Shenmue Dojo

EDIT: INTERVIEW IS UP!



Hi all,

I am meeting with Mike Rhinehart tomorrow here in New York City.

Mike was the lead tester for Shenmue 1 who is currently selling the beta prototypes online.

Please place any questions here you may have for him.

He is listed in this block of credits:

Sega of America Dreamcast, Inc.

U.S. Executive in Charge: Shinobu Toyoda
Localization Coordination: Jin Shimazaki, Osamu Shibamiya
Producer: Jason Kuo
Dialogue Editors: Jason Kuo, Christopher Lucich
Director Promotions: Heather Kashner
Product Manager: Robert Alvarez
Product Marketing Specialist: Dennis Lee
Director Product Marketing: John Golden
Public Relations: Heather Hawkins
Director Event Planning: Kathleen Joyce
Creative Services: Angela Santos
Lead Tester: Michael Rhinehart

I'm not sure if he would know this, but if anyone other the Yu himself knows this, he would.

I have a theory about the stairs glitch, that it was a intentional bug created, for the purpose of skipping disc 1 altogether, as well as accessing areas of the map, where Ryo is "not" suppose to be at(meaning using the debugging menue wouldn't help with testing that).

Did they infact use this bug for such?

Ask the same question about the map glitch in Shenmue 2

I'm not sure if he knows the answer to this since it was done in Japan, but he may if he asked about it, does he know if the reason why the fights in Shenmue 2's Beverly Hills warf force a first person perspective, was to cover up a camera bug in a hurry(for obvious reasons, Yu Suzuki needed to get it released right away at that point)?

Damn I know there's more I want to ask him, but just not coming to mind atm.

Thanks for doing this, would be curious to know when North America testing began/finished.

Any particularly memorable bugs/glitches?

Did he get to test Shenmue II at all before the US release was cancelled?

Did he get a chance to play the Japanese-dub/English-subbed version that Corey Marshall recently mentioned?

Amir wrote: Thanks for doing this, would be curious to know when North America testing began/finished.

Any particularly memorable bugs/glitches?

Did he get to test Shenmue II at all before the US release was cancelled?

Did he get a chance to play the Japanese-dub/English-subbed version that Corey Marshall recently mentioned?

A better question would be, does he know where the Japanese Dub/English sub is/what happened to it

If he's familiar with the final product, was there anything he can remember that ended up being cut from the final game?

Maybe a certain missing chunk of the game on the boat per chance ?

Thanks a lot for the opportunity for us to know a bit more about Shenmue, Sega and game development! Let's hope he can give us lots of insights!
(and sorry for my garbled engrish)

For how long he worked at Sega? Shenmue was different from other projects?

When did you and your team had the first contact with Shenmue? There were tech demos before? Let's say, some game about an old man and a peach tree?

Due to the long time in development, I think Shenmue changed from a ambitious technical and artistic work, into all this AND being a last chance for Sega to reach out the top again, with Shenmue now being the killer app for Dreamcast; just IMO, sure. But, how it was perceived at the time, for you and for the team? Just another job?

SoJ had proximity with SoA at that time? How was it?

The team for Shenmue 1 and 2 wasn't mantained? Why? Did you had some role at the second game?

Is there some feature removed due to ineffectiveness? Or something that was desired but could not be implemented? Besides the bicycle.

There was some long term project about Shenmue? Was the team dealing with the hypotesis of it not being a market success? How the team reacted to the impact Shenmue had at the time?

There was something you think would worked better if it was different in the game?

Do you have a good and a bad memory about developing Shenmue you could share with the fanbase?

I'm sleepy... for now, that is it. Thanks again shengoro!!!

Thanks everyone!
I've locked around 20 questions.
The interview will be soon and expect a text version of it soon

/james

Interview completed!
45 minutes long and holy moly was it awesome.

A couple key things:
- More than 1 beta build exists in the wild and he has two of them.
- Several bugs are still in the game after their QA due to time constraints.
- Beta testers may not have known about the Dobuita stair glitch
- There is a bug with a phone call to Nozomi that may still exist
- The coke machines existed in the NTSC build at one point until close to QA completion
- We might still be able to get the Shenmue SoftImage plugin

We spoke about a lot more than that.

Wow really appreciate you going through all the effort to speak with Michael!

Looking forward to the full interview, he seems a pretty friendly chap

shengoro86 wrote: A couple key things:
- More than 1 beta build exists in the wild and he has two of them.
- Several bugs are still in the game after their QA due to time constraints.
- Beta testers may not have known about the Dobuita stair glitch
- There is a bug with a phone call to Nozomi that may still exist
- The coke machines existed in the NTSC build at one point until close to QA completion
- We might still be able to get the Shenmue SoftImage plugin

We spoke about a lot more than that.

Nice, so there's another NA Beta build out there, then the one we know about, which the one in auction seems to be the same build, that's good to know.

Hm, so the stairs glitch in Shenmue 1 was not used to mainly test out where NPCs are, when Ryo is not allowed to be in a area then?

Hm, I heard rumors about a bug involving a phone call to Nozomi for many years now, it may have been originally leaked by another beta tester, but I haven't personally stumbled upon such.

Oh wow, that's interesting to know, I just figured the coke machine was in the beta, jut because they are using the Japanese game naturally as the base, and they just didn't remove it right away.

Thanks James! Always nice to learn some more about the development of Shenmue. Mike seems like a really cool guy for agreeing to do an interview. Look forward to reading it

Awesome! Can't wait for the whole thing.

shengoro86 wrote:[...]
- We might still be able to get the Shenmue SoftImage plugin

[...]

OH... MY...! That really got me hyped!