Tak Hirai Comments on the Shenmue Saturn Version

Lead programmer for the first two Shenmue games, Tak Hirai, has shared some insights into the development of the games in some tweets today. Since they were in Japanese, we have provided English translations.

When asked about the legendary Shenmue Saturn version, he responded:

"The rendering was created by me with much effort. The program was quite revolutionary with a branchless structure. The source code - as well as the graphics - is something I'd love to show the coders of the day".

He also shared a photo of himself during development of Shenmue around 1998 / 1999 at age 27. As lead programmer on the project, Tak said that his dev environment was sizeable but the air conditioning didn't work properly (note the paper fans ready for use!).

Regarding the Shenmue Saturn version, Tak Hirai's prefaced his comment with a light-hearted note that he thinks the "statute of limitations" (on discussing the Shenmue Saturn version) should have expired by now - so hopefully we will be able to hear more from him in future on this topic.

Source tweets: Tweet1, Tweet2

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Poll Result: Patrons' Choice Topic for October 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:

"Tweeted anecdotes from former developer on the original Shenmue project, Morio Ashizuka"

"Morio Ashizuka" is the pseudonym used on Twitter by a former developer who was deeply involved with development of the first two Shenmue games, in particular character animations and motion capture. He tweets prolifically about video games, SEGA and other topics - along with occasional fascinating insights and anecdotes from the day.

Some of the amazing details from Morio Ashizuka's tweets that we have included here on the blog in the past include:

• The revelation that the character of Izumi Takano was once a candidate for Ryo's love interest
• The reason Ryo's bicycle was dropped from the first Shenmue game
• Suzuki's comment about Takumi Hagiwara's motion capture as Ren
• What had been planned for the bicycle event by which Ryo travels to Miao Village

Cover of one of the "The Legend of Akira" script books (Chapter Four: Guilin) tweeted by Ashizuka. Source tweet

In this upcoming post we'll be translating a selection of other Shenmue-related tweets from Ashizuka that shed further light on the game's development process.

Watch for it to come!

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Shenmue Anime Real-life Location Photo Report: Yokosuka Arena

The depiction of the high school karate tournament that Ryo attends in Shenmue The Animation was based on a real-life multi-purpose sporting venue known as the Yokosuka Arena. Previous posts on this blog have shown how remarkably closely the stadium interior and building exterior were reproduced for the anime.

I recently had the opportunity to visit the Yokosuka Arena and obtained permission to go inside the main hall itself. I was pleased to discover that even minor backdrops in the anime such as the stairs leading up to the seating were faithfully portrayed in the anime, as you will see in the additional comparisons below.

Although this view was not shown in the anime, the Yokosuka Arena complex consists of several buildings, with a futuristic elevated pedestrian skybridge joining separate areas together. The main stadium, where the karate tournament took place, is at the far side behind the skybridge:

When I visited, there was a Tai Chi class taking place in the main stadium, which helped to provide a suitable Shenmue atmosphere:

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Poll Result: Patrons' Choice Topic for September 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:

"Yu Suzuki's Dobuita St Visit Video with Esra Krabbe: English Subtitles"

Earlier this year (2022), a promotional campaign was held in Yokosuka to celebrate the Shenmue anime, with a livestream event, guide maps, postcards, merchandise and gacha gacha games.

Yu Suzuki also traveled down to Dobuita to take part in the celebrations, and explored the area with IGN Japan journalist Esra Krabbe. Together they visited several shops in and around Dobuita, chatting with shopkeepers and examining some of the anime art that was on display as part of the promotion.

It is heartwarming to see the creator himself returning to the actual location on which the first game was based, and hear him reminiscing about the creation of Shenmue I and the anime.

As many fans outside of Japan may not be able to follow the Japanese conversations, we'll be working on translating the conversations into English to create subtitles for the video. 

An announcement will follow on the blog once the subtitles are complete!

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Who is Yoshio Goto? | What's Shenmue

The What's Shenmue demo was released in June 1999 in Japan as a preview of some of the characters and gameplay gamers could expect prior to the main game's release. You may recall that it has the simple premise of Ryo having to locate Sega executive Mr. Yukawa somewhere in Dobuita, and to protect him.

Ryo's notebook starts filled with an entry indicating that "Yoshio Goto" (後藤喜男) has entrusted him with this mission, which Ryo also mentions in his short conversation with his friend Tom at the hot-dog truck.

What's Shenmue: the first page of Ryo's notebook (2014 fan-translated version)

Ryo explains his mission to Tom.

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Interview with Singer of Shenhua's Theme IOLI | Dreamcast Magazine 1999

In early 1999, to mark the upcoming release of Shenhua's Theme as a CD single, Japan's Dreamcast Magazine featured this interview with IOLI (derived from her surname 伊織 Iori), the singer who performed the moving vocals on the track. She also sang live at the Shenmue Premiere in Yokohama in December of 1998.

There is not a great deal of information to be found about this singer online, even on Japanese-language sites, so this is a short but rare snippet of history.

Special Report! Shenhua Theme Releasing on April 1st (CD Single & Album)!

Shenmue

• SEGA
• Release scheduled for this Spring
• Price: TBD
• FREE (Full Reaction Eyes Entertainment)

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

We will come back to 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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Dissecting SEGA's Shenmue Patent: Magic Weather & Magic Rooms

In today's post we will examine a patent application submitted by Sega back in 1998 relating to the generation of graphics suitable for interactive role playing games (RPGs), with the inventors listed as Yu Suzuki, Takeshi Hirai, Kazuo Kondo and Kazunori Masuda.

While Shenmue itself is not mentioned by name within the document, of course, the concepts described within can be readily recognized as pertaining to the soon-to-be-published game series. This includes two algorithms in particular for the automated generation of in-game content that were designed to save having to store vast amount of data on the limited space afforded by physical discs: Yu Suzuki dubbed these Magic Weather and Magic Rooms. We will focus on these two systems in this post.

The patent document contains 24 pages in total, over half of them being diagrams and flowcharts. 

The US patent document contains 24 pages

As a whole, the patent brings together a number of concepts that describe what we know today simply as the "game engine". The motivation was to ensure that the Graphical Processing Unit (GPU) receives display data fast enough to ensure that the display is updated frequently enough to maintain smooth output. The game prepares and sends a single image, or "frame", to the GPU in a never-ending loop. This means that the game's logic processing must be handled efficiently in the time period between one frame being sent to the GPU to be displayed, and the next.

An English-language version is available in the form of the US patent application document, from which the diagrams in this post have been sourced. The language used in the English version is rather stilted and confusing, so relevant snippets of text have been translated from the Japanese original in preference. Additional color images have been included for illustrative purposes.

Before diving into the patent itself, let's have a brief recap on what these two systems are about.

Thanks to LemonHaze who provided technical explanations and information about the implementation in the first two Shenmue games.

Magic Weather

Revolutionary when featured in Shenmue, the "Magic Weather" system controls the ever-changing climate and weather conditions experienced during play.

In the "Making Of" video documentary about Shenmue produced by NHK in 1999, the narrator introduced it as follows:

"The game contains a system that realistically recreates the weather and other natural phenomena. That system is called Magic Weather. In the game, the weather changes as time passes: fine, cloudy, rainy. These changes are based on the long-term weather data for Yokosuka, the town in which the game is set.

"Let's consider a case in the actual game where it is, say, fine one day and rainy the next. The weather conditions encountered by the player will differ depending on how they go through the game. For a player that moves ahead rapidly, they may visit a certain house on a fine morning. On the other hand, a player who plays more slowly may end up visiting the house the following night in the rain."

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