Original subtitles

Before the Internet I would get all of my game news

from Barnes and Noble's magazine rack.

I would go in there and I would look at

Game Pro and Nintendo Power

and PlayStation magazine and Dreamcast magazine

and I can remember so vividly

sitting in a Barnes and Noble looking at Shenmue before it was out

and I can remember just saying this is this looks crazy

this looks like nothing I've ever seen before

this came out of nowhere like nothing like this

had ever really done this to this scale

the ability of Shenmue and what it promised

was unlike anything we've ever seen on our console

up to that date not even close people were not ready for it.

Shenmue is about a protagonist

who comes back to his home to find that his father is about to be murdered

he can't stop that

but then he has to basically find the identity of the murderer

and pursue him

along the way you meet all sorts of friends and

acquaintances and you just talk to these people

and try to get a good sense of the culture and you get really immersed

not only into the game but like the lifestyle the game creates for you

they're presenting you with this world and this story

and like there's the main story beats

but there's so much hidden underneath the surface that

even to this day like I kid you know I like I've played that game 20-30 times

I'm still finding little bits of information or a little cutscenes

and a little secret things that I just didn't find when I first

played the game back in the day

I was immediately drawn in the story the characters

how everything was treated how everything was treated with respect

the fact that you weren't rushed into everything

when you look at message boards when you talk to people in person

what they remember is that almost hypnotic experience of interacting

with a place a very specific place in a very specific time

for me it changed everything

it changed how I looked at games and the potential

but when everything was tangible like it wasn't Shenmue it was

probably the watershed moment of videogames

not just Sega or Nintendo or Sony but the industry as a whole

and how it's grown and the amount of people it's inspired

the fact that they were able to pull that off in like 1999

2000 that is wild it is insane

what do you think makes you so different from other game developers

and do you feel you represent a new kind of developer

he does not necessarily think that of himself

as a new type of developer

he has actually met and spoke with many game developers

but he has never met someone who

makes games the way he does

and he thinks that watching movies or

looking up at the sky or at the sunset

those kinds of stimulations are very important

and I'd like to keep making games this way.

Yu Suzuki

as weird as it is I almost consider him the Shigeru Miyamoto of Sega

this guy just had really great ideas for games

and simple ideas but they were fun ideas.

Part of the magic of what Yu Suzuki brings to to games

especially back in the arcade era was the level of the melding of technology

and gameplay and visuals that nobody was doing at the time

and so you knew that when you sat down in the arcade

and you saw a new game from Sega

particularly that was being directed by Yu-san

it was always pushing the limit and he's a legend in the industry

especially when it comes to his craftiness as an engineer.

Yu-san had created so many different ways of tricking the hardware

and having a go way beyond what it was actually capable of

when I was very young

the place that you would want to go

the place that you would have the best games

was at an arcade because arcades were these gigantic cabinets

and they were capable of things that you could never accomplish on your eight bit

Nintendo Entertainment System or your Atari or your ColecoVision

or your Magnavox Odyssey

if you really wanted you know the major league talent you'd go to the arcade

and that's even where you know

some of the more popular games from that era were first available

when I was a kid going to the arcades and playing hang on

and my dad put me on this like really big motorcycle,

and he would actually ship me back and forth

because I was too small to actually shift it with my own weight

and that to me is what Sega was all about, having those kind of experiences

in the arcade where everyone else was still kind of using joysticks and buttons.

Yu Suzuki kind of takes it one step further

he was like, okay well if I am going to be in a car driving

like sure I have a steering wheel I have a clutch whatever

but I want to be in a car and I want to feel it move

motion was a big thing that he kind of introduced into the scene

that's what made him famous

for the sage of titles he shied away from doing console gaming

for the longest time because you just couldn't

have something that matched the performance then the powers of the arcade

cabinets gave him

I don't think that he really approached games as toys

he approached them as as experiences as opposed to

how many points can I score

and how gamey and silly can I make this?

He was always approaching from a real realism perspective

and then really just kind of fulfilling the fantasy of what it's like

at some point in the late eighties and the nineties you have this crossover

between arcades and home entertainment or home consoles

8 bit console called the master system

that was it was modestly successful

it actually did pretty well in Europe but in the United States in Japan

it really flamed out pretty quickly.

Sega was not a household name certainly not in my household

until the nineties with the with the Sega Genesis

and then it became the biggest deal in town

it became a part of our identity

it became a part of the cultural zeitgeist

it became the shorthand for the next generation of gaming

this new product this new console the Sega Genesis was really the hail

Mary pass for the company was a new generation of technology

and it could really bring the arcade experience

home in a way that had never been possible before.

I would honestly believe that Sega was really kind

of pushing it more than anyone else with their home based consoles

they're really giving the best graphics that would look very similar

to what you would get in an arcade setting

the roots of Sega where most of these games would be imported from the arcade

and Sega was really quickly burning through all of its arcade hits

and once those arcade hits were ported to Sega Genesis

then where would we go next?

After the success of the Genesis Sega needed to come up with another console

to take things to another level and they ended up releasing the Sega Saturn.

What was happening for Sega?

Sega had created a bunch of peripherals that had not done so well in the us

they created the Sega CD

the 32X the Sega Saturn which was really really expensive

and so people were losing faith in the entire Sega brand

and Sega knew they had to do something big drastic and intense.

Sega back in the day had a level of integrity

that was almost unparalleled

so having people like Yu Suzuki he was already experimenting

with a 3D polygon technology and it got everybody excited

about a more realistic fighting game

the Virtua Fighter was this massive franchise for Sega

it was one of the few things

that anybody bought a Sega Saturn for especially in Japan

and so Sega said we need more virtua fighter games

Yu Suzuki you made that franchise we want something else

from you what do you want to do?

And that's where he got interested in the RPG idea.

And he's like alright I'll take virtua fighter

my most popular thing and with Sega's blessing and I'll make an RPG

and I remember hearing about and reading about that Yu Suzuki was moving

away from arcades and was going to make his first consumer focused console game

and it was a Virtua Fighter RPG or Project Berkley

which he was calling at the time

he was supposed to tell the story of Akira one of the main characters of that game.

The video of Shenmue on the Saturn is amazing for the Saturn

they got far enough along in development where the Saturn was no longer relevant

so they're like we're not going to release this giant blockbuster game

when all that's being left out there is sports titles

the Saturn at the time

they had released it early before anybody knew it was actually coming out

so its initial sales are really low

and then when Sony basically announced a much cheaper console

it just kind of destroyed them

so Sony really took the market and just destroyed it and Nintendo

was still relying on cartridges which was a lot more expensive to produce for

so Sony was just reeling it in

so they're like, we'll just stop

we'll start all over again and we'll put it out on our upcoming

console the Sega Dreamcast

and we'll use it as this big flagship title to boost that console

all the mistakes they did in the past with the Sega CD the 32X

and just making all these variations of add-ons for the consoles

the Dreamcast really was trying to be the thing that fixed all that.

In the fairytale version of the story

you'd like to think that if the Genesis was the western console

that worked and the Saturn was the eastern console that worked they'd finally

figured out oh we can get east and west and come with this wonderful thing

called the Dreamcast

and from the commercials and also from my own

firsthand playing of the Dreamcast it felt like it was that magical thing

it felt kind of weird and foreign

as an American but it also felt amazing

you know the drink has had a tremendous tremendous slate at launch

trek style hydro thunder

a little later Jet Set Radio Future

I mean you think of these great games

but Shenmue was a tentpole in a different way.

Video games is always like a big part of growing up

it was like the one escape that I had you know being kind of like

the the quiet shy kid

played video games since I was like five years old

and then 2000, 2001

that's the year I discovered Shenmue and that's when like you know

the obsession started.

I really liked anime

growing up like loved anime loved Japan

the idea of it it was

it was very foreign to me but there was some something about it

that not just me but a ton of other people that just found Japan very interesting

and I think it was because of the media that we were consuming right

like Dragon Ball Z Pokémon that sort of stuff

oh this is great anime's awesome

it comes from Japan I want to learn more about Japan

this is pre Google Maps pre anything

I think you have to open the encyclopedia go to Japan like

oh look cherry blossoms

it's cool here's a neat picture

or you can play Shenmue and like dive right into the game.

You know you have really two elements

happening in Shenmue at the same time

you have this revenge story that's kind of classical Japanese

a little bit of wuxia Chinese mythology stuff going on which is fairly typical

I mean you think back to the NES days one of the earliest NES games

kung fu is pretty much that

but then you have this other thing you have this other thing

where you get to interact in a living breathing world

in a place and time that is so incredibly specific.

You're literally like a an 18 year old high school guy in Japan

walking around experiencing things and you're like this is different

this appeals to my interest

I want to play this Mark because I feel like

this is the closest thing that me a 13 year old is going to get

who is stuck in Newmarket Ontario

this is the closest to Japan I'm ever going to get at this point in my life.

So Peter and I landed in Tokyo

we got here on what like seven days ago?

Monday so five days ago yeah

and already we've done like so much yeah

and you live here yeah I already live here yeah

but I've never been to Dobuita before

five or so years I've lived in Japan

and the one thing we all have in common is like we're hardcore fans

yeah hardcore hardest of cores the hardest of cores

would be in the top tier the top tier of Shenmue fans

the most passionate I'd say definitely

when I was 24 or 25 I made the decision like hey I have disposable

income and I have a network of friends that I've met online

that are huge fans of this game

that want to go to Japan and want to go to Dobuita

in Yokosuka, where Shenmue is set

it was something that Shenmue fans had done

for a very long time I don't know who the first one

to do it was but you start

when you spend enough time on the forum you hear stories of people do that

and you see pictures that people start posting like

hey I went to the place where Shenmue was

based off of and here are my photos and here was my experience and as a fan

you read that and you're like oh man I have to do that

like that's like if I don't do that I'm going to

I'm going to really really regret it

so yeah I met some people

I got on a plane I went to Japan and I was like okay let's let's do it

let's go on the Shenmue pilgrimage

so we're in Yokosuka now walking around

already kind of get that like vibe a little bit

you can kind of tell I got too much

yeah well that's why I haven't really spoken

much since I get off the train

and yeah it's this is like kind of taking it all in arrival

in Japan feeling x10 because this is where it's

this is where it's all like yeah this is why we're

even just seeing like a lot of like American sailors

walking around

yeah it's already kind of settling in

it's cool so we're heading over to Dobuita Street now.

You talk to the people who were involved in the first Shenmue game

and hearing their stories about working with Yu-san

it's you can almost sense the frustration in their voice just thinking back

to those days where they're having to design things that didn't exist

so they could put in this game and at the time they might not even have

realized like why am I doing like why are we doing this?

Why are we spending so much time and energy on this?

Like designing five different doors or designing a night and day system

or designing real life elements like like a capsule toy or something

like why are things like this in the game?

They showed that to the other game developers

and the people who are working under them

they would play Shenmue but then they would get

kind of almost obsessed with the capsule toys and want to find different ones

and keep playing and keep playing it so they can collect the other ones

and there's almost that aha moment

this is what Yu-san means like this is what he wanted

and this is what he was able to envision the whole time.

Well, the great thing Shenmue is that it was

based on real locations in Japan in 1986

and the beauty of it is that we can come and visit this great country

but as me fans we can find these locations

and whatever relevant plans to actually go visit them

so it's not entirely

based on the exact layout of the game,

but a few of the places are scattered together mainly in Yokosuka

and as you get closer and closer to the Dobuita

you start to see little bits and pieces of it that you're like okay I see

and then once you get to like the street and there's that one intersection

you see that and then it sets triggering like all these moments of nostalgia

in your head

so of course you had the tobacco shop over there

you have to pay phones Ryo could

walk over here technically there would be a bus stop right over here

you come through the arcade would be right here

and then Dobuita Street would be right here

you will run through there

and then there's the hamburger shop just down there actually

so yeah

so it makes it makes perfect sense

it's not exactly one to one but you know

you can see where Yu Suzuki's head was at especially back

in the in the nineties when he came in he came through here to

location scouting so

of course the main attraction of Shenmue one was the main street

which is Dobuita Street and not too far from that is the harbor

so that's the main two settings of the first game yeah

and the great thing is that it's conveniently located between the two

that finds this place that is also can go visit them

his team would go and research

what was the actual

weather of the day that the game is set in in this part of the country?

What was the sound?

What was the sound that the telephones made at that time

when you would call domestically within Japan or when you would call

international to Canada?

And what was the ringtone in Canada when you would call how does the wire on

the telephone call in a way that was like it was representative of 1980s Japan.

One day you might be walking down the road and I know ladies outside of our house

and then the next day she's not she will have her own routine day by day

that will change in what she does and that goes for every single character

you never know what will happen in the world

it's almost unexpected day by day.

Only way that you could ever find out that information

is if you pick up the phone and call that person multiple times.

I probably played through that game seven or eight times before

I even realized that like

I could call my friends multiple times and like learn more about them

that was one of the craziest things about that game

and just the whole process that went into making it.

So and we are now on route to Dobuita Street we're just 10 minutes away

when I got there in real life and I was walking around and kind of seeing it

and it was just taking me back to when I was that kid

who discovered Shenmue for the first time

I think that was the magic right there

I didn't even think that I would ever find myself in Japan

but like now I'm here and this is something that I really want to do

yeah just I don't I feel like I have to it's like well

it's a Shenmue fan I have to I'm obligated

what's the one thing you want to do today?

Oh ok this day

is not going to be complete until I drop in ¥130 vending machine

chug a coke at the exact same

I'm going to mentally time it so I have you know the drink drink.

It was a cool feeling and I don't know how to describe that feeling

to people from other fan communities because it's such like a thing

specific to Shenmue right like going half way across

the world to this place that was in a video game

I don't think I've ever seen anybody do that

I don't know what it was that made us want to do it but it's like

okay, if there's a payphone, let's get a photo of us

like talking on the phone or let's buy a capsule toy from the vending machine

when you do that people probably think you're so weird

and so strange but I don't know it felt like something that I needed to do

like I don't know

this looks like the spot where Ryo would get on the bus to go to the harbor

and I remember there was a payphone there and my first time playing that game

I thought that that was the only payphone you could use in the game

I thought that was the only place to make a call

because when I was talking to people they kept leasing me there

I had no idea I could use one that has a key residence or anywhere else

so every day when I was looking for message chen

I wanted to get up right out of Hazuki residence

all the way down here just to make that one phone call

and despite all that

despite all that, I still thought it was the best game ever

even though I thought it was just making me run the circus

yeah that's my story

and look at that looks the same

looks just like it

it's kind of like that aha moment you know

we're storyline kind of played an integral role

but where Shenmue did it even better is that not only was this incredible

storyline going on but it was doing it in such an interactive way

that no other other game before it had really accomplished

as much as Shenmue did

most RPGs of that era

that ultimately came out in the late nineties where essentially turn based

where you have a group of characters together who would have to stop

and they'd have fight something and you know you use hit points etc

they're all very very much the same thing where you hide your stats your attributes

you would walk around there would be random encounters

you would fight monsters with the people in your party

you there would be magic there would be consumables

the formula was there and it was working

but how do you step in and change that?

Right how do you shake things up?

We have you know Ryo Hazuki

his father is murdered by people that have come in from another country

it's like so all of a sudden his world goes from this tiny

little Hamlet to a international story

but then on the player side it's this amazing story

about the sudden realization that video games don't have to be arcade

video games don't have to be this kind of I have to beat the game

video games suddenly became this incredible all procedural thing

it became an experience

it was really different at the time because it was a sandbox game

the fact that you could go anywhere you could walk into somebody's house

pick up a piece of fruit and just look at it

and a stupid as that sounds this is a really big deal

when it first came out

a lot of people find that to be really boring and tedious

and I want to say I do too

but I get it

like I understand why they did it because it makes you feel like

this is a real thing

there's a level of respect towards the player that I think

that that insinuates that we really appreciate as gamers

it's like they reward my curiosity

for opening up this closet that I find a plus 24 sword

probably not but I saw what kind of clothes

Fuku-san likes

I saw what video games he was into and that made me understand him

as a player a little bit more than the game

holding my hand telling me he's a Sega fan.

Whenever you advance a story you know that that happens because

a cut scene triggers in the game and then it cuts and starts

and then you start learning more about what you're supposed to do

and whenever that happened I had like this pavlovian response to the

like I would just be craving that you know fade to black

and then the cut scene because I'm like oh yeah I know I'm doing something

I don't know if it was like the detective aspect

or just like the fact that I was learning more about the story

and what was going on but that was like what made me want to keep playing.

For the for the vision that Yu Suzuki had for Shenmue

the technology in game engines didn't exist

and that's why he had to build this stuff

that's why it became so expensive

no one was making an engine that was capable of doing what Shenmue did

they had to make all these textures make all these assets

design everything from scratch

remember by the time this game was ready to go tomorrow

there were 300 people working on this game

this was not an inexpensive game

and the theory was at that time

that it was the most expensive video game ever made.

It would on the fly as the doors opening have to like render a whole room

and delete the rest of the environment and without having the

the individual notice that he was coming up with all sorts

of programming tricks and tactics that are now much more heavily used.

What game engine was offering a such a complex weather system

that two different people could be playing at two different seasons

one could be in winter and one could be in summer

and you would never cross over from one or the other

there's really very few games that offer that kind of stuff

the way that the weather system worked by itself is really crazy

and I really don't think an engine of any sort

that existed at the time was capable of reproducing those kind of assets.

It seems kind of weird like that people would fly

halfway across the world to come to Japan to go on this pilgrimage to just like

a small little town to the small little town to see like a street

and like hill

yeah, maybe some vending machines but I don't know what do you guys

what do you guys think we're going to get out of this today?

I've lived in an area previously that's a lot like yokosuka and Dobuita

that's in southern Japan but it's just not the same

no matter how much of Japan you've seen

I think that what was in the game

we'll be able to see the remnants of that

it's what I would say there's a just for us fans a magical feeling of

just even standing there and being there on that street

where you can kind of live vicariously through Ryo Hazuki

how he would have walked down that street

even though it's not really a video game but we can actually do that for real

this would have been the road that Ryo takes on the motorcycle

to get to the expressway which would go to the harbor

now in the grand scheme of things what does this all mean?

What is the significance?

Like, I think for me it's for me personally

because I've lived in Japan for a number of years

and part of the reason I came to Japan initially in the first place

is because of Shenmue so this is kind of like a like a full 360 moment

so this location is going to have like some kind of physical effect on me

some sentimental value

yeah it's sentimental

I sunk so many hours into this game just walking around

and talking to people and exploring and listening to music

and there was even one moment where I kind of just like you know

popped in my headphones was playing the Shenmue sound soundtracks of the game

and I was just like walking around and kind of like taking it all in.

When you play a video game you become that character and the music

becomes the soundtrack of your life that becomes your music

it's not Indiana Jones it's music it's not another character's music

it's part of your adventure and your life.

Shenmue is different you know when I first started doing games

I only done about two or three games before Shenmue

and it was a lot of you know combat fighting and exertion sounds

I think one of the big ones I did was Tekken Three I was Paul Phoenix

but it's a lot of just like you know come on

kind of thing

then when I got the script for Shenmue it was just

it was basically we were making a very long interact live movie

I would walk into the studio

they literally gave me a script sometimes like that almost every day

I want to say maybe like a month and a half

I was going back and forth back and forth to Sega studios

it was definitely a big scale project that was involved

when you get to the studio those show you a couple of

pictures, drawings, or in this case, video which was really nice

and the script and you have a little meeting

with the director and they give you a background on the character

you know they say okay this guy's a really nice guy but he kind of grew up in a broken family

and then let us kind of play with it and said okay we want you to go

a little bit lighter a little bit softer a little more aggressive kind of thing

and when we focused in on that one sound

that one kind of character then he said okay let's let's roll

and I remember reading the lines and kind of getting the character

and my brain and kind of thinking you know he's like a very

you know he was a very martial arts discipline background

he's very stoic

they had me read some of the opening scene

they had me read some of the interactions with some of the other people

and yeah just they and I think they just liked

for some reason they just like the sound of my voice

and they thought that that fit Hazuki.

Then honestly like if you ask people who are marketing that game

I don't think they could have told you what it was

there's no elevator pitch for what Shenmue is it's an RPG but like it's

it's a it's an open world and like you fight people but like you don't level up

but you also have to like I don't play arcade games from time to time

and it's it's there's just so much going on

that you can't in a few sentences do it justice

this is what I want out of a video game

and like most

people want something totally different they want to shoot

they want to fight

I want to like kind of live someone else's life

a lot of people found it boring

that you just walked to a store and bought items and walked home that day

they didn't see that you were living a real true life in Japan in 1986

asking questions with Ryo trying to find out what happened

with his father you know you know with that car on that fateful day

but I see how some people would be frustrated right?

Because you're not constantly doing stuff if you're going to compare someone

with Grand Theft Auto Grand Theft Auto you're just causing mayhem

there's always something to keep you entertained

generally long stretches of time

you're just you're walking and you're exploring and you're talking

to people in your opening drawers and looking through phone books and stuff

all these mundane things

were amazing because for the first time you could do it in a virtual environment

so yeah it was cool going to the store

it was cool playing pool or driving around in a forklift

it didn't matter

what it was is because it was all insular

it was you would believe that you were in that world

we look at that now and think oh well that's just something that you do in games.

Shenmue really was the first one to do that in that kind of prospect

of that that puts you in that kind of you know first

or really third person action adventure type of game

people often like call it

a virtual Japan tourism game

right now you can be a tourist in Japan

I don't think that's the correct way to call Shenmue because you're

not a tourist

you're a guy from there

you have a home you have family

well actually not anymore

but you still have like people that are really close to you

my first encounter with Shenmue was similar to what you're in Hong Kong

and it's like I had friends from Hong Kong and you know we have a large

Chinese and Hong Kong population in London

so I knew lots of people from there but I'd never been there

and I didn't sort of couldn't directly imagine that

and to be sort of immersed in that environment

was just really exciting and unusual

in the first game

Ryo is in his hometown so it feels cozy it feels warm

he has his family and friends all the little shop owners they know him

so there's a warmth to it

and then Shenmue two you go to mainland China

and it doesn't feel so good

it feels cold they steal your backpack right away

and that translates to a player

you are a fish out of water

you're trying to navigate the streets I remember always just getting lost

never knowing where I was going not trusting anyone

so it's not a tourist simulator

it's a living simulator

you're a Japanese boy that lives in Japan and has friends

that should be going to school things like that

when characters are introduced in the first game like Tom

who goes to America and the Nozomi who goes to Canada.

I can remember there's a scene in Shenmue two

when you have the chance to tell Shenhua about your friends

and just that small

moments of telling her about your friends

I'm getting chills right now thinking about it

because they feel like real people

so I think after playing through Shenmue one and two I had the feeling that in myself

there was a new identity of being a Japanese

something that no movie would be able to do because I was standing

in the shoes of Ryo having to go to China having to go

to Hong Kong and that was such

a mysterious feeling of me being a Japanese wandering

through Hong Kong

almost like I was having this weird dream or like seeing one of my older lives you know

if we're talking pure escapism like yes I think that's why so many

fans of North America and Europe were playing this game

it's because it's like oh this is a world that I've always wanted to go see

but now I get to see it through this virtual lens

you know the games that were being released here in

Japan by Japanese companies more often than not

had limited appeal in the west and they were really struggling to sell games overseas

and so that kind of was a point where it was like

for a studio here it was like do we make our game for

Japan or do we make it for the west?

And there was a choice between one of the other

what we were fighting against

them was the fact that the world was globalizing world was becoming smaller

the Internet was gathering steam exchange of information people

having a voice understanding different cultures faster than ever

the Japanese video game industry was still mired in the same types of games

that were heroic games that were fantasy

games that were not really reflective of real western life

and a big part of the conflict between Sega of America and Sega of Japan

that did lead to much more difficult times for them going on

was the fact that the Sega of America was so successful in the United States

during the Genesis era and the 16 bit console was not very successful in Japan

and Japan is where the parent company was, the United States was a subsidiary

they were you know the child of this parent company

the Japanese studios were built almost like oligarchs

I mean just the the development heads were gods

you'd walk down the street with Yu Suzuki or Yuji Naka

or Nagoshi-San and you'd be mobbed in Akihabara

these guys are gods

this was a fascinating moment in time in our industry

where western developers started to have the upper hand

and I spent a lot of time going back in to Tokyo trying to explain to

to my bosses in Haneda

that we need to change

the the big thing that was going on with Sega Japan is

they were betting everything on the Dreamcast financially

so I think they put like $47 million into the development of Shenmue

and it wasn't going to be one game I believe it was going to

be multiple games I think up to 12 parts if I remember correctly

we're going to build this foundation this platform this structure

and then we're going to have this game stretch into one two three and beyond

and then you can amortize the cost

a well-financed company a well capitalized company can amortize

the upfront cost and say five years from now

this thing is going to be a money machine for us

that was the plan with Shenmue the narrative

you know we're going to continue the style of China

in a particular era was going to continue but it was tied to the platform

and it's the platform wasn't going to be successful then

unfortunately there was nowhere for it to go

it was well-received at the time

it's still really fun to play games

on the Dreamcast now and then you get into sort of the

the difficult but understandable reality of the gaming industry is that

it is a business and there are business decisions that are made

and sometimes bad business decisions that are made that impact

you know the outcome of the company that aren't based on

whether the game is good or whether the hardware is good

because I would say that

the games were very good for the Dreamcast and the hardware is very good

but they price it in a way

that they were losing too much money with each console sale and they weren't

able to extend their reach and had issues with the distribution of it

and they ended up pulling the plug

on January 31st

it was determined while we had a press conference call

at which we announced I had to announce the

that Sega was getting out of the hardware business

that the hail Mary that was North America

whilst we had done very well wasn't good enough

and the hardware business is built on volume

and getting an install base and getting an attach rate of software

to that installed base

because in most instances you're losing money on the hardware.

I think that was certainly the case with the Dreamcast

the Dreamcast failing you know it's

it's a depressing thought

it still depresses me.

Everybody was excited that the next Shenmue game was coming on the Dreamcast

but unfortunately at the last second they canceled it.

Microsoft came in and said hey we have this brand new machine called the Xbox

we need a Japanese game

we'll give you a ton of money for Shenmue

bring it on to our system

so they canceled the Dreamcast version brought onto the Xbox

they were giving it a second chance to maybe meet a bigger audience.

Shenmue two ends on this like massive cliffhanger

that all Shenmue fans know right

you get to the end of that game it sets up this big moment

huge cliffhanger and then it just ends with the story goes on

going in that cave

and seeing magic

there are flashes of magical light

there's two giant engravings of the mirrors you've been looking for

and a nice magical sword

again as a kid it was just what

Shenmue just disappeared for like 14 years

and there's been so many sites talking about it that it's coming back

and everybody's like this E3 it's coming back

and I heard a rumor that the Tokyo game show it's coming back and it never did

if there had never been a schedule or two I don't think there would have been

the kind of fan outrage as there was

Shenmue two came out in 2001

so I think from 2001

to like 2006 or 2007

until probably when I graduated high school in 07

that stretch of time I was on the Internet

like literally every single day like going to IGN Gamespot

trying to find like rumors or news about when Shenmue Three going to come out when

is Shenmue Three going to come out

Yu Suzuki is incredibly talented developer,

been through some tough times over the years

because he can't shake Shenmue.

It's a myth it's a it's an odyssey that is not yet completed

it is something that is at times I think probably a milestone in around his neck

it's a passion piece that he has to fulfill

there were people in these fan communities who were doing like online

gaming activism,

I don't know what you would call it but they were raising awareness for Shenmue

they were announcing to the world like hey guys we're still here

we as a community are still here and we will not stop until Yu Suzuki makes

Shenmue Three because we know that he wanted to make that game.

Like a like a lot of fans

it really nagged at me I would think about it all the time

like I wonder what this guy that I've never met is going through

as somebody who was set up to create this massive

story is only be able to tell the first two chapters of it

and is there any way I can help him?

So just out of the blue I emailed Yu Suzuki one day in 2013 and I said...

I know how to help you make Shenmue Three and he wrote back in as many words

he basically said, who the hell are you?

In 2013 he had mentioned that he was going to be a gdc, giving a talk

and when I be in San Francisco and I said yes we should meet

and so we spent a whole day at his hotel

and I walked him through this whole idea of what this thing called Kickstarter is.

Yu-san called me one day and then he's asking me to come over

to his office and then you know he told me about

idea of the Shenmue Three and then he told me about that

he's going to

incorporate it with Kickstarter

with your fan base with your pedigree

with the desire from everybody to have this sequel made

Shenmue Three I think there's a real world where you can break

records having the biggest crowdfunding game of all time

and sure enough that's what happened

I told him Yu-san listen Yu-san

this is it this is the point of no return

once you made a decision you should be

you have you will have a responsibility

and obligation to complete the game.

E3 is like Christmas for gamers

it is when all of the news and all of the entire industry gets together

to announce what is next to showcase what they've been working on for years

and it's just it's a celebration of the industry

and people's hard works

so I remember sitting there watching Sony's press conference

and the first thing they did they had I think it was Adam Boyes came out and he

said this is a game that a lot of people been looking forward to

and I was like oh shit its awesome oh my gosh Shenmue

and then it was the last guardian

and I was like you

okay

and so we kept watching aloing of the show

and then they was like oh here's another

big fan requested project and final fantasy seven remake comes in

everybody's like losing their shit

and then like I remember watching some of those

livestreams you being like how can they top this? How can they top this?

And then they started talking about Kickstarter,

I said oh it's going to be it's going to be bloodstained

because it just had a hugely successful Kickstarter

my lungs tightened I couldn't breathe

because I understood what I was about to see

and it goes back

and that leaf drops

in right when it drops

the second I see it I know

I know that this is the moment.

There were there was a flood of emotions

it was is this real? Am I dreaming?

I can't even believe this is happening right now

you know the screaming and shouting

it was really a very different type of noise.

Literally that like mind blowing like holy fucking shit

like the moment I've been waiting for this whole time is finally happening

like Shenmue Three is going to be real

for me I said goodbye to Shenmue a long time

it's a video game

screw it

it didn't work out it was not a financial success

money drives the industry get good with it

so to see something like that is like seeing an old friend that you thought

was dead he said,

I will release the story of what happens next

when there is no hope when this game can never be made

I will tell you the story and I will release it in some capacity

so you can have closure

and that moment never came

so I kept hope alive

and so at the moment I was really sure because you know,

Kickstarter project will be successful

one person can only do so much right?

But the one you exponentially grow that right

if you have 100,000 people who think the exact same way

and they're like yeah let's let's raise hell let's take to Twitter

let's make our voices heard let's get this game made

and when Shenmue Three took Kickstarter like, it literally broke the website in 24 hours.

To have this announcement happen what was going to blow up

there's just no way it couldn't have

because everyone everyone was just so excited to have it

I think that if a publisher would have done Shenmue Three

it would have been a failure

I think no one could have made it work

but with Kickstarter

we're the publisher so all of us together made this game happen

I think this game could not have happened any other way.

This could for me possibly

the closing of I wouldn't say chapter that's too small

but one book of a volume that's probably you could say

this has been such a long journey for the past 15, 16 years now

and from that point until this my life has just been completely Shenmue

orientated on a daily basis

so the fact that it's culminated from especially last year in Shenmue Three

finally being announced

and in a short space of time we're now sitting here in Japan

and about to visit the real life locations

it's a dream come true absolute dream come true

it's been a long day

but its been possibly one of the best days of my life

this is it's been an insane experience being shown

all these locations by Yu Suzuki which inspired him to make Shenmue

so and it's not over yet

so hopefully

we have a couple more hours with Suzuki-san

and it will complete

what will be the best day of my life

what's special about the fans of Shenmue and why that series

has stuck with people for so long and has created such a passionate fan base

is because I think that their memories are very much

stuck inside the game because the game is so multi-textured it's so multi-layered

it broadens your perspective

and I think as humans we are drawn to stuff like that

we love that kind of stuff

that's what we're wired to like

it makes us better as people

there's a lot of influence off of a game like Shenmue and a lot of games are built

off of the pillar that that Shenmue provided

it really is kind of like

just a wonderful piece of art you know I mean

that people need to go and see an experience

like any medium of art games don't exist in a vacuum

there's a lot of things that you know the components to the experience

beyond that there is the fandom

you know it's not just the experience

of playing the game actively but also thinking about the game

wanting to get better at the game wanting to make friendships

and if it also leads to people feeling inspired or

having human experiences that they wouldn't have otherwise had

by making friends or writing fan fiction or cosplay or whatever it is to help

somebody feel more immersed in that world and more

you know less alone in our world

through this fictional thing that didn't exist

until someone thought of it and made it happen

you know that's a beautiful thing.

What's up everybody!

Barnett A.K.A.

Bruce Wayne 911.

Hey, man, I can't believe it, man.

Our dream came true, man.

We get Shenmue III

and on top of that,

we get in a Shenmue documentary.

I want to give a special

thanks and a special

shout out to shenmuedojo dot com A.K.A.

shenmuedojo

dot net for covering all things

Shenmue for so long.

I want to give another special thanks

and a special shout out to Adam Corley,

happy console gamer

for always covering any Shenmue

news on their channels,

and I just want to thank

the Shenmue community as a whole.

Man never gave up.

We stuck in their Shenmue

Three is finally coming.

Man along with the Shenmue

documentary man.

Hey everybody.

Enjoy, man I'm out my name is Albert

Imitation Evil

Shenmue was one of those games

I consider to be revolutionary.

Back in its day

its first game,

I was told it incorporated elements

from different genres,

such as RPG,

action, adventure and funny games,

all to create an epic

synergetic experience.

Now, quite frankly,

if it wasn't for Shenmue,

I think my passion for videogames

would have died a long time ago.

So I personally think he uses Yu Suzuki

and the team who developed Shenmue

for rekindling my passion in video games.

To me, Shenmue is more than a game.

It was

it was an experience.

It was

a big part of my life

for a very long time

I remember the day it came out.

I remember the day I first played it

and I was completely immersed in it.

And I remember finishing the game

and I just wanted the second one

and couldn't wait for the second one.

And when that came out a year later,

the same experience continued.

It's just absolutely amazing.

I want to thank

Yu Suzuki, for actually helping

bring this a reality to all the fans.

And I also want to

thank all my fellow fans

because the fact

that we were so passionate

and the fact that we continue to ask and

create campaigns and make our voice heard

is what's made Shenmue III a reality

come every

day without neglect to keep training.

G judge yourself without conceit

and do not show moves thoughtlessly

done.

Be brave

and stay calm to make the right decision.

Ye to act without hesitation.

To do what is right to forward us.

Thank you for teaching these lessons.

You know,

ever since they announced Shenmue Three,

we've been getting messages

from our fans asking

if the gang is going to get back together

to make another movie.

I know, and that's a tough one.

I mean, we were in high school

when we made those

and now we've got jobs, families.

I don't even know if I have time

to play Shenmue Three,

let alone make another movie.

That's right.

But we're excited to announce

right here on this documentary,

the launch of game

entertainment's Kickstarter

for Shenmue Three, the gang edition II

to help us reach our humble

goal of $7 million.

I just might put the jacket on.

Again.

When I was at my Sony conference

in the early 2000s,

they were going around the room

asking what everybody's

favorite game was.

And I said, Shenmue

and I was booed for that.

And the reason I was booed was because

Microsoft Xbox

had the exclusive to Shenmue at the time

while I still stuck to my guns.

That Shenmue is my favorite game.

And as of this taping, Shenmue

Three is only going

to be on PlayStation and PC.

So I guess Karma still comes around.

It's Shenmue that

gave me my love of everything.

Japanese and eventually led to me.

Losing over a hundred k was in word

and then moving halfway around the world.

I never made it to Japan,

but I ended up moving to Thailand

where I'm

now a teacher

teaching English as a foreign language.

And if it wasn't for Shenmue,

that never would have happened.

So I will be eternally grateful

to Yu Suzuki and the team. Hi.

My name is Wil Martin

and as well as being a sound designer

for video games

for years,

I'm the world's biggest Shenmue fan.

Even going back to five years ago,

I was interviewed by EuroGamer

and I even mentioned

that it would have been my dream job

to work on Shenmue Three

and now we're so close

to having Yu Suzuki release

Shenmue Three

I can't wait.

Good luck to you

and everybody else has worked on it.

I can't wait to play it

and keep me in mind

for working on the next one. Cheers.

Hello everyone.

I've been playing Shenmue

since it came out in 1999,

and I have to say,

my most memorable moment ever

was when I beat the game

for the first time.

That is the first Shenmue.

When I beat the first time,

I remember sitting there

watching the entire credits

and reflecting on everything

I just experienced.

And that game was so good

that I immediately started

a new save right there in the spot.

Hi, guys.

Just wanted to say a big, big, big

thank you to the Shenmue community.

Without you all, we wouldn't have got

where we are now.

This is where it all started for me.

It was an absolute life changer

and a big thank you to Yu Suzuki,

for creating this masterpiece

and let's hope

we can get Shenmue 4

hashtag let's get Shenmue 4