Backlog Game 005: Shenmue
Main image source: www.shenmuemaster.com
Maybe I need to stop trying to play the first game in a series before moving onto subsequent games I haven’t played over the last 20 years or so, because I’m now 0/2.
Sadly, just as I wanted to play more of the Metal Gear Solid series but was stopped dead in my tracks by a disappointing revisiting of the Playstation original, so too has the original Shenmue discouraged me from continuing on to the second and third entries.
But first, a little background.
I love the Dreamcast!
Despite its very short life, or perhaps because of it, the Dreamcast seems to hold a particularly special place in the hearts of gamers; I think that has to do not only with the qualities of the console and its games, but also the nostalgia associated with the late 90’s (let’s pause to remember just how awesome 1999 was for both movies and music).
That was certainly the case for me, and the launch of the Dreamcast also coincided with some pretty important moments in my life.
In 1998, my dad’s job transferred him back to France. Normal people would think “hey, what a fantastic opportunity”, but not me: I was a spoiled, ignorant, meat-wad teenager who was leaving friends and familiar surroundings behind, so I was miserable.
Today, anything is within reach in seconds seemingly, but’s hard to convey just how different times were back then in terms of internet access, and I think that part of my emo-misery stemmed from it being just plain difficult to keep in touch with “home” in the US.
Thankfully, I was fortunate enough that my father would pay for the internet and the phone use for me and my siblings to go online for about an hour a day (each!). Of course, I kept up with friends (AIM and Hotmail, iykyk), but most of my online budget was spent following videogames passionately, just as I did prior to moving.
I remember visiting the original ign.com and videogames.com, and I strongly remember being fascinated by the launch of the Dreamcast.
In fact, I devoured what news would appear during my morning site tour, and I definitely remember the morning I logged on to read about the Japanese launch, and continuing to feel disappointed that the US would have to wait nearly a year for their turn (to the credit of Dock Games in my small town, I may have poo-poo’d anything French just out of pure spite, in hindsight I can appreciate they had a Japanese import console behind their counter months before it appeared in the US and Europe).
Fast-forward to mid-1999, my family was back in the US to visit friends, and what used to be my usual Electronics Boutique in the mall had a pre-launch Dreamcast with a Sonic Adventure demo.
I played it, my jaw dropped during the first level (you know the part I’m talking about!) and I put ten bucks down to pre-order it on the spot.
That Summer I worked to save up the remaining cash for the console and two games (Sonic Adventure, of course, and Soul Calibur, of course!), and while I’m still sad that I could not experience the epic launch on 9/9/99, I was lucky that my dad was nevertheless headed back to the States around launch time, and was able to bring it back for me.
From that point, the Dreamcast became the go-to console for my brother and me, and I certainly have some happy times associated with so many games on that console.
Perhaps you see where this is going though: of all the excellent games that we played and anticipated (Crazy Taxi, Jet Set Radio, Skies of Arcadia, and on and on and on), Shenmue felt different.
All aboard the hype train…
Just as the turn of the millenium was phenomenal for music and movies, so too was it phenomenal for videogames.
Consider that each of the three major consoles had genre-defining hits, now considered among the greatest titles of all time: the N64 with Ocarina of Time, the Playstation with Metal Gear Solid, and the Dreamcast with Shenmue.
At first, Shenmue started out as rumblings of a “Virtua Fighter RPG”, where you’d take control of Akira on an epic quest (that wasn’t actually so far-fetched, as Shenmue utilized the Virtua Fighter engine).
Once the full scope of the project was unveiled, interest really started to pick up.
It was almost inevitable based on what was promised:
A fully “living” world where you could interact with anybody
An arcade in which you could play classic Sega games
A combat system taken straight from the Virtua Fighter games
This should be obvious, but I’ll say it anyway: as much as “open world” is a cliche in 2023, the concept was absolutely mind-blowing when Shenmue was announced, so the idea that you could have your character drink a soda and play some games while avenging his father really was heavy stuff.
And then there were the associated graphics.
Video neither widely nor easily available in those days, and you’d have to rely on screenshots to imagine what games looked like.
For Shenmue, as hard as it is to believe now, the graphics portrayed in screenshots were miles ahead of anything at the time.
I can’t convey to you how incredible this looked leading up to the launch of Shenmue, you really just had to be there (Image source: www.retrogamer.net).
With all this in mind, Just like everyone else, I was SO STOKED to get the game, and Christmas of 2000, I was ecstatic to find the NTSC version of Shenmue under the Christmas tree.
Playing Shenmue for the first time
I know I sound like a broken record, but gaming in the early 2000’s was vastly different from how it is today.
Nowadays, as soon as a game comes out - even before - everyone’s ready with their hot takes, and sometimes a game that was highly anticipated “cools” nearly instantly if enough people say it’s not what they were expecting.
The Dreamcast may have had online capabilities, but gaming back then was a far more insular experience - you felt what you felt, not what others told you to feel - so I was primed to like this game, and it was unlikely that anything the game could throw at me would ruin my initial, positive feelings.
Other than the forklift races, which I clearly remember finding super-tedious, I liked everything else about the game, and as soon as I reached the ending, I looked forward to a sequel. Also, to its credit, technically Shenmue was so, so far ahead of anything I’d seen prior that all of the neat stuff papered over any deficiencies in the gameplay (spoiler: there are many…)
A couple of years later, during Winter break from college, I did receive the XBox version of Shenmue II, but with lots of other things going on, I just never made it that far.
Which brings us to now.
Some things are better left in the past…
A few months ago, I started picking up PAL Dreamcast games and OF COURSE I was going to buy Shenmue (and the sequel, which did see a European Dreamcast release).
Why wouldn’t I want to finally complete one of the most legendary franchises in gaming?
It turned out that I also found a copy of the Shenmue 1 and 2 compilation (which I didn’t even know existed prior to searching for the Dreamcast releases) for next to nothing on PS4, so the other day I popped in the disc and…
The game starts off well enough, with a pretty good-looking for now, mind-blowing for the time, real-time cutscene of Lan Di murdering Ryo’s father, which sets the story in motion.
From there, everything is just soooooooo slllooowwww.
Yes, in any game you have to allocate some times to get your bearings, but in Shenmue, instead of being driven forward in a blind rage, Ryo has time to calmly help raise a kitten, or help an elderly local woman find someone’s house?
And as for those “mind-blowing” graphics…
When the character models start moving and talking…
Yikes.
As a 16 year old whose mind was blown by the cutting-edge graphics and how “awesome” it was that I had to go to bed at the end of the day (so realistic!), yes, I could put up with this, and actually even have fun in the process.
As a nearly 40 year old gamer with a broader knowledge-base upon which to draw, playing this game in 2023 just feels tedious.
In fact, I remember feeling, within about 10 minutes or so from the end of the opening cut scene, that Yu Suzuki got so caught up in the realism aspect of Shenmue that he mistook details like finding underwear in drawers for fun.
In other words, the realism of Shenmue was confused for gameplay, when in fact it should have been only one aspect of the gameplay, whose guiding principle, above all, should follow…
The number one rule when it comes to entertainment.
My wife and I have a rule when we sit down to watch a tv series or movie:
No matter how hyped the product is, how famous its actors are, or how intriguing the description sounds, if it’s not fun or generally entertaining within the first 5 minutes or so, we move on to something else.
After all, the sole purpose of this media is to entertain, and if it’s not doing that, why waste time when we could be doing or watching something else?
And such is how I felt with Shenmue.
As I did with Metal Gear Solid, I fully respect the contribution this game made to the hobby (I found many comments online to the effect of “Shenmue walked so Yakuza could run”), I am so glad that something like this exists, and I am grateful for the good times I associate with my first play-through, but as something to re-experience in 2023, I’ll pass.
What about Shenmue 2 and 3?
I struggle with this question with regards to Metal Gear Solid as well: I’ve heard excellent things about subsequent games in the series (especially Snake Eater), so should I still try to experience those, despite rose-colored glasses not being enough to get me through a present playthrough of the first game?
Or, are the aspects that are elemental to the gameplay of those seminal titles still present in the sequels?
From my understanding, while Shenmue III is somewhat middling, the second game is actually quite good, with a much larger scope and gameplay changes that do a lot for the overall experience.
Perhaps I will get to those games eventually, but right now, there are so many other games I know are good that I have to get to, that my lackluster, new attempt at Shenmue has pushed its sequels farther down the backlog list.
Oh well, at least I still have the memories.