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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