Poll Result: Patrons' Choice Topic for January 2026

Every month Phantom River Stone holds a poll among our patrons to choose a topic for the blog in the coming month. After tallying the votes (including accumulated votes from previous months), the winning topic that has been voted this time is:

"Inside Yu Suzuki’s Project Berkley: a First Glimpse"

In late 1998, as the Dreamcast era was just beginning, Yu Suzuki began teasing his next project under the code name Project Berkley. Rather than a traditional announcement, Suzuki chose to reveal fragments of the project through a special video on GD-ROM that came bundled with Virtua Fighter 3tb.

Coverage by the Japanese Dreamcast Magazine from the time paints Project Berkley as something deliberately hard to define: not quite a game, not quite a movie, but what Suzuki described as “FREE”: Full Reactive Eyes Entertainment.

The article focuses on mood, visual direction, and ambition, teasing a vast world, universal themes, and the now-famous image of a mysterious young girl who would later become central to Shenmue’s identity. This early glimpse offers a fascinating snapshot of Shenmue before the title, the town of Yokosuka, or even Ryo Hazuki had been fully revealed.

Coming soon to the blog!

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Yu Suzuki’s Keyword for 2026: “Maru” — Reflections on 2025 (Famitsu.com)

 

"171 Game Creators' New Year's Resolutions" from Famitsu (the Chinese Zodiac animal sign for 2026 is the Horse)

Famitsu.com has released its annual developer survey, offering insights from 171 creators across the Japanese game industry. Yu Suzuki is among those featured once again. As in previous years, participants were asked to select a “keyword” or phrase representing their outlook for the year ahead, reflect on the past year, and share brief updates on their current activities.

Yu Suzuki’s responses reflecting on 2025 and looking ahead to 2026 are below, translated from the original Japanese. This year’s comments are brief and upbeat, reaffirming his commitment to game development while touching on recent Shenmue-related news. His chosen keyword is simple but open to interpretation:

Q: Your Keyword for 2026?

YS: Maru (まる = “circle” / “wholeness”)

Q: Your Aspirations for the Year Ahead?

YS: Next year also, I hope to continue taking on the challenge of game development and delivering fresh experiences to everyone!

Q: Recent News

YS: In 2025, we announced release information for Shenmue III Enhanced. Please wait a little longer for this easier-to-play, higher-quality version of Shenmue III.

Q: What Are You Keeping an Eye On?

YS: The 2026 World Baseball Classic, and the film adaptation of OutRun.

Yu Suzuki: CEO of YS Net. Best known for creating genre-defining works such as Virtua Fighter and Shenmue during his time at Sega. In 2025, his company released Steel Paws.

Notes on the Keyword “Maru”

Yu Suzuki’s chosen keyword, maru, is a simple word that can carry a lot of meaning in Japanese. Literally, it means “circle,” but it’s often used to suggest ideas like wholeness, completeness, or rounding things out. In everyday contexts, maru can also be used to mark something as correct or satisfactory (like an exam answer), while more broadly it can hint at cycles or things coming back around, rather than reaching a definite end.

Seen in the context of Yu Suzuki’s career as a game developer, maru feels deliberately open-ended. For Shenmue fans, it’s hard not to briefly wonder whether a word associated with “wholeness” or “completion” might hint at the long-running and unfinished nature of the series, and the hope of one day bringing that story to a proper conclusion. Any such reading, however, remains purely speculative.

More broadly, and perhaps more practically, maru can be read as expressing a general sense of balance or continuity, which fits neatly with Suzuki’s comments about continuing with game development and delivering fresh experiences. In light of Shenmue III Enhanced, it may also reflect the idea of refining or rounding out an existing work through further polish and improvements. Whether it’s meant as “closing a circle,” keeping things moving, or simply aiming for things to feel right, maru works here as a loose, reflective keyword rather than a fixed statement.

Shenmue III Enhanced

Release information for Shenmue III was shared in August 2025, around the time of Gamescom. Published by ININ Games, the Enhanced version introduces visual, performance, and quality-of-life improvements, while allowing players to retain the original experience through optional settings.

2026 World Baseball Classic

He also highlights the World Baseball Classic as an event of interest. The tournament is set to return in 2026 and will once again bring together national teams from around the world, with games scheduled to be held in several locations, including Tokyo.

OutRun Film Adaptation

Suzuki also notes his interest in the upcoming film adaptation of OutRun - inspired by the arcade game of the same name he created at Sega in 1986 which remains one of the company’s most iconic arcade titles. In April 2025, Sega announced that a live-action feature film adaptation is in development at Universal Pictures, with acclaimed director Michael Bay attached to direct and produce. A release date has not yet been announced.

Related Links

Previous end-of-year responses from Yu Suzuki:

• Yu Suzuki's Keyword for 2025: "Getting Active"
• Yu Suzuki's Keyword for 2024: "Creating Games I'd Want to Play Myself"
• Yu Suzuki's Keyword for 2023: "Light AI"
• Yu Suzuki's Keyword for 2022: "Mix"
• Yu Suzuki's Keyword for 2021: "Shooting / RPG"
• Yu Suzuki's Keyword for 2020: "A New Project Start"
• Yu Suzuki's Keyword for 2019: "Balance"
• Yu Suzuki's Keyword for 2018: "Immersion"
• Yu Suzuki's Keyword for 2017: "Shortcuts"

Source (Japanese): Famitsu.com

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What's on the Menu in Dobuita: Yamaji Soba Noodles Restaurant

In Shenmue, Dobuita's many restaurants have been crafted in realistic detail, offering a variety of different cuisine and dishes, even if they are not critical to the game's story. We have previously examined the many dishes available at Manpukuken Ramen, and this time will be visiting Yamaji Soba Noodles.

Yamaji Soba Noodles exterior

With its calm, traditional interior, Yamaji Soba Noodles provides the perfect place for workers in the district to stop in for a quick lunch or a meal before heading home.

Restaurant interior

What particular dishes do they serve here? Let's check out what's on offer.

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Shenmue Development Timeline (May 1998 - Dec 1999)

Most Shenmue fans already know the broad story of the game’s development: the early demos, the ever-extending release date, and the rumors in games magazines suggesting that SEGA was aiming for something far bigger than anything it had attempted before.

Below is a timeline translated from the Shenmue Complete Guide book, which was published in Japan not long after the first game’s release. It reflects how Shenmue’s development was being presented and discussed at the time, before years of retrospectives and post-mortems filled in the gaps. Much of this information will be familiar to longtime fans, but it still serves as a handy snapshot of those busy Dreamcast years and how key milestones slotted into place.

I’ve also inserted relevant videos at a few points along the way where they help capture what players were seeing at the time as Shenmue gradually took shape.

21 May '98

DC Demo: "Tower of Babel"

At SEGA’s Dreamcast unveiling event, one of the demo videos shown was Tower of Babel, created by Yu Suzuki in just 10 days. In retrospect, this can be seen as a precursor to Shenmue.

• Tower of Babel Demo Video:

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Poll Result: Patrons' Choice Topic for December 2025

Every month Phantom River Stone holds a poll among our patrons to choose a topic for the blog in the coming month. After tallying the votes (including accumulated votes from previous months), the winning topic that has been voted this time is:

"Interview: Toei Director Kazuya Murata's Experience Working on Shenmue II"

In interviews, Yu Suzuki has mentioned that, in order to realize his vision for Shenmue, he needed help from people who didn’t even exist in the game industry yet:

“We didn’t have directors, or anyone used to motion capture… so I gathered people from all kinds of fields: movie staff, scriptwriters, even a novelist.”

One of those outside voices was anime director Kazuya Murata, who joined the Shenmue II team around 1999 and found himself navigating a development floor unlike anything in traditional animation.

Best known for his work on major anime titles like the world-wide hit Fullmetal Alchemist and the internationally popular Code Geass, Murata stepped far outside the usual animation pipeline when he joined Yu Suzuki’s team midway through Shenmue II’s development. The shift from anime studios to a bustling game production environment brought a whole new set of challenges, from motion-capture sessions to experimental 3D cinematics.

In a 2019 interview, Murata shares what that transition was like and how he adapted to a creative process very different from the one he was used to. His recollections about working with Yu Suzuki and team shed light on a moment when anime and game production intersected, bringing both new opportunities and practical hurdles.

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Shenmue’s Road to Release (Shenmue "Complete Guide" Feature, March 2000)

Not long after the release of Shenmue ~Chapter One: Yokosuka~, the Shenmue Complete Guide, with its distinctive black cover, was published in Japan by SoftBank under the Dreamcast Magazine brand. Included in this guide was a special in-depth feature that looked back on the game’s ambitious development.

In this post, we will be translating the full piece into English. It's a fascinating glimpse into how Yu Suzuki and his AM2 team transformed an experimental RPG prototype into what would become one of the most groundbreaking titles in gaming history.

The translation begins below.

A Year and a Half Following Shenmue

AM2, Sega’s most powerful development team, has produced countless hit games. But around the end of 1996, its head, Yu Suzuki, began to go quiet. Spurred by a shift in direction within Sega, Suzuki took on the RPG genre for the first time. As he became more and more immersed in his new project, before anyone realized it, it had grown into a massive undertaking involving an extraordinary number of staff members.

What would become Shenmue ultimately took over four years to complete. But the Shenmue you hold in your hands is still just the beginning.

What exactly is Shenmue? We take a closer look to find out.

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Poll Result: Patrons' Choice Topic for November 2025

Every month Phantom River Stone holds a poll among our patrons to choose a topic for the blog in the coming month. After tallying the votes (including accumulated votes from previous months), the winning topic that has been voted this time is:

"Weekly AM2: Translation of Next Issues (Vols. 15 & 16)"

The topic selected this time is a continuation of our translations of the official online magazine published by Sega's AM2 team back in the day, the Weekly AM2. This magazine published content about the Shenmue series from December 1999 through to around the release of Shenmue II in 2001, and a link to issues of the Weekly AM2 thereafter became a regular feature of the Shenmue.com website.

This time we will be translating further editions of the Weekly AM2: Volumes 15 & 16, published online on 21st March and 28th March 2000.

Vol. 15 Preview of Shenmue-related content:

• Shenmue Passport Feature Commences: Total Net Ranking
• GDC Report from the U.S.A.

Vol. 16 Preview of Shenmue-related content:

• Takuan's Dobuita Visit Report (First Part)
• Wallpaper Download
• Japan Game Awards Announcement
• Masaya Matsukaze's Consultation Column
• Shenmue Chapter 1 Yokosuka Original Sound Track

These editions will be translated in a future post on the blog.

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Megumi Yasu Photoshoot - Nozomi Harasaki Cosplay | Dreamcast Magazine, March 2000

The March 2000 edition of Japan's Dreamcast Magazine featured cosplay by Megumi Yasu, the voice actress who portrayed Nozomi Harasaki in the Japanese version of Shenmue. Along with the photos, the feature included a brief Q&A section.

Megumi Yasu recreates one of the CG renders of Nozomi at her shop.

AI animation based on the magazine still.

Note: the photos in this post have been extracted from a pdf scan of the magazine, so quality is limited. Some of the photos have also been processed to remove overlaid text.

 -- The article translation begins below --

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