null DC.

Even with all the inaccuracies i felt in love and the following year i got the sequel on Xbox through eBay. Later of course i got a Dreamcast and such.

Looking foward to what the future bring with the series.
Click to expand...

Never considered that but yeah I was a huge fan of fighting games. I grew up with Mortal Kombat (I was awful at it), killer instinct, fatal fury series, street fighter, tekken 1 and 2, DOA 3 and Kakuto Chojin so those probably helped me adapt to Shenmue since I was pretty decent at those games.
 
zeldafan1002 said:
Compared to all of these stories, mine is a little less impressive. I remember hearing about Shenmue back in 2016 and saw the first teaser for Shenmue III when it released. I really liked the music of the trailer and the visuals were great. But then, I forgot about the series. It wasn't until near SEGA FES of this year that I heard the name "Shenmue" again. There were many rumors of a rerelease of the first two games, and the rumors were greater due to SEGA already registering "ShenmueHD.com" as a domain. Then, on that fateful day, I saw the trailer for Shenmue I & II and was surprised. I decided that this year would be the time I get into Shenmue.

After that, I searched YouTube for videos on Shenmue, trying to learn everything I could before the rerelease came out. But then, a week ago, I couldn't wait anymore and played a bit of the first disc of the original Shenmue on the Dreamcast emulator Demul. I was so fascinated by Yokosuka, Dobuita, and all its citizens. I wanted to help Ryo find Lan Di and avenge his father. But, I stopped playing, because I didn't want to spoil myself and I wanted to get the game legitimately when the rerelease came out. Little did I know then that earlier this week I would go ahead and watch all the cutscenes for Shenmue and Shenmue II to learn the story. So much for not spoiling myself... :/

But now, I still plan on getting Shenmue I & II digitally on PS4. I want to support the Shenmue series in any way that I can, and I want to actually pay for the games this time too. Then, I'll be ready for Shenmue III next year!
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You are in for a ride and being brand new to the series, you get to experience the series with no prior gameplay whereas sometimes I wish I had amnesia of the game so I would have that shocked or surprised feeling again. Once you have played so many times, the games tend to feel predictable but I suppose thats any game you have had for 18 years.

Either way, take your time and absorb the game, and you will enjoy it.
 
A friend brought in the dreamcast magazine and showed me Shenmue and I was captivated by it.

I got it for my birthday & what a decision that was. I was enthralled and then couldn't wait for 2 which went beyond anything I'd ever played. I'll never forget it
 
i was still at school at the time I heard about Shenmue on a tv show. they showed the trailer and claimed it was going to be the most immersive, realistic game ever made. ..even then, back in 2001 I got the impression the dreamcast wasn't a big hit..but i still wanted a dreamcast simply to play this new game and was Lucky enough able to get one plus some other games for Christmas.

when i played shenmue for the first time, knowing nothing about the gameplay, i was pretty disappointed, the Controls were clunky and everything seemed strange, it wasnt what i had imagined it would be like (maybe i thought it would be more like gta5 lol) but after a second attempt at playing, i was hooked. of course one of the reasons why i signed up to the dojo back in the day was because i wanted to be kept upto date with s2.

back then we were lucky, shenmue2 didnt take long to arrive. s2 completely blew me away for obvious reasons. such a shame shenmue 3 got cancelled at sega, the whole epic story could have been done and dusted. :crying:
 
Bock/Omar who wrote the Meka emulator and much later, was the primary dev behind the Wonderboy Dragon's Trap remake showed me the screenshots on ICQ one day. I used to chat to him a fair bit both being master system buffs. I don't remember if I had a Dreamcast at the time or was considering buying one, I think I did have one though as I got it mainly for Soul Calibur and Virtua Tennis which were early releases. Anyway, he showed me the screenshots and mentioned that these were in-game screenshots, not pre-rendered. I thought they looked great but wasn't quite as amazed as he was. Of course I ended up getting it when it was released and still stands as one of my favourite gaming experiences.
 
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I first read about Shenmue in the German Sega Magazin, right about when the first solid infos on Dreamcast stuff in general were surfacing.
I was blown away by what I saw in the screenshots and what I read about the game. I didn't take long for me to realize that this is THE game to have, just the biggest thing ever.

When it came to the games release I didn't buy it the day it was released. I have honestly no clue anymore why that happened but my old best friend at the time, who was still living where I moved away from 3 years earlier, got it closer to the release and I think I've seen it a bit when I visited my grandma's place. My memory on this is all a bit fuzzy but I do know I played it there and I do know he had it before me and one of the first conversations was how problematic it was to find the Tattoo Parlor.

Then I got the game and got to it immediately. It took some time until I got fully immersed in it. Being a huge Sonic fan at the time, my main interest at first was that particular capsule toy machine. I think having such a dialogue heavy game with just English subtitles also made it a bit of a slow start I think. But I was old enough and far along with school English to understand everything that was going on.
Soon I felt with Ryo and I so wanted to beat up Lan Di! I was shocked when it ended so soon and I had no idea when and even if this would ever go on.

At this time the Dreamcast was already dying and so was the original Sega Magazin. It has already been bundled with a larger general gaming magazine, even since the Dreamcast started and my subscription ended because of this. At that point I had lost my source of Sega gaming news and I wasn't looking elsewhere. Still didn't have much of an idea about what Shenmue II could possibly be. I just remember downloading the trailer that starts with Xiuying practicing.

That has been all I've known and seen from the game until the fateful day where I went into town to get some totally unrelated video game stuff and as I went through the gaming area, I saw the Shenmue II box standing there. I was shocked. It came complete out of nowhere to me. I instantly changed my mind on what to do at that moment and bought Shenmue II in a heart-beat.
The initial impression was even better, minus the small bit of confusion about it being dubbed in Japanese. But it grew on me very quickly and it became one of the best experiences ever. The rest up to this point is just the same history of anxiously waiting for a continuation after that incredible cliffhanger.
 
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