When ya first got shenmue I ......

[stigee]

I played Shenmue on the Dreamcast at a friends house and then a few days later I went out and bought one just for Shenmue. The first thing I did was play Shenmue when I got home. It was a great day. To this day, it is still my favorite game of all time. Long live the Dreamcast and Shenmue!

[extraordinarybadgrocer]

I had never seen graphics like it and assumed it was somehow pre-rendered. This was around June 2001 and none of the PS2 line up at the time looked half as good as this. A friend sold me the DC for £50 with Shenmue and a bunch of copied games (Crazy Taxi was the best of these), 2 controllers and a VMU. It's stunning how crisp and detailed a lot of the textures are.

I look at a lot of current gen (Xbox/PS2) games released recently, half-hashed lazy programming, poor graphics and sometimes not enough incentive to make you want to play through once. It can even seem like a chore. This is a benchmark game. I think all designers/ developers should play through this once for inspiration.

[Andy Hughes]

It was so great and fun. I didn't even follow the game at the time. I just bought sodors man i never saw a game like that in my life lol.

[Suairyu]

I was looking forward to the game from the moment I read the official UK Dreamcast Mag's article on its reveal at the Tokyo Games Show. I even remember it being on the "readers top 10 most wanted" from that mag onwards, right up until launch day. I received it as a birthday present, though I knew I was getting it, so I stayed up all night unable to sleep, waiting for 7am (the time I was allowed to open my presents!). I only opened Shenmue and then played it until I had to leave for school, exhausted, slept a bit in school, then came straight home and played until the small hours of the morning.

Seriously, I was hooked from the get-go. No game has ever had me so excited. Everything (apart from the god-awful rigid controls) about it seemed so perfect. Shenmue II never recaptured that excitement that the first one produced, even with all the improvements made. I still prefer playing I over II. It's your first time that always sticks with you. It was just magical. That's the only way to describe it.

[shengoro86]

When i was 11 I saw footage for a game called Shenmue...

I remember waiting for Shenmue to come out b/c of the footage i saw of it. I was at Blockbuster trying to find a good dreamcast game to rent and play. I took a copy of D2 thinking it was Dead Or Alive 2 lol. Boy was a i wrong, anyway when i was about to rent the game, i asked the guy behind the counter if Shenmue came out yet. And he was like YES WE JUST GOT IT IN.

i was like OMFGWTF give me a copy NOW!!!!!!!!

so i put back D2 and rented shenmue for 7 days.

I got all the way to rescuing Nozomi but i could never get to the harbor on the motorcycle in time So>_< after my 7 days. But i was hooked on it just from seeing previews of the game. When i actually played it i fell in love with the game. So here I am!! ^^


*note* by the time im writing this ive beaten the motorcycle part countless times. /*note*


Till this day I still have my first copy of the game and I still look at them and im like OMG I LOVE YOU *hugs game* lol




Shenmue II is a more "dramatic" story lol

[Cyberman]

I was amazed by the brilliant graphics and the amazing storyline. Best story of any game. No other game comes close to it. And I saw the tv ad for the game too. "Who is Nozom?!" Classic.

[Kenny]

I thought the story and the actual game itself sucked cause it was too slow and the characters were basically lifeless, so I returned it the next day.

I decided to get it back after awhile.

[Yokosuka Martian]

Remember when we were posting our "first posts" this was actualy my first one lmao. I'm gonna BUMP dis bitch up and see if anyone else has personal stories .

[Spokane]

Did you desecrate your first post? You have committed two sins of the Dojo all at once.

[south carmain]

the first time I owned shenmue 1 was back in 2009 I think, I played through it properly since the first time I played it was with a Friend

the first time I got shenmue 2 though I was amazed with how open it was, I remember spending hours working at lucky hit stands or exploring the different shops, mainly the one near the harbour where you can play darts

[ShenmueTree]

I saw two games at a ROSES that I'd never heard of before, Jet Set Radio and Shenmue. I bought both games. ($20 total)

The opening cinematic blew me away and my dad was also really into it, I remember being surprised because he never seemed interested in any *console game before. I played that game so much the first disc actually stopped working.

[Mocha Joe]

Christmas 2000 was the first time I played Shenmue and I still remember the state of shock and awe it left me in after the introduction. Now, I had the Dreamcast for a year at that point and played some great and visually impressive games like Sonic Adventure, Crazy Taxi, House of the Dead 2 etc. but nothing had prepared me for what I was about to witness. Even after I had read and viewed pictures of the game beforehand in magazines, I still wasn't prepared!

The graphics, the music, the brief, yet brilliant fight sequence; the intro - which in that era of gaming was generally a 1min or less throwaway in other games - just captured my full attention immediately. And I was only 9 at the time, so the 'avenge your father's death' story was still fresh and not overplayed in my mind!

Thankfully the rest of the game wasn't too bad, either

[Feelers Rebo]

I thought it was quite boring. I loved my Dreamcast and wanted another game for it, and I picked Shenmue up, since it was a long one. I couldn't understand why I was playing a game in which I was going around the house searching for candles or matches and taking game consoles out of cupboards - all of that I can do more efficiently in reality.
Thing is, I liked the sort of subdued and somewhat relaxed atmosphere of the first disc - just walking about gathering information from whoever and watching some chill Jamaican dance in the middle of the street. It grew on me after the initial scepticism, and I'm glad it did.

[Perfect_Chaos]

when i was in the sixth grade my best friend Walid was telling me about this great game coming out around christmas for the dreamcast called shenmue. since i didnt even have a dreamcast i didnt give a flying fuck. he came to school everyday talking about how he couldnt wait for it. after a while i was brain-washed. not intrigued not interested....straight brain-washed. i didnt even know what the concept was, just knew i wanted it. i begged my mom for a dreamcast and shenmue for christmas and she told me no. a month later she said "well i got you that dreamcast thingy with that disney shamoo game" i was pissed! she was joking of course and n christmas morning there it was right next to the Official Red Ryder Carbine-Action Two-Hundred-Shot Range Model Air Rifle (joke) was Shenmue and a dreamcast. i was pissed!!!! i hought it was a fighting game! i was pumped for it and go a fuckin RPG! lol. put it in and played til i couldnt find toms hot dog truck. too young and stupid to realize that toms hot dog truck was the god damn truck in plain sight..... still my favorite game to this day

[Lan Di-sama]

I was 9 when I got my Dreamcast so I had very limited exposure to gaming media. I knew about Sonic and that's about it. When I got into RPGs a year or two later I found Shenmue and picked up a copy along with "Evolution", an OK dungeon crawler RPG.

I think at the same time my brother picked up Resident Evil Code Veronica, so I was slightly on edge the first few times I played Shenmue. I was definitely intrigued by the atmosphere, music, and environments but the barking dogs in Yamanose game me some RE flashbacks and spooked me a little. Since the game started slow, it took me a while to progress, and I was plagued with a faulty copy that often froze up. I didn't make it much further than the 3 Blades, as even my replacement copy failed me.

It was probably a couple years after that I was browsing the internet, likely on GameFAQs, and read something or other about Shenmue, and wondered where my copy was. Found it in my closet and decided to give it a whirl, got through the ifrst disc with no lock-ups and was able to complete the game. Was totally fascinated and was more than exuberant when I found a local non-chain gaming store had a reasonably price Dreamcast import of Shenmue 2 - something I never would have expected in my small town. After I cleared Shenmue 2 in five or six days, I logged into Shenmue Dojo for the first time and that's when I found out that Shenmue III was not definitely on the horizon. 10 years later....here I am.