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 any carried over from previous months), the winning topic this time is:
NHK documentary "Making Of Shenmue" Recap
In July 1999, Japanese broadcaster NHK BS2 aired the first episode of its new Network Jungle III documentary series. Each installment explored how digital technology was reshaping Japan’s creative industries at the turn of the millennium. Episode One was called A Vision of the Future - A New Digital Era and focused on Sega’s legendary producer Yu Suzuki and his most ambitious project to date.
The NHK production crew followed Suzuki and the AM2 team inside Sega’s development studios over a period of six months, giving an unprecedented look at game creation on a cinematic scale. Viewers saw programmers tweaking lighting and weather systems, motion-capture artists digitizing martial-arts movements, and an orchestra recording the game’s sweeping score. NHK framed it as a glimpse into a new kind of entertainment: part film, part interactive world. The episode’s closing subtitle put it plainly: “A game that plunges you into a world of another dimension.”
Later that year, and still before Shenmue's eventual end-of-year release, the Japanese gaming magazine Dreamcast Magazine published a special feature about the game's development that was closely based on this broadcast. It reused stills and quotations to turn NHK’s televised documentary into a richly illustrated print feature. While the show itself aired only once, the magazine preserved its tone and stirred further anticipation for a title that promised to redefine realism in games.
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