Thursday, February 10, 2022

Poll Result: Patrons' Choice Topic for February 2022

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:

"Cut Content: Screenshots of Miao Village"

Following the release of Shenmue II on the Dreamcast, a number of intriguing screenshots were revealed by the development team on the Shenmue.com website that appeared to contain content that had been cut from the game before release. They showed an unfamiliar village and temple, and even subtitles of dialogue with an unused character.

Fans later also managed to uncover unused loading screens, one of these showing the name  "Miao Village" - this is the name by which the location of these screenshots came to be known by the community.

Various theories have been put forward over the years, although even today, little is known about these screenshots.

Some of the screenshots apparently showing content cut from Shenmue II

In this post, we'll be examining not only the content of these mysterious screenshots, but also as many mentions and references as we can find from available sources from the day and later, in order to build as comprehensive a picture as possible.

Coming soon to the blog!

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4 comments:

  1. Hello,
    This Screenshots interested for years now. Isn't it possible to get in contact with someone from Sega and ask them if it is possible to get more footage or even the data? there is also a forest demo of shenmue which i would like to play as many others probably also want to expierence. I mean you have realy good website here, don't you have to the chance to write a mail to sega to get in contact with someone?

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    1. Thanks for your message! Efforts have certainly been made to obtain "lost" treasures and footage (the Saturn version of Shenmue is one in particular that is keenly sought) by contact with various contacts at Sega and elsewhere over the years, but in the end it is Sega's call. The most likely chance for new material would be on developer discs that find their way to auction, as with the Tower of Babel demo recently.

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  2. It looks like an old version to Bailu village to me

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    1. Yes, walking through Bailu village in Shenmue 3 really feels like you're in the same place, but with modern graphics.

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