In this post, we continue our English translation of Famitsu’s 25th anniversary roundtable with the original Shenmue developers. In Part 2, the team shared tales of late nights and endless debugging, reflecting the uncompromising standards that defined the project.
Part 3 highlights Takeshi Hirai’s ingenious “Shenmue Maker” system that kept all 88 programmers in sync, and dives into anecdotes about working under Yu Suzuki, including the Zushi Marina retreats where late-night debates (and drinks) helped shape Shenmue’s vision. We also hear a special anniversary message from Yu Suzuki himself.
Hirai's "Shenmue Maker" Programming Concept
— Were there any other parts of the programming that were especially difficult?
Hirai: The "games within a game" at the You Arcade were pretty tough. You can play Space Harrier, Hang-On, and so on inside the game. But to do that, we had to temporarily set aside the data from the main game, load and run the arcade game, and then after playing, return to the main game - and deal with the fact that various internal data would come back completely scrambled. Getting everything to cleanly return to the way it was, as if nothing had happened, and seamlessly resume the main story... that was actually a pretty complex process.
— I see.
Kurooka: Here’s a funny one - you know the capsule toy machines, right? Well, one of the items you can get is Sonic. But Sonic was the only one modeled with an unusually high polygon count, and during development, there was this bug where the game would crash whenever you got Sonic.
Sonic is Sega’s mascot, and we wanted to do him justice. So we modeled him with around 500,000 polygons. The data load was far too heavy and it caused the game to freeze. (laughs)
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| "This is cool!" |
Hirai: One of the hardest things wasn’t even about game development itself - it was figuring out how to create a program in a way that minimized human interaction. By the end, there were 88 programmers on the project, including myself. With that many people, communication became a major issue. I realized that if I didn’t make it possible to write code without constant back-and-forth, my own work would never move forward.
When I first joined the team, for the first six months, I couldn’t even touch someone else’s code without asking them, “What are the specs for this?” That kind of setup just wasn’t scalable. So I standardized the foundation of the code. Programming is normally all about freedom. But I intentionally removed that freedom. I turned “you can do anything” into “you can’t do anything,” then rebuilt an environment where “you can do anything” within a structured framework.
— That’s starting to sound like a Zen riddle.
Hirai: To put it more simply, think of it like LEGO. When you look at a LEGO model, you can tell which pieces were used to build it. I created those kinds of building blocks, and set a foundation that said, “You can’t write code unless you use these commands.” That way, people could build events or scenes just by stacking blocks.
So the idea was, “Use these LEGO blocks to build whatever you want.” I handled all the management and debugging myself. In other words, I built what you could call a kind of "Shenmue Maker" - like our own RPG Maker-style system - that allowed the team to create content freely within shared rules and standards.
— Wow... So instead of having totally free-form programming, which would’ve spiraled out of control, you built a system with shared rules and standards that still allowed for maximum creative freedom within those boundaries.
Hirai: Exactly. Everyone programmed the way they wanted, and the good parts naturally stayed while the bad ones fell away over time.
By creating a system that united the other 87 programmers - excluding myself - we no longer needed constant communication, and I think that’s what made it possible to actually realize an open-world-style RPG, ahead of its time.
— So this was essentially the game engine, right?
Hirai: Yes, but more than just an engine. It was a communication-free system built with the end goal already in mind.
Okayasu: You know, Hirai hasn’t made a single complaint - he’s just straight-up bragging! (laughs)
— (laughs).
Hirai: Well... I mean, I did make something amazing! (laughs)
But honestly, I can't complain because Mr. Okayasu and Mr. Kasahara were always there, protecting the programmers and making sure we could work comfortably.
— So Mr. Okayasu and Mr. Kasahara were the breakwater, shielding the team.
Hirai: Thanks to the two of them protecting us, we had the time to properly focus on creating. And it's thanks to everyone that... I made it. (laughs)
— (laughs)
Okayasu: Hey! (laughs)
Hirai: And Wada-san was amazing too. I don’t think I could have worked properly without him.
Okayasu: He joined the team and took on a leadership role straight away, right? Even though he wasn't a full-time employee.
Hirai: He was basically the number two guy. He came in during the final year (year four), and within a month, he was already handling the team’s coordination at a fine level. The game was completed in 11 months after that. Without Wada-san, Shenmue never would have been finished.
Wada: Well, I was a contractor, and my contract literally said, “Get this finished.” So it was my job to make sure it got done.
— If you were working three times the normal hours and didn’t go home for two months, even though you were only on the project for one year, it’s like you actually worked three years’ worth.
Matsuda: Haha. Yeah, that’s pretty much what it comes down to.
Wada: Just to add, at the time I was also working at my own company, developing another game. When Shenmue wasn’t too busy, I’d leave Sega, head back to my own company to work on another title, and finally head home.
Matsuda: So you were working even more.
Kurooka: That’s superhuman.
Wada: Honestly, that was just normal for me back then, so to tell the truth, I didn’t really find Shenmue all that hard or exhausting.
Hirai: No, it was exhausting! Incredibly exhausting!
Everyone: (Loud laughter)
Endless Stories About Yu Suzuki
— You’ve already mentioned a few, but are there any particularly memorable episodes during development involving Yu-san?
Okayasu: What was it he used to say... kind of like a catchphrase.
Wada: Want me to say it?
Okayasu: Please.
Wada: "I said OK, but I didn’t say GO!" Right? (laughs)
Everyone: Ahhhh!! (laughs)
Kasahara: Oh yeah, that one! (claps)
Hirai: Totally. We all got hit with that at some point.
Kasahara: Whenever we’d go to build something, we’d first present it to Yu-san - like, “Would something like this be okay?” And he’d say “OK,” so we’d go ahead and make it. Then once it was done and we showed it to him, he’d say, “What is this? Why would you make something like this?” and reject it.
Hirai: Naturally, we’d push back and say, “But you said OK when we showed it to you last week!”
Kasahara: And then Yu-san would say, “I said OK, but I didn’t say GO!”
— (laughs)
Hirai: After that, every week it turned into this two-step confirmation process - “Yu-san, is this OK?” “Yeah, it’s OK.” “Is that OK also a GO?” “It’s a GO.” (laughs)
Kasahara: We’d be thinking, “What even is this conversation?” (laughs)
Hirai: That line really became legendary.
Kurooka: So nostalgic. (laughs) I remember how crushed people looked after getting hit with it.
— So this happened to a lot of people?
Hirai: I didn’t personally get told that myself, but I saw it happen plenty of times.
Kasahara: I think most of us heard it at least once.
Okayasu: To be honest, I think Yu-san just forgot he had given the OK and was too embarrassed to admit it, so he tried to cover it up. (laughs)
Kasahara: Another thing that really sticks with me was the “Zushi Marina retreat.”
Okayasu: Oh yeah, that happened. (laughs)
Kasahara: Back then, Yu-san had a house in Zushi, so we’d gather every week at a place called Zushi Marina for what were basically planning retreats. He’d invite people from all sorts of industries to talk, discuss ideas, and brainstorm. And by the end of each session, we’d be drinking wine together. It was completely unconventional.
— As it happens, we’ve received a 25th anniversary comment from Yu Suzuki himself, and it’s actually about his memories of the Zushi Marina retreats. Let’s share that now.
25th Anniversary Comment from Yu Suzuki
"What left the strongest impression on me were the weekly retreat meetings we held every weekend at Zushi Marina. In order to incorporate a wide range of perspectives from other industries, we carried out one-night, closed-door meetings every weekend. We gathered a diverse group of people - film directors, novelists, composers, and professionals from the movie and video industries - to exchange ideas and search for what a completely new form of game could be.
Since everyone had different languages and senses of perception, we began a night's stay-over at Zushi Marina - having meals, soaking in the hot springs, and then sharing an overview of Shenmue to deepen our sense of camaraderie. At first, everyone was cautious and didn’t talk much, so eventually we started serving drinks after 9 p.m. to help ease people into conversation. It really was a form of team building through “naked honesty.”
Some people who weren’t night owls would go to bed early, while others stayed up past 3 a.m. in heated debate. There were also those who only shared their best ideas after a few drinks, so we made a rule: “If drinking helps, then go ahead and drink.” That rule proved extremely effective.
I want to thank everyone who was involved in Shenmue. I especially appreciate the members of the planning team, who handled all the preparations for the weekend Zushi Marina meetings every week without fail - it must have been tough!"
—So, that was Mr. Suzuki's message.
Okayasu: Kasahara, it's okay to cry.
Kasahara: What kind of emotion am I supposed to cry from? (laughs)
There were so many people attending those retreats, so if we didn’t have enough wine or snacks, I’d have to run out and buy them. If someone wasn’t feeling well, I’d go buy medicine. Even though I'd never lived in Zushi, I ended up knowing where pretty much every store was. (laughs) There was even a time we had a five-day retreat lasting from Christmas through New Year’s Eve. I remember on New Year’s Eve, after the retreat was over, Miyawaki and I were sitting at Daikoku Pier [in Yokohama], eating rice-bowl dishes, and asking ourselves, “What have we even been doing out in Zushi?”
Miyawaki: (laughs)
Okayasu: There are honestly so many funny stories from those Zushi retreats. Like the time we were all working on the scenario together. It was already dawn, and we were totally exhausted - and totally drunk. We were trying to figure out how Ryo could be saved from a tough situation in the story, and Yu-san suddenly said, “How about this character comes to save him!”
For a moment, everyone was like, “Ohh, that’s a good idea.” But then we thought it through and realized that during an earlier meeting that same day - around 7 p.m. - we had decided that character dies.
So we had to say, “Yu-san, we've already killed that guy off.” (laughs)
—I imagine all the hardship stories come out naturally, but were there any fun or lighthearted moments too…?
Hirai: Well, Yu-san used to say, "Someday this will all be something we can laugh about," so maybe that time has finally come... (laughs)
Okayasu: Yeah, those painful memories turn into funny stories when you look back.
Kasahara: Going through all of that, I feel like I can handle pretty much anything now.
Hirai: This is another story that’s kind of a laugh now, but I have strong memories of the Shenmue premiere event we held in 1998 at Pacifico Yokohama.
—The big reveal, right?
Hirai: Right. That’s when the title Shenmue was announced, the protagonist Ryo was introduced, and the voice cast was revealed. But all the footage shown at the event was set in China - even though the first chapter of the game is set in Yokosuka.
At the time of the announcement, we hadn't made anything set in Japan yet. (laughs) Originally it was Virtua Fighter RPG: The Legend of Akira, so if Akira had remained the protagonist, starting in China would’ve been fine. But after the event, people said, “Wait, if our main character is the Japanese Ryo Hazuki, shouldn’t the story start in Japan?” That’s when we realized we needed to build Yokosuka, and we ended up creating that entire setting within a year.
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| Yokosuka: "we ended up creating that entire setting within a year." |
—When you think about it, that’s incredible. So you basically threw together the whole thing in just a year?
Okayasu: It brings back memories. We were really committed to having full voice acting, which was still rare at the time. That meant the amount of audio data was enormous, so we calculated to figure out how many discs it would require.
Then Yu-san came to me and said, “Okayasu, if we include everything, it’s going to end up being 16 discs. Is 16 discs for a game even acceptable?” (laughs) I remember flat-out telling him, “Absolutely not!”
Hirai: We spent quite a bit of time developing the Saturn version too. I think we were exploring that direction for about two and a half to three years. We even made places like Miao Village. Of course, the Saturn’s specs were really limited, and eventually a decision was made to switch over to making it on Dreamcast. For the voice data, we had to lower the audio quality considerably to reduce file size. And even then, it barely fit - out of four discs, three were game discs.
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| Screenshots of the legendary cut Miao Village area [Image added by Switch] |
Speaking of the discs, I’m reminded of the fact that Dreamcast used GD-ROMs back then. The developers were required to follow a regulation where the disc had to spin briefly to read data, then stop, and wait a certain amount of time before the next read.
But Shenmue was an exception. We used something we called “Infinite” mode where the disc would spin continuously. That way, there was almost no need for seeking, and the loading times were much faster.
Hirai: Since the game constantly needed to load characters in the city while you were walking around, we kept the disc spinning continuously using the "Infinite" mode - something that wasn’t allowed for other companies. So it’s possible that playing Shenmue caused more wear and tear on the Dreamcast hardware than other games.
When you played Shenmue, the GD-ROM would just keep spinning... at full speed... the entire time.
—(laughs)
Okayasu: By the way, did everyone here actually play Shenmue all the way through after it was released? I mean, I’d done so much of it during debugging and at the Zushi retreats that I felt like I didn’t need to anymore.
Hirai: I did! I played until I got the time-over game ending*.
*Note: In Shenmue: Chapter One - Yokosuka, if the player doesn't progress to the end by April 15, 1988, the game ends with a time-over.
Okayasu: You were doing that for work, though.
Hirai: Well, yeah, I did it for work too, but I also played through the retail version just to check. I already knew it could be finished normally, so I wanted to test whether you could also trigger the less common time-over ending. During development, we had a debug mode that let you fast-forward the in-game time, but that’s not in the retail version, so it was a real grind.
Okayasu: Yeah, in the game, time progresses one day per real-time hour.
Wada: I don't know how he is now, but back then, Yu-san was incredibly serious about game development - he had zero tolerance for jokes or goofing around.
—Really?
Wada: So if a programmer tried to sneak in something silly or playful, he absolutely wouldn’t allow it. He’d get seriously mad.
Back then, I was the only programmer on the team who could handle the physics for swaying 3D elements like hair or clothing movement. I programmed things like Shenhua’s braids swinging naturally.
When I first joined the team, I was in charge of the female character Niao Sun. She didn’t make a proper appearance until Shenmue III, though. She was designed to be a sexy character, and one of the designers - who clearly had a thing for that kind of thing - came to me and said, "I’ve added bones* to Niao Sun and Xiuying’s chests, so the rest is over to you!" In other words, they were requesting jiggle physics for their breasts.
*Note: In 3D modeling, a “bone” is a moveable part used to animate polygons.
So I implemented it. But then Yu-san found out - and I got a huge scolding from him. He yelled, “It's not that kind of game!” and got seriously angry. After that, Shenmue had a strict ban on breast jiggle.
Matsuda: Oh yeah, I remember that! (laughs)
Kasahara: Speaking of getting chewed out… well, I can talk about it now after all this time, but here’s a story involving the Four Guardian Beasts that feature in Shenmue.
There was a long meeting about naming them, and one of the scenario writers proposed using their commonly known names: Suzaku Zhuque (Vermillion Bird), Byakko / Baihu (White Tiger), Genbu / Xuanwu (Black Tortoise), and Seiryū / Qing Long (Azure Dragon). Yu-san really liked them - he said, “These names are great!” and looked very pleased.
I warned the writer, “Those names are already used in other games. That could be a problem,” but…
Later, Yu-san was so happy with the names that he suggested we go out for drinks, and I ended up going along. And that’s when the disaster struck. He started telling the bar girl about the Guardian Beasts. Like, “Aren’t these names awesome? Seiryū, Suzaku - they’re the bosses in the game I’m making right now!”
And then the girl said, “Oh yeah, I know those names! They're in Persona!” (laughs)
As soon as she said that, Yu-san abruptly started gathering his things to leave, and just 10 minutes after we got to the bar, he was heading home in a taxi.
The next morning, sure enough, I got called into his office. He was upset, and of course, I got blamed. The name proposals were scrapped, and we had to come up with entirely new ones. I just remember thinking, “Yup… I knew this would happen.” I was always the one pulling the short straw in situations like that (laughs).
I immediately ran off to the Haneda Library and started researching the Four Guardian Beasts. And what I found was that names like Seiryū and Suzaku actually had even older versions. That’s where Cang Long* and Niao Sun came from - the ancient names. Once we pitched those, Yu-san approved them, and we just barely managed to salvage the situation. I remember that clearly.
*Note from Switch: prior to the game's release, another change saw Cang Long renamed to Lan Di.
—So even when things went wrong, they somehow worked out in the end. Misfortune turned into opportunity! (laughs)
To be continued in Part Four!
Source: Famitsu.com – Shenmue 25th Anniversary Roundtable (Japanese) (December 2024)
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