Shenmue 15th Anniversary (North America) & Making of Shenmue

[Kiske]

Today is the 15th anniversary since Shenmue was released in North America on the Sega Dreamcast. (December in Europe) To commemorate this day we are sharing a special video that goes behind the scenes in the making of Shenmue. Back in the late 90's NHK aired a TV program on the development of Shenmue at SEGA. They spent 6 months with Yu Suzuki as he was developing Shenmue on what would be Sega's last home game console. English translation provided by Switch.

Making of Shenmue: Youtube | DailyMotion |

Available Captions/Subtitles: English, French, Spanish, German, and Portuguese.

[Ziming]

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[Amir]

Thanks to Switch and everyone involved in working on this, amazing stuff.

So surreal watching Suzuki and the development team watching and playing Final Fantasy VIII to see how it stacks up to their own game

Incredible that they got so much done of the Guilin section back in '98, even if it does look more primitive than the final version in Shenmue II. Funny seeing Suzuki chastising them for not modifying the QTE sounds for this section at 44:50, now we know the origin of the softer QTE sounds in Guilin!

I wonder if they still have the uncompressed audio saved somewhere and could use them for HD remasters? So used to the compressed audio after all these years that the uncompressed dialogue and sound effects sound alien...

[SheepheadCG]

Thank you so much for doing the translation of this! Its so amazing to see how the game was created. I knew that Yu had a strong vision for what he wanted Shenmue to be, but damn! When you read about people saying that he had a presence that would take over a room, they weren't joking.
This just makes me more excited for Shenmue 3 and at this point I didn't even think that was possible! Thanks again Switch and Ziming!

[-=SPZ=-47]

Awesome! Thank's to all who participated in this process!

[Giorgio]

Thank you so much for this, everyone involved in the making. This is a real treasure.

These quotes by Yu Suzuki-san are priceless:

"You work away at something using a computer, a world of 0s and 1s, involving mathematics and physics and so on. But at the end, lying somewhere within the creation is its power to communicate something to someone, right? Somewhere along the way this power gets infused into the creation - this ability to communicate to people somehow, whether by moving them emotionally or however.

And that comes from something other than the technology. That’s what I strongly feel. The only way to achieve it is to put your heart into meticulously creating something, I think. A difference in hardware performance can often be explained completely by a difference in technology. However in the case of entertainment or some kind of creation, it’s about moving people emotionally or influencing them in some way with the energy that radiates from it. What I think is important, is whether or not one’s heart and soul has been put into the work."

[Sonoshee]

Seeing how Yu Suzuki works with his team in this video and how focused and precise he was during the development of the first two games leaves me with zero doubt about the integrity of Shenmue 3.

This is a phenomenal effort from both Switch and Ziming - thanks guys!

[DEVILLE_David]

Awesome. Thanks to all of you !

And of course : Happy birthday Shenmue !

[fittersau]

Thanks guys. Awesome contributions to the Shenmue community yet again.

[Amir]

Did we ever find out who uploaded the NHK video in the first place? I wonder if it was a former NHK employee, as the video quality looks like it was taken from the source and not recorded off the TV or anything. Now if only we could get our hands on a high-quality video of the full 2-hour Shenmue Premiere...

[Ziming]

Did we ever find out who uploaded the NHK video in the first place? I wonder if it was a former NHK employee, as the video quality looks like it was taken from the source and not recorded off the TV or anything.

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[Sh3ppy]

Thank you to those involved in making this subtitled version available for us. Have been looking forward to it for a while. I really enjoyed watching, & it was packed with footage I had personally never seen before. Quality!

[Nankeiro]

This is really an awesome piece of work! Thanks you so much for sharing all of this information about this wonderful game. Thank you.

[blacktorn]

Seeing how Yu Suzuki works with his team in this video and how focused and precise he was during the development of the first two games leaves me with zero doubt about the integrity of Shenmue 3.

This is a phenomenal effort from both Switch and Ziming - thanks guys!

Any small doubt i had about Yu is gone now too,fascinating video!

Seems abit stressful for many of his employers though but i guess that was and still is normal amongst the gaming industry,the end part was especially intriguing when Yu was getting annoyed and trying to push them to come up with stuff,also the microsoft guy coming over...he must of been the reason shenmue II appeared on the original xbox? But why was he visiting at the point of them making shenmue 1???

Also the part where their assessing the ps2 announcement was priceless Their basically like "ohh S*** we're screwed"

[fittersau]

Any small doubt i had about Yu is gone now too,fascinating video!

Seems abit stressful for many of his employers though but i guess that was and still is normal amongst the gaming industry,the end part was especially intriguing when Yu was getting annoyed and trying to push them to come up with stuff,also the microsoft guy coming over...he must of been the reason shenmue II appeared on the original xbox? But why was he visiting at the point of them making shenmue 1???

Also the part where their assessing the ps2 announcement was priceless Their basically like "ohh S*** we're screwed"

I think their reactions with a boss is very normal in any Japanese company. A lot of respect goes to the managers, hardly any other type of interaction occurs, boundaries are well respected.

With the PS2, you could see they were taking it seriously, but really Suzuki was spot on when he said that it will take then a year to realise the potential of the PS2. In reality took about 2.5 years before games started to look as good as the Dreamcast in my opinion.