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.

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Former Sega Executive Hidekawa Yukawa Has Passed Away

It has been reported that Hidekazu Yukawa, a senior Sega executive during the Dreamcast era, passed away last year from aspiration pneumonia. He was 78 years old.

An iconic figure to Shenmue fans for his promotion of the game, he starred in the What's Shenmue demo and had an easter egg cameo in the main game as well (see here for more details). Fans were even able to meet him in person at the Shenmue Premiere event that took place before the game's release.

News article (Japanese)

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Yu Suzuki on Stage at Network Jungle II: Digitaliland

This post is a translation of a report in the May 1999 edition of the Japanese Dreamcast Magazine about the Network Jungle II: Digitaliland event that was held in the months leading up to the release of Shenmue. During the event, a stage event was held in which Yu Suzuki, Hiroaki Takeuchi and Hidekazu Yukawa talked about the upcoming game.

Related posts:

• Exploring Shenmue Forest at the "Network Jungle II: Digitaliland" Event (1999)
• Shenmue Forest Demo

Recap and Comments from Yu Suzuki's Special Talk

Some incredible images were on show at this event, prompting us to ask ourselves "How on earth did they create that footage?" and wonder how far along Shenmue was in its development. The answers to these questions were to be found in the talk show with Yu Suzuki at 3:00 p.m. Many exciting things were said, including comments by Former Managing Director Yukawa!

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Shenmue Characters Based on Actual People: Susumu Aketagawa, Takeshi Hirai, Akira Nagai, Yoshihito Nishii, Hiroaki Takeuchi, Manabu Takimoto, Hiroshi Tamura, Yoshihiko Tashiro, Hidekaze Yukawa, Kenta Shimizu, Jin Xin Nan, Takashi Matsuda

Several characters that appear in the Shenmue games have in-game models based on real-life people.  This is not surprising in the case of Shenmue III, where several higher-tier backers were included in the game as a reward for their pledges. What may not be so readily realized is that several of the people Ryo meets in the first game of the series, as workers or residents of Yokosuka, were also modeled on actual people, including but not limited to members of the project development staff and people associated with Sega.

Today's post presents the findings of research to identify and gather together as many of these characters from the early games in the series as possible.

Let's get started!

Characters Based on Actual People: Shenmue I

Susumu Aketagawa

In the game: He is the hard-working owner of Yamaji Soba Noodles in Dobuita who is now considering retirement.

In real life: The name and model of this character are those of the voice & recording director for Shenmue I and II, Susumu Aketagawa. He was invited to provide his own voice for the game, but  declined, commenting with a laugh in a 2019 interview that "I wasn't willing to go that far".

When he worked on the Shenmue project, he was approximately the same age as his character in the game, although they do not share the same birthday date. It is unknown whether he is a big fan of soba noodles, although he did mention in the interview that he used to enjoy going for a lunch of boiled whitebait on rice at a restaurant near the Sega offices.

Left: Susumu Aketagawa in the game is the owner of Yamaji Soba Noodles in Dobuita. Right: directing a recording session for Shenmue around 1998 (top-right) and in a 2019 interview (bottom-right).

Aketagawa-san's profile: retirement from the noodle business beckons.

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Poll Result: Patrons' Choice Topic for May 2021

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 for April 2021 is...

"Shenmue at Network Jungle II: Digitaliland" 

At the technology showcase event "Digitaliland" in early 1999, Sega had an entire area devoted to promoting Shenmue ahead of its eventual release at the end of the year, called "Shenmue no Mori" (Shenmue Forest). Attendees were treated to video trailers, playable demos, figurines, art and merchandise for the game as well as stage events throughout the day.

One of  the stage events held was a talk show featuring the game's creator Yu Suzuki, game advisor Hiroaki Takeuchi and Hidekazu Yukawa (the Sega former managing director who featured in the "What's Shenmue" demo). 

We'll be translating highlights from their discussion as they talk enthusiastically about the game before the event attendees.

Watch for it on the blog in the near future!

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Fan Photos of Shenmue at Network Jungle II Event in 1999

Shenmue was featured at "Network Jungle II: Digitaliland," an expo for games making use of networking and digital communications held in Tokyo in 1999, to promote the game in Japan ahead of its release.

One of the stage events had members of the public competing to "dub over" lines from Shenmue. One participant spoke as Ren using a regional Kansai dialect, which must have caused some hilarity among the audience.

The voice/mo-cap actors for Ren (Takumi Hagiwara), Shenhua (Hazuki Ishigaki) and Ryo (Masaya Matsukaze) in the Japanese versions introducing the dubbing competition

Later Yu Suzuki also took the stage together with Hiroaki Takeuchi, and Sega Managing Director Hidekazu Yukawa (of "What's Shenmue" demo fame).

From left: Hiroaki Takeuchi, Sega Managing Director Hidekazu Yukawa and Yu Suzuki.

Most images that can be found online of this event are rather low-resolution (understandably, due to bandwidth considerations at the time), so it's fascinating to get another glimpse from someone who was actually there.

Photo credit: @kohji_nakazawa via Twitter

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