Unused Shenmue Map #2: Island Town

In this second part of our maps feature, we will be looking at another map from the 36-page art book that was available at the Shenmue Premiere events around Japan in late 1998 / early 1999. 

Cover of the Shenmue Premiere Art Booklet

In Part One, we looked at a map that could be identified as Suzhou.

This time, we turn our attention to a second unknown map that appears further down on the same page of the Shenmue art booklet. This one is displayed in black ink and depicts a town situated on - or, more accurately, around - an island.

Inspecting Unused Map #2: Island Town

This map is distinctive and appears to show an island location surrounded by a tightly-packed city of buildings built out upon water. Tall mountain peaks rise up from the island:

Page detail: island town map

As with the first map, certain buildings and features have been labelled with Japanese text and there are small black star indicators dotted around the water's edge.

Become a Patron!

Unused Shenmue Map #1: Suzhou City

During the 1998/1999 Shenmue Premiere showings in various cities across Japan, ahead of the game's original release on the Dreamcast, a 36-page art book was available as merchandise. It featured concept art, photographs, design diagrams, and other materials related to the game's development.

Cover of the Shenmue Premiere Art Booklet

In past posts on this blog we have analyzed some of the fascinating snippets of early design documents that can be glimpsed in this booklet, such as:

• Ryo's Arrival in Hong Kong: Shenmue II Design Document Translation
• Earning Money to Meet Ren: Shenmue 2 Flowchart #2 Translation
• Shenmue 1 Start of Game Flowchart: Early Design Document Translation

This booklet makes creative use of charts and drawings as decorative images to accompany the pages describing the making of the game.

Unseen Maps in the Art Booklet

On one page of the booklet, two maps can be found that don't match any of the places Ryo has visited so far in his journey. One map sits at the top left in blue ink, and the other, which lies to the right further down the page, is in black. (The maps are partially obscured by an image of an early map of Aberdeen/Wan Chai, and a photo of a computer monitor displaying a map of Dobuita).

The page containing the mysterious maps

In this post, the first in a two-part series, we will start to examine the maps and labels in detail to uncover hints about Ryo's initially-planned or potential future travels.

Image credits: thanks to James Brown for providing the booklet page images

Become a Patron!

Band-Aids at the Tomato Convenience Store - Early Design Document | Translation

In this post we examine and translate an early Shenmue design document which gives some interesting insight into some design changes made before the game's release.

The document is an illustration that details the contents of the shelves at the Tomato Convenience store in Dobuita, as shown below:

Early design document of the shelves at the Tomato Convenience Store

The appearance and layout of these shelves match very closely with the shelves at the Dobuita branch of the Tomato Convenience Store in the first game:

Shelves at the Tomato Convenience Store in Dobuita (release version)

Become a Patron!

Unused Assets: Mr. Yukawa Business Card Variants | What's Shenmue

What's Shenmue is the name of a playable demo that was released in Japan in August 1999, shortly before the full release of Shenmue. It took place in Dobuita Street and involved a short quest in which Ryo has to to locate Mr. Yukawa (a real-life former senior executive at Sega) before a deadline at the end of the day.

During the quest, Ryo visits the You Arcade where he obtains Mr. Yukawa's business card...

The business card Ryo receives of Hidekazu Yukawa

Details on the front of the card include the SEGA logo, Mr. Yukawa's full name and title (Hidekazu Yukawa, Former Senior Managing Director), his company (Sega Enterprises) and a link to the Shenmue.com website.

Become a Patron!

Poll Result: Patrons' Choice Topic for June 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:

"The Secret of Miao Village: Shenmue II Game Jam prototype"

Recently, a previously-unseen Shenmue II prototype was successfully purchased at an online auction and, thanks to the generosity of the group behind the purchase, it was shortly afterwards released to the community. This discs were marked "Game Jam," which was the name of an event that occurred in April 2001.

Initial analysis showed that the prototype contained numerous interesting differences in textures, cut scenes and gameplay (including the hilarious discovery by LemonHaze of a character model for Yu Suzuki, leading to his release of a special version in which the player controls Yu Suzuki in the place of Ryo).

But perhaps one of the biggest questions at the forefront of the minds of many fans was whether the prototype would help reveal anything more on the topic of the legendary Miao Village that had been cut early in development - and this proved to be the case!

The discovery of a wealth of Miao Village related subtitle content was announced on the Shenmue Dojo forums only a few days after the prototype's release  to the community by veteran Shenmue hacker LanDC, who extracted and translated several key conversations and pieced together from the clues the likely sequence of events that were to have taken place.

This amazing finding has at last allowed confirmation of what had only been theories and suppositions until now on the topic of Miao Village, Miao Guang Temple and the bicycle quest with Xiaoqin. With contributions from others in the community, further relevant conversations were also found, building an even more comprehensive picture of the cut story content.

In this upcoming post, as an extension to our existing Secret of Miao Village series, we will walk through the many pieces of dialogue found to highlight the story progression that had once been planned for this part of the game.

Watch for it to come on the blog.

Become a Patron!

Poll Result: Patrons' Choice Topic for May 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:

"What's Shenmue Unused Assets: Mr. Yukawa business card variants"

What's Shenmue is the name of a playable demo that was released in Japan shortly before the full release of Shenmue. It took place in Dobuita Street and involved a short quest in which Ryo has to to locate Mr. Yukawa (a former senior executive at Sega) before a deadline.

During the quest, Ryo visits the You Arcade where he obtains Mr. Yukawa's business card.

Details on the front of the card include the SEGA logo, Mr. Yukawa's full name and title (Hidekazu Yukawa, Former Senior Managing Director), his company (Sega Enterprises) and a link to the Shenmue.com website.

 

The back contains a handwritten clue over the Dreamcast swirl that points him to the next location of interest ("After 4pm, Asia Travel Co.").

While this is the card that is used when playing the demo, in fact among the game files are a couple of other minor variations of the Mr. Yukawa business card that would have been produced during its development but not used, but were left behind. We'll be looking at these in an upcoming post.

Watch for it soon on the blog!

Become a Patron!

Ryo at Miao Guang Temple Entrance

Ryo approaches Miao Guang Temple.

This image is a composite of a screenshot showing content cut from Shenmue 2, and a model of a temple gate & wall present in the released version of the game.

The latest posts in the Miao Village analysis series have more details about the cut temple content:

• [Part Four] The Secret of Miao Village: Temple Screenshots Analysis
• [Part Five] The Secret of Miao Village: Temple Content Left Behind

Become a Patron!

[Part Four] The Secret of Miao Village: Temple Screenshots Analysis

Welcome to Part Four of our analysis of cut-content screenshots of the mysterious "Miao Village" and temple that were revealed in 2002 on the Shenmue.com website by AM2, Yu Suzuki's development team at Sega.

Parts in the series:

1. Village Screenshots Analysis
2. Village Content Left Behind
3. The House in Xiuying and Ziming's Flashback
4. Temple Screenshots Analysis [this post]
5. Temple Content Left Behind 
6. The Original Plan for Miao Village in Shenmue II
7. Content Reborn
8. Dialogue Revelations & Sequence of Events
9. Dialogue Revelations & Sequence of Events (Cont.)
10. Extra Dialogue & Facts Collected
11. Cut Scene Discovered!

In this part, we will now turn our attention to the remaining four screenshots of a temple location:

The four "cut content" screenshots of a temple

Order of the Screenshots

We saw previously with the village screenshots, that the images originally presented on the Muecas page are not necessarily in time sequence order; keeping this in mind, we will consider whether any change in order may be appropriate.

Temple Screenshot 1/4: Exterior

The image of Ryo outside is clearly the first in the sequence.

Screenshot 1: temple grounds

Become a Patron!

Shenmue 2 Cut Bicycle Event Part Three: Grandfather Model Identified

Previous posts have covered a bicycle riding feature for Ryo that had been shown in promotional footage for Shenmue in the months leading up to the release, but was not kept in the final version.

• Related post: Ryo's Bicycle Riding Ability - Part One | Cut Content
• Related post: Ryo's Bicycle Riding Part Two: Shenmue 2 Cut Content

As seen in the previous coverage, one of the cut content screenshots shows a little girl, Xiaoqin Liu on the back of a bicycle with Ryo, with her grandfather watching from his store, Sunny Capital Pharmacy.

While Xiaoquin and the store are included in the released game, the character model for her grandfather, Fushou Liu, differs from the one shown in the screenshot:

Top: cut content screenshot. Bottom: capture from the released game, showing a different character model for the shop's owner.

With only a single screenshot of her grandfather available, and furthermore being viewed from behind, it might be assumed that the character model may have been scrapped completely.

However, after some investigation of Shenmue II's character models, based on his features a close match can be made with a character model that exists elsewhere among the disc files:

The distinctive hairstyle and wrinkles match up exactly.

In fact, this character model is one that can be seen in the final game: it is Shi Yi Ming, the owner of Wise Men's Chemist. It would appear that the model selection for Xiaoqin's grandfather was adjusted during the development process.

In the released version Shi Yi Ming is of course is not involved with any bicycle-related event - but he is able to provide some information about Man Mo Antiques if Ryo needs it!

• For detailed information on the Shenmue II characters, Stuart's Shenmue II Character Database is a valuable resource. 

Become a Patron!