Weekly AM2 Vol. 1: The Launch of Weekly AM2 | 14th Dec 1999

In this new series, we will be translating content from the official online magazine published by Sega's AM2 team back in the day. Content about the Shenmue series was published regularly over the next couple of years until the release of Shenmue II in 2001.

This is the very first edition of the Weekly AM2 web magazine, launched on 14th December 1999, with the release of Shenmue in Japan imminent. A link to the Weekly AM2 thereafter became a regular feature of the Shenmue.com website.

Although this first entry is really just an announcement of the planned series, it has short messages from Yu Suzuki as well as Makoto Osaki (the deputy director of AM2 under Suzuki, whose other projects include the Virtua Fighter series and Daytona USA).

The three concept keywords around which Shenmue was built - "Leisurely, Fully, Gently" - are mentioned again here. Yu Suzuki referred to them in his GDC 2014 retrospective, and Takumi Hagiwara also brought them up in his 1999 pre-release interview we translated last week.

-Switch

 

Vol.1:1999.12.14

Nice to meet you all.

I'm Takuan, and I'll be running Weekly AM2.

I'm looking forward to bringing you lots of great information on a weekly basis going forward.

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