When it was announced that Shenmue III would become an actual thing, rather than wishful thinking, I was unmoved. When peoples' minds were exploding at the thought of this story finally coming to completion, I wasn't fussed. When I learned of the first two games getting a remastered release, I thought 'ah, that'll be handy: Shenmue and Shenmue II are on the 1001 list.'
I didn't have a Dreamcast twenty years ago. I don't know anybody who did have a Dreamcast. I still don't know anybody who owns a Dreamcast. Anything groundbreaking and monumental to video game history that came out of the Dreamcast is unknown to me unless it would get ported since its release. Shenmue isn't strictly speaking an unknown to me, but what I know about it amounts to pub quiz trivia: It's set in this world, not a weird fantasy one or a distant sci-fi one, and it introduced quick time events as we know them.
Other than that, I know nothing about these titles. I don't know why people are losing their marbles over there being a third game. I should probably find out.
Fun Times
To describe Shenmue as cinematic may just be an understatement. Shenmue certainly starts off as more of a story than a game, as we follow Ryo back to his family home under mysterious circumstances.
It seems his father has something that someone rather nefarious wants, and having us hoisted into the air by our neck is enough for him to spill the beans and give up the goods - this mirror must not be worth as much as I am. Good to know.
Sadly, though, our father did not survive this encounter, leaving us - the young martial artist out for revenge - to begin his epic journey...
... four days later, in his bedroom.
It's a slow start, but it sets up what Shenmue is. While a young martial artist in the 1980s would kick the heads of many a nameless thug on his way to the big bad guy in a film, here we're going to do things a little more realistically. Make no mistake, this is a martial arts revenge story, but it takes place in the 1980s as it happened, not in the parallel dimension that every martial arts film is set in.
That means instead of charging out and bashing peoples skulls in, we've got to talk to the neighbourhood - right after I get my pocket money?
This remastered version I'm playing does look really good if you ignore the wrapping that it comes in. There is a choice of the original Japanese voice acting, though I left it on English to actually engage with these characters. I almost wish I hadn't, because most of the delivery is a joke, no matter who is talking. That's a minor quibble though - just imagine this is a dub of an early Jackie Chan film, it'll be fine.
Heading outside I find the run button and get used to moving Ryo and the camera. It's not clunky but it's not comfortable either. Luckily, with this kind of pacing, I don't think I'll be caught in a flap regarding the controls - frantic this game is not.
Ryo has a notebook where he scribbles important information, and if you're stuck with what to do next, you can flip through its pages for some ideas. We know the big bad evil guy came in a black car, so let's see who knows what about it.
Well, we were unlikely to be met with success so soon. Time to canvas the town.
Frustrations
Oh boy. Is this how Shenmue really gets going? Is this what people are going mental over? This is Walking and Talking: The Game.
Walking around the corner triggers a cutscene which reveals something useful, and points us to another part of town for some ideas on where to look for more information. These trails and hints are nice to discover organically, as opposed to having map markers and flashing HUD elements all over the place, but we'll have to see how long I take that view, should I need to find any needles in haystacks later on.
Some leads are just dead ends, which is true to life, I suppose, but quite annoying when it happens. True to life again, there. Shenmue really is trying to be authentic, and stand out through its differences to anything that has come before it.
Further Fun Times
I soon get sucked into a cutscene with an elderly lady looking for a specific house. While it sounds like a distraction from my black car hunt, it introduces us to the gameplay mechanism that is 'looking at everything'.
With everything written in Japanese, I'm going to have a harder time of things until I use this mechanism, which just zooms into signs and translates them, but zoom into a shop sign and you'll see its opening and closing times. Shenmue has a persistent clock on the screen, and the inhabitants of this little town live their own lives according to this clock. Shops are open when houses are likely empty, and vice versa. It even follows the weather from the 1980s, and I would imagine that more people could be found outside in the sun, and inside in the rain.
It sounds like it might be a hassle to find someone at any given point in time and space, but it also sounds like a proper exploration game. A world you can get lost in, if not in terms of where you are, then in terms of when, owing to oodles of distractions.
I don't know why I need to spend 100 Yen on a mystery kids toy, but I can. As often as I like, so long as I've got the money.
And if I get bored of manipulating these models to see them from different angles, I can just find a drinks machine and spend more money.
That one would have made more sense back in the day when the product placement was still in the game, but still, the attention to detail in this game is some kind of absurd. We don't need to do this, but we could. And because we're able to, there's bound to be times where we need to. I hope that's not the case too often.
Back to the action, if action is the right word...
Finding a map leads me to the Yamamoto residence, and so I track down the old lady to tell her.
Or I would tell her, if I actually interacted with the sign, triggering that invisible check marker the game needs to have a value of 'true' attributed to it in order to complete the quest, so I run back and trigger it and get on with the story.
Well, that was nice. Back to hunting black cars, I guess.
Each area I've come across so far is small and self-contained, but they're getting bigger and more active, and I'm learning more and more about this black car as I venture further and further from home. The world, and the story, is opening up to me before my eyes, and I still haven't had to do anything strenuous - just follow the breadcrumbs.
With the day drawing to a close, I've learned a lot more than I knew this morning, and have some solid leads to investigate. But then I see an arcade. And it has Space Harrier in it. I've not played the arcade original of Space Harrier. It was on the 1001 list, long, long ago... technically I'm in an arcade right now...
Space Harrier is a strange game, where you are a dude grabbing hold of a rocket which propels you into the screen as everything nasty comes out of it.
You can move around pretty fluidly and will have to dodge or blow up all kinds of obstacles and enemies, none of which make sense. Apart from trees and bushes, I suppose. Floating rocks don't make sense. One-eyed mammoths don't make sense, either.
What does make sense is smacking face first into a tree being a bad thing, where you'll lose a life in doing so. You can blow them up by shooting them, but it's probably better to avoid them for the most part. I'm not very good at that, though.
I saw the first boss, a giant flying dragon snake thing, but was clearly too busy focusing on the giant flaming ball bearings he was hurling at me. Oh well, I'll have to drop another 100 Yen to play again some time.
Oh, shit, that's right. I was meant to be playing Shenmue...
Final Word
I have a list of games from this 1001 list that I have to get back to in one form or another, and Shenmue is on that list because I've done nothing but ask people about a black car, and that's not what Shenmue is about. It's also about driving forklifts.
It's not just about asking people where a black car is or about simulating jobs, but the fact that Shenmue involves such a heavy dose of reality is quite interesting. It reminds me of Heavy Rain, and I played Heavy Rain every which way, so I should be able to walk around Shenmue and find out where the story takes me without too much fuss.
After all, I've got to get myself caught up in a quick time event, just to find out what they were like back in the day. Probably exactly the same as they are nowadays, but it'd be nice to see how they were implemented, seeing as Shenmue is lifted up and pointed at when we think about the origins of the mechanism. Did it do them right, or simply do them when we didn't expect them to be done? I'll have to find out.
With both Shenmue I and II coming in the form of Shenmue I and II, it's easier than it ever has been to get into these games - no emulation needed, and support for mods too. For a change in pace from whatever game you're playing, maybe you should think about trying Shenmue.
I hear it's getting a third outing soon...
Fun Facts
A humourous bug (one of some ten thousand during the course of development) had characters getting stuck inside a convenience store. The solution? Make the door wider.
Shenmue, developed by Sega AM2, first released in 1999.
Version played: Shenmue I and II, PC, 2018.