SHENMUE SHOW REPORT (Computer And VideoGames)
All the gossip from our man in Japan
On Dec 20th 1998 at the National Convention Hall in Yokohama, Sega held a special presentation event to officially announce Shenmue, the potentially epochal Dreamcast game from Yu Suzukiis AM2 department. There were three presentations throughout the day, each with an estimated audience of 5,000 people. Many of the tickets had been sent out in advance, so most people didn't have to queue in order to get in - so fortunately for our sanity the queues weren't so frantic as they were for the D2 and Sonic Adventure shows.
Everyone who got in received a special goodie bag containing a T-shirt, CD single, note pad and a small figure of the main heroine. However, inside the main reception hall was a massive shop selling posters, mugs, pens, calendars, guide book etc. The most impressive and expensive item available was a massive limited-edtion framed picture of one of the four main characters (only 50 of each were available) which was on sale for 50,000 yen n approximately £270, 378 Euros (hey, itis 1999), or nearly twice the cost of a Dreamcast!
Also in the reception hall were several special Shenmue print club machines. There shop was completely swamped with gamers eager for goods and there were long queues for the print club machines too. Inside the hall, the massive stage was divided in a main presentation area with a massive screen, two slightly smaller screens to either side and an orchestra area in front.
The show began with the orchestra playing the theme music from the game, followed by the theme song of the gameis heroine, Shenhua, which was accompanied by a singer. Following this, two presenters and Yu Suzuki came on stage to talk about Shenmue. Every chat session was kept short, so as to focus more on the demo video sequences of the game. The main events of the presentation, in order, were…
1. The video footage of the of the game first seen on the Project Berkley demo disk.
2. Mr. Suzuki's trip to Japan/China to research materials for the game. As the clips were shown, they were interspersed with game images in order to show off to show the similarities. The long-term nature of the project was confirmed when it was revealed that Mr. Suzuki went to China as long ago as 1994.
3. The making of Shenmue. Firstly, all the music for the game was produced. AM2 then used this for inspiration to create the locations and characters. The team created busts of the characters to help create the 3D models. This section included many scenes of AM2 staff working at their desks.
4. Next, they introduced the characters. The most important were Ryo Hazuki (the hero) and Rei Shenhua (the heroine). Various other key characters we also revealed, including Ryo's father. There were 11 characters in total
5. The main feature of the game is the real time weather system, called Magic Weather. A scene depicting falling snow was shown, followed by a boat steaming through the water as the time changed from dawn to day to dusk to night.
6. The locations in the game are very important. Even in the one small town shown there are over 1,200 rooms, each designed in incredible detail. A video showed a wide selection of rooms including a school, a bar, a church and a kitchen.
After a little more chat, the presentation moved on to the actual game itself. The most important aspect is the "Quest" where you must talk with the other characters in the game. As well as speaking, they can respond with head and arm gestures, and they also have intelligent responses instead of the same fixed phrases. If you keep going back to the same person then they'll reply differently each time.
More videos showed a new system called the QTE (Quick Timer Event system). This system works for both ordinary events and the battle events. As well as this there are a wide variety of mini games such as doing part time work for money, gambling and helping other people with miscellanous tasks.
The final section of the show talked about the motion capture technology involved in creating the movement of the characters, and the mammoth effort that has been expended recording all the speech for the game. They've been recording the voices for over a year now and they still haven't finished!! Some of the voice actors joined Mr. Suzuki on stage at this point to talk about the speech in the game.
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I found the above in the CVG news archive, found it pretty interesting to read and damn I wish I could have gone to that presentation show, I'd love to see it esp the part of Mr Suzuki going to Japan/China. I would have bought everythig on offer too
Can you imagine how much those free goodie bags are worth now 
