Anecdotes & Insights - "Shenmue Maker" & Yokosuka's One-Year Build | Famitsu Dec 2024 [Part 3]

In this post, we continue our English translation of Famitsu’s 25th anniversary roundtable with the original Shenmue developers. In Part 2, the team shared tales of late nights and endless debugging, reflecting the uncompromising standards that defined the project.

Part 3 highlights Takeshi Hirai’s ingenious “Shenmue Maker” system that kept all 88 programmers in sync, and dives into anecdotes about working under Yu Suzuki, including the Zushi Marina retreats where late-night debates (and drinks) helped shape Shenmue’s vision. We also hear a special anniversary message from Yu Suzuki himself.

Hirai's "Shenmue Maker" Programming Concept

— Were there any other parts of the programming that were especially difficult?

Hirai: The "games within a game" at the You Arcade were pretty tough. You can play Space Harrier, Hang-On, and so on inside the game. But to do that, we had to temporarily set aside the data from the main game, load and run the arcade game, and then after playing, return to the main game - and deal with the fact that various internal data would come back completely scrambled. Getting everything to cleanly return to the way it was, as if nothing had happened, and seamlessly resume the main story... that was actually a pretty complex process.

— I see.

Kurooka: Here’s a funny one - you know the capsule toy machines, right? Well, one of the items you can get is Sonic. But Sonic was the only one modeled with an unusually high polygon count, and during development, there was this bug where the game would crash whenever you got Sonic.

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[Part Eleven] The Secret of Miao Village: Working Cut Scene & Team Battle Event Discovered!

It is time to add to our Miao Village series with the announcement of an exciting discovery of a working section of cut game play, making this the first time we have ever experienced Miao Village cut content in a playable form!

This incredible finding was discovered by Brian Park, who runs the Shenmue Park account on X/Twitter, after intense efforts. On a recent Shenmue Dojo stream, Brian commented that he had "checked through thousands of entry points" (referring to the debug menu available on certain prototypes of the game) over the last few months before finding it.

The part of the story relates to Ryo's meeting with Zhang regarding the whereabouts of Yuanda Zhu, and Brian has made a video that captures everything. Not only does it contain a brand-new cut scene and QTE event, but (depending on the outcome of the event) it can even develop into a team battle with Ryo and Zhang taking on a gang of thugs!

The dialogue in the ending cut scene matches exactly with the Zhang meeting subtitle text for the Miao Village storyline that we examined previously. However we now see additional interactions between the two prior to this discussion - and it also reveals that their meeting place was not the Dou Jiang Diner, as had been assumed, but Lotus Park in South Carmain Quarter.

Video

Watch the incredible footage of the full cut scene from the Game Jam prototype, from Brian Park, which includes the QTE success & fail scenarios as well as other variations of the scene found on Disc 2 and in the unreleased US Shenmue prototype:

You'll note that the voices are not those of the official voice actors for the release. Due to the scene being still under development at this point, stand-in voices were used (for example, those of staff or developers) as placeholders until the scenes were finalized.

Credit for screen shots in this post to Brian Park (taken from his video).

Cut Scene, QTE and Team Battle: Synopsis & Dialogue Translation

Here is a synopsis of the interactions that occur in this extended cut scene, which also includes a QTE interaction and - depending on whether you succeed or fail at this - a team battle together with Zhang against the loan sharks!

Ryo enters Lotus Park, which appears to be empty, and looks around as if searching for someone.

A few seconds later, a man in a brown suit walks out from behind a tree, and bows. It is Zhang.

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[Part Ten] The Secret of Miao Village: Extra Dialogue & Facts Collected

We'll examine this image more closely in this post!

Previously in this series, we walked through the entire sequence of events (first half, second half) that would likely have taken place during Ryo's visit to Miao Village, based on the dialogue text files from the Game Jam prototype build of Shenmue II.

This time, we will run through extra dialogue and interactions Ryo can have with various characters. These aren't necessarily part of the main story flow, but they shed more light on the relationships and personalities of the villagers.

Note: in some places in the dialogue files, varied responses from a character can be identified with respect to a single query from Ryo. This may indicate where a different response is picked (perhaps at random) each time Ryo asks the same question.

Miscellaneous Dialogue

Miscellaneous Dialogue: Yiming Ke

Yiming Ke is the elder brother of Rong and son of Cuili. Although his character didn't feature in our previous story summary posts, he is one of the most specific in his directions about how to find certain landmarks, adding to our knowledge of Miao Village's layout.

Yiming Ke (character model: YKM)

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[Part Nine] The Secret of Miao Village: Dialogue Revelations & Sequence of Events (Cont.)

In this post we complete our examination of the Key Story Beats for the Miao Village arc with the final entries 7 to 10, highlighting conversations found in the recent Game Jam prototype of Shenmue II.

• If you have not yet seen the previous post, or wish to review, read the first part of the dialogue analysis here.

Miao Village Story Arc Recap to This Point, Entries 1-6:

Ryo speaks with Zhang, who claims to be Yuanda Zhu's aide and asks Ryo to retrieve the second volume of the Wulinshu martial arts book from a man named Kongzheng Luo who lives in Miao Village. Ryo volunteers to assist the elderly owner at Sunny Capital Pharmacy by delivering some herbs to Miao Village by bicycle, together with his niece Xiaoqing. After carrying out this task, Ryo then asks passers-by as to Kongzheng's whereabouts and learns that he was killed two weeks earlier.

We now pick up again with Ryo looking for a way to get inside Kongzheng's house, which is locked up, to search for more clues about his death.

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[Part Eight] The Secret of Miao Village: Dialogue Revelations & Sequence of Events

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.

Related post:

• Hidden Yu Suzuki Model Unearthed in Shenmue 2 | "Game Jam" Prototype Release

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! Shortly after the prototype's release to the community, the discovery of a wealth of Miao Village related dialogue content on the discs, in the form of Japanese subtitle files for conversations and events, was announced on the Shenmue Dojo forums by veteran Shenmue hacker LanDC (link to thread and discussion) with detailed explanations of several key conversation sections.

It is now possible to piece together a comprehensive picture of the cut story content, and confirm at last what had once been theories and suppositions: how Miao Village was to have been integrated into the main story, details of the bicycle quest with Xiaoqin, and the true meaning of the dialogue seen in the AM2 screenshots all those years ago.

Starting with today's post, we will be presenting as much of the newly-found Game Jam dialogue as possible, and present it in a logical order that reflects the most likely sequence of events relating to the Miao Village content.

Notes:

• The conversations shown here have been translated from the Japanese dialogue data extracted from in the Game Jam discs. The original Japanese text is also provided for reference with each conversational interaction.
• The original dialogue content that remains on the Game Jam version covers only a subset of all the characters that would have once been part of the Miao Village subplot, however it is still substantial enough to draw useful conclusions.
• Some notes have been added in italics, such as to indicate when a character is pointing, or when new information has been learned that gives Ryo a new objective. These are speculations based on the dialogue context.
• The Shenmue II order has been followed for the names of Chinese characters e.g. Lishao Tao (rather than Tao Li Shao). 
• A selection of conversations with various characters has been included, included repeated questioning, to demonstrate the variety of interactions through which Ryo is able to acquire clues.

Miao Village Story Arc: Key Story Beats

Below are the key story beats that can be identified in the cut subplot. They have been assembled into an order that appears to fit the content best. 

1. Cut Scene: Meeting Zhang & a Mission to Retrieve the Second Volume of the Wulinshu
2. Searching for a Way to Miao Village
3. Visiting Sunny Capital Pharmacy & a Bicycle Delivery Quest
4. Medicine Delivery at Miao Village
5. Looking for Kongzheng Luo's House
6. A. The Fate of Kongzheng Luo
   B. Master Yunhai's Friendship with Kongzheng Luo
7. A. Finding a Way to Enter Kongzheng Luo's House
   B. Obtaining the House Key
   C. Identifying the Boy in the Photo
8. Talking with Zhengye Luo
9. Cut Scene: Visiting Master Yunhai at Miao Guang Temple
10. Delivering the Wulinshu to Zhang
    

We'll run through each of these in detail.

Starting Point of the Miao Village Cut Content

The first relevant dialogue is a cut scene, that takes place with Yuanda Zhu's aide, Zhang. At this point in the story, it can be assumed that the following events have occurred as they do in the release version of the game:

• Ryo has met Lishao Tao and discovered the Wulinshu in the library at Man Mo Temple. Inside the book he found a note with the Chawan Sign, which serves as his next clue to locating Yuanda Zhu.
• After making the Chawan Sign at the Dou Jiang Diner, he has met with a man in a brown suit, who we later find out is named Zhang, who revealed that he serves Yuanda Zhu. However before Ryo had a chance to ask him any questions, several thugs burst into the restaurant and abducted Zhang.
• A QTE event played out in which Ryo chases after the thugs - dodging a watermelon projectile in the process - and Zhang was rescued, thanks to the invisible help of Xiuying.

Ambush at the Dou Jiang Diner (screenshot from release version)

This brings us to the likely point of the first scene of cut content we will be looking at, in which Ryo talks with Zhang once again after the thugs have been defeated.

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[Part Seven] The Secret of Miao Village: Content Reborn | Shenmue III

Welcome to Part Seven 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
5. Temple Content Left Behind 
6. The Original Plan for Miao Village in Shenmue II
7. Content Reborn [this post]
8. Dialogue Revelations & Sequence of Events
9. Dialogue Revelations & Sequence of Events (Cont.)
10. Extra Dialogue & Facts Collected

Traces of Original Miao Village Dialogue

Before diving into the post, you may be aware of the exciting news since the previous part in this series, with a previously unseen Shenmue prototype - known as the "Game Jam" prototype from the event for which it was created - being acquired at auction by a small group of fans and generously shared with the community. Not only does it hilariously contain a Yu Suzuki character model, but a set of conversational dialogue subtitles that directly relate to Miao Village was discovered hidden within the files. These finally allow us to piece together many missing pieces of the puzzle and put to rest certain questions held over so many years.

In today's part, however, we look at how several of the concepts that had been planned for the scrapped Miao Village ended up appearing in partial or reworked form, many years later, in the most recent game in the series: Shenmue III.

Thanks to George & Joe Kitchen for their helpful input.

Bailu Village & Its Inspiration

As concluded in the previous part, Miao Village was to have been located in the vicinity of Wan Chai, Hong Kong. It was not planned to represent the story's Bailu Village, which is located much further north in the Guilin region of China - however, they do share many similarities.

As Ryo travels with Shenhua over the mountains of Guilin in Shenmue II, she talks often about 

Bailu Village, and the various conversations with her during the walk portray a small, closely-knit but isolated village. (A full set of the conversations with Shenhua can be found here on BlueMue's video channel).

Here is a selection of information learned from Shenhua about Bailu village during the journey:

• Bailu Village is one of the oldest villages in Guilin, existing since the Tang Dynasty
• It has a population of about 50 people.
• The village well is the source of drinking water.
• Most houses are made from wooden pillars and earthen walls. There are also houses made from stone. Glass is not used because once broken, it can't be repaired. Shenhua's house is like a typical house in the village.
• A picture of a god is placed at the entrance to a house to protect from devils and evil spirits.
• Most villagers cultivate the fields and own water buffalo or goats. Horses are also kept for transportation.
• One of the villagers has a huge carp. Carp are cooked on New Year's or when there's something to celebrate.
• The village also has ancient buildings that housed treasures and rare items, protected by strong walls, built long ago by the nobles from the city.
• There is a herbal pharmacy but no hospital in the village.
• Stone lions are placed at road intersections.

Regarding the inspiration for Bailu Village, Yu Suzuki has stated that is inspired by ethnic Chinese villages such as those of the Miao people:

"There are villages called Miao villages that belong to an ethnic minority. Ethnic minorities like the Miao, Iyan or Kam inhabit villages in the interior region of Guilin. I'm creating Bailu Village with those kinds of villages in mind".

- Yu Suzuki (Shenmue Master interview at Gamescom 2017, Germany)  

This would imply that the ideas and designs from Miao Village would fit equally as well in Bailu Village, and there is evidence that this is the case in the rendition of Bailu that made its appearance in Shenmue III.

Yu Suzuki at Gamescom in 2017 (Shenmue Master interview)

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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.

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[Part Six] The Secret of Miao Village: Original Plan for Miao Village in Shenmue II

Welcome to Part Six 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
5. Temple Content Left Behind 
6. The Original Plan for Miao Village in Shenmue II [this post]
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 post, we'll investigate the original intention for the Miao Village shown in the cut-content screenshots.

Note: an early Shenmue II prototype that was created for the GameJam event in 2001 has just been released to the community, and this holds a lot of potential for new discoveries. This article was completed prior to the release of the prototype but, in anticipation, an eighth part has been added to the current series, for any new findings!

Theories Over the Years

For many years since the screenshots were first made public in 2002, there has been much speculation among players as to where in the story the village (and temple) was to have fit. Some ideas discussed among posters on the Shenmue Dojo forums included:

• Based on the village's link with the Miao people, who mainly inhabit the mountains of southern China: located somewhere in Guilin, for example on the way to Bailu Village.
• More specifically, one area that raised eyebrows as a possible location is the transition to the Green Field area just after Langhuishan, as there is a distinct disconnect in scenery (e.g. the path's appearance and mountain shapes):

• Located near Luoyang.
• It might have been intended to be Bailu Village itself.
• One location that was not given a great deal of attention is Hong Kong itself, presumably due to the rural setting of the screenshots.

For many years, little concrete information was available to back up or disprove these theories. It was not until much later, with Shenmue III going into development, that direct references were made by some of the original developers that helped to shed some light on the topic.

The highest profile comment was from Shenmue's main character design artist, Kenji Miyawaki.

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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

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[Part Five] The Secret of Miao Village: Temple Content Left Behind

Welcome to Part Five 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
5. Temple Content Left Behind [this post]
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 post, we will gather together any content to be found among the disc files that may have once been part of the temple location seen in the screenshots.

Name of the Temple

Just as an unused "Miao Village" loading screen was uncovered by fans (see Part Two), a second unused loading screen was also found that provides the name of this temple. If running a build of Shenmue II that has a debug menu, this can be viewed by setting the area code to SMMK:

Debug menu: settings for displaying the temple loading screen

Doing so will display the following loading screen, which has the name "Miao Guang Temple" (as with the Miao Village loading screen, it fails to continue past this point):

The Miao Guang Temple loading screen (the time and date are default values)

The area code for this loading screen, SMMK, matches the four-character prefix seen in the filename for the object model representing the red-cover version of the Wulinshu (seen in Ryo's hands in the temple screenshot), confirming that it is the same temple.

Next, we'll look for models of objects or buildings on the disc. You may recall that Part Two's earlier investigation into the village screenshots turned up fragments of village houses actually included in the released game in an unexpected area: the gloomy corridors of the first couple of floors of the Yellow Heads Building. It turns out there are further pieces of scenery to be found there that relate to the temple location.

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[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

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[Part Three] The Secret of Miao Village: the House in Xiuying and Ziming's Flashback

Welcome to Part Three of our analysis into screenshots of the mysterious Miao Village revealed in 2002 on the Shenmue.com website by AM2, Yu Suzuki's development team at Sega, showing content that had been cut from the game before release.

Parts in the series:

1. Village Screenshots Analysis
2. Village Content Left Behind
3. The House in Xiuying and Ziming's Flashback [this post]
4. Temple Screenshots Analysis
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 the previous post, we identified several object models from the first few floors of the Yellow Head Building in Kowloon that are likely to have once been part of the Miao village seen in the screenshots.

In today's post, we will investigate another location in detail: the setting for the flashback showing Xiuying as a child with her brother Ziming inside a house that shares many similarities with the houses seen in Miao village.

The House in the Xiuying and Ziming Flashback 

The flashback occurs when Ryo goes to bid farewell to Xiuying at Man Mo Temple, informing her that he will be leaving to follow Lan Di's trail to Guilin.

The flashback plays just before Ryo travels on to Kowloon.

Xiuying gives him a stone that makes up half of a yin yang symbol, and after doing so, the flashback scene plays.

The flashback shows Xiuying and her older brother (Ziming) as children, sitting together on the floor of a dark interior that is illuminated by a fire that heats a pot over the hearth. Xiuying receives the stone from Ziming who tells her to keep it safe. 

Flashback scene with Ziming and Xiuying.

Due to the limited visibility during the flashback, it is hard to distinguish details of the environment. 

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[Part Two] The Secret of Miao Village: Content Left Behind

We will continue with Part Two of our analysis into screenshots of the mysterious village revealed in 2002 on the Shenmue.com website by AM2, Yu Suzuki's development team at Sega, showing content that had been cut from the game before release.

Parts in the series:

1. Village Screenshots Analysis
2. Village Content Left Behind [today's post]
3. The House in Xiuying and Ziming's Flashback
4. Temple Screenshots Analysis
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 post, we will gather together models of various objects that may have once been part of the Miao village seen in the screenshots.

Models and other data were extracted from the game discs with the excellent Wudecon converter tool created by LemonHaze. 

Content Left Behind: Miao Village

Over the years, fans have wondered if there are any traces of the village left behind in the game files, and in fact there are several pieces of content left on the disc that appear to once have been intended to be part of the original village content.

Loading Screen

The existence of an unused loading screen for "Miao Village" was first mentioned as a discovery on the Shenmue Dojo forums by LanDC way back in 2003. This loading screen was left in the game files, but is not displayed during normal play.

A simple way to trigger this to display is to run the Shenmue II US prototype that was recently released on the Sega Dreamcast Info site, through the use of its debug menu (Scene=02, Area=SM00, Entry=01):

Debug menu: settings for displaying the Miao Village loading screen

This results in the loading screen being displayed:

The Miao Village loading screen (the time and date are default values)

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The Secret of Miao Village: Analysis of Village Screenshots [Part One]

Following the release of Shenmue II on the Dreamcast in 2001, a number of intriguing screenshots (a selection of which is shown above) were revealed on the Shenmue.com website by AM2, Yu Suzuki's development team at Sega, showing content that had been cut from the game before release.

Several of these screenshots showed an unfamiliar village and a temple setting, with some even containing subtitles of dialogue between Ryo and a character who was unused in the released game.

Fans later also managed to uncover unused loading screens, one of these showing the name  "Miao Village" - and so it is by this name that the location of these screenshots has come to be known by the community.

Various theories have been put forward and discussed over the years, although even today, these screenshots still hold a great sense of mystery. In this series of posts, we will gather together as much as we can find about them, as well as carrying out some digging of our own, and see what conclusions can be drawn as to their true nature.

There is a lot to talk about, so the planned post topics for this post series will be as follows:

1. Village Screenshots Analysis (this post)
2. Village Content Left Behind
3. The House in Xiuying and Ziming's Flashback
4. Temple Screenshots Analysis
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

Models and other data were extracted from the game discs with the excellent Wudecon converter tool created by LemonHaze. The comprehensive Shenmue II Character Database by Stuart of the Shenmusings blog, was a fantastic resource for checking character names and usage.

Let's get started!

Screenshots Analysis

The screenshots first appeared in issue #29 (June 2002) of Muecas, the name of AM2's online Shenmue fan club. They were grouped into three sections: Ryo on a bicycle with Xiaoqin (which we have talked about in this post); Ryo in a village setting; and Ryo in a temple setting - this series will focus on these last two sections. At the time they were presented as content that had been cut from the released game, but no further explanation was provided.

We'll start by examining the three screen shots that show Ryo exploring the village, and highlight any features and small details:

Village screenshots

After that, we will move on to the four screenshots of a temple setting which include subtitled dialogue.

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Poll Result: Patrons' Choice Topic for February 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:

"Cut Content: Screenshots of Miao Village"

Following the release of Shenmue II on the Dreamcast, a number of intriguing screenshots were revealed by the development team on the Shenmue.com website that appeared to contain content that had been cut from the game before release. They showed an unfamiliar village and temple, and even subtitles of dialogue with an unused character.

Fans later also managed to uncover unused loading screens, one of these showing the name  "Miao Village" - this is the name by which the location of these screenshots came to be known by the community.

Various theories have been put forward over the years, although even today, little is known about these screenshots.

Some of the screenshots apparently showing content cut from Shenmue II

In this post, we'll be examining not only the content of these mysterious screenshots, but also as many mentions and references as we can find from available sources from the day and later, in order to build as comprehensive a picture as possible.

Coming soon to the blog!

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