Poll Result: Patrons' Choice Topic for May 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 those carried over from previous months), the winning topic this time is:

"Composer Comments from the Shenmue Original Sound Track CD"

Released in March 2000, the Shenmue ~Chapter One: Yokosuka~ Original Sound Track included a booklet featuring commentary written by the composers themselves for each track on the album.

Shenmue Chapter One ~Yokosuka~: Original Sound Track

The comments provide a fascinating glimpse into the creation of Shenmue’s music, touching on everything from memories of research trips in China to the atmosphere the composers imagined while writing specific pieces.

The booklet also contains detailed composer credits, providing rare confirmation of which composers created many of Shenmue’s best-known pieces.

In this post, we'll translate the booklet commentary in full, along with composer information and scene screenshots showing where each piece is used in the game.

Coming soon to the blog!

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1999 Special Report: "Making of Shenmue" | Dreamcast Magazine

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.

The Shenmue special feature appears in Vol. 28 of Dreamcast Magazine (September 1999)

In this post, we’ll be sharing a full English translation of that magazine article, together with stills recaptured from the NHK documentary. Together, this will reveal how Shenmue was presented to Japan, as a milestone in digital culture in 1999.

The article translation begins below.

Note: where feasible screenshots have been re-captured directly from the NHK documentary video and other sources, based on those in the original article.

Shenmue logo

Shenmue Chapter One: Yokosuka

● SEGA

● Scheduled for release on October 28, 1999

● Price: 6,800 yen, 3-disc set (4-disc limited first edition)

● Genre: FREE (Full Reactive Eyes Entertainment)

Shenmue Part Two (Working Title)

● SEGA

● Release date undecided

● Price: TBD

● Genre: FREE (Full Reactive Eyes Entertainment)

"May that sense of wonder stay fresh in your heart forever."
(Image courtesy of the Shenmue Dojo: Shenhua 1999 calendar)

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