May is Shenmonth! That's right, a whole month devoted to articles about the beloved Dreamcast series 'Shenmue'. Expect an article a week here at the Dreamcast Junkyard as well as a few at SEGAbits. If writers here or from any other Sega blog wish to participate, feel free to grab the header image above, slap it atop a blog post and write whatever you wish about 'Shenmue'. A "Top Ten Ugliest NPC Characters" article is up for grabs.
You might be asking: "Why May?" Well, any 'Shenmue' super-fan should know that today is the birthday of Ryo's dearly departed father, Iwao Hazuki, born on May 3rd, 1940. So what better day than today to kick off Shenmonth?In death, Iwao became both the catalyst and driving force for the epic story of 'Shenmue'. Despite two games of plot, much of Iwao's life is still a mystery. Did he really kill a man named Zhao Sunming in Meng Chun? Why did he have a white leaf in his possession? Is it really all that important for a boy to eat his carrots? These are the questions that Iwao's past holds the answers to. I intend to revisit these questions in a later Shenmonth article, but in the meantime...
I'd like to share what to many American Dreamcast fans was the first 'Shenmue' review to be read: The Official Dreamcast Magazine 'Shenmue' Review! Click the images for high res readable photos.
10/10! I won't argue with that. As a bonus, check out this crappy GameStop ad featuring a badly designed mock-up of the Dreamcast cover art:
So let Shenmonth begin! Hopefully I make it to a third entry.
Return to SEGAbits if that's how you got here
Shenmue is one of the best games ever created!!!!
ReplyDeleteI really loved (and i'm loving now too :D) this game!
Yu suzuki Rocks!!!!!
sure you seen this or will post sometime. this is "GDC 2000: Yu Suzuki and Shenmue" part 1 of 9. says there are 8 parts but there are 2 videos called part 2.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jsh8x_choj0
this person also has a lot of other videos on shenmue too.
I'd really like to post something on the subject of Shenmue, but I hit an attention brick wall in Shenmue 2 where you have to earn cash to pay that gang leader by moving boxes around. Talk about mind numbing...
ReplyDelete@james, thanks for the links! I'll check them out!
ReplyDelete@Tomleecee
eeyuck. I hated that part. I've replayed II recently and spent all my money on lighters at the pier before my backpack was stolen. In all, I lost $1 which made Ryo's anger at Wong all the more funny. Like $1 really meant a lot to Ryo. I then sold the lighters to a pawn shop and got a good amount of my cash back. :)
i never played shenmue 2 since can't get it on dreamcast and don't have xbox. maybe get xbox sometime but they are getting kinda old and the harddrive is like 9 years old and those things don't last forever.
ReplyDeleteanother reason is there is a cliff hanger i hear so guess want to wait for the next game?
Play Shenmue II as soon as you possibly can despite the cliffhanger. It's the journey that matters, not the destination.
ReplyDeleteShenmue I & II are "must play" games. No other games in history are as detailed. If you're a gamer....you need to play at least one Shenmue.
ReplyDeleteOh, and I have that same Dreamcast magazine. It also has articles on the unreleased Half-Life DC port and the unreleased Team Harrier game.
played the first one. maybe when i get a xbox will play the second. seen one for $35 at game store here.
ReplyDeletenot looking forward to replacing the harddrive though because i know it is not really as easy as a computer and if you don't you might have to soon when you in the middle of something.
Wow great article! I saved those magazine pages to my PSP for retro reading on the go!
ReplyDeleteLooks like the past few months have been really good to be a Shenmue fan, since Shenmue 2 has been fully moded with English Speech. XD
I look forward to reading more on your articles.
By the way, could I bother you to take pictures of the Half Life Multiplayer article and post a link to them here please? I am very curious as to what was planed for the DC version. XD
Yes, It's a great shame Half life DC was never released.
ReplyDeleteThe expansion Blue Shift which was later released for the PC was originally to be released with the Dreamcast version of half life.
The version of DC Half Life I have has both the original game and Blue Shift. It's a damn good port, but it takes up a whole VMU when you need to save!
ReplyDeleteThanks Anthony817!
ReplyDeleteIf I remember to do it, I'll take a photo of the Half-Life page. I'd scan it, but I don't want to bend my magazine up to fit in the flatbed.
I'd like to get to burning some unreleased DC games (half-life, propeller arena) but I'm awful at doing it. Even after reading three walkthroughs I fail.
That Shenmue add is bad in so many ways, what's happened to Ryos hair?
ReplyDeleteAnd who thought that "Much more than your everyday kick in the groin" was a good advertising slogan?
Well Barry, you should DEFINATLY get the Half life mod Paranoia that was just finished this week after 3 previous betas over the past few years.
ReplyDeleteTruth be told, that porting a PC mod to the DC using HL was not easy, but it is the best damn looking FPS on DC by far as it is very photorealistic.
Anyway, regular HL and Propeller Arena are 2 great games that were leaked to the net.
Now for an über suprise!
System Shock 2 beta and Thief 2 have been found on a DC collectors Dev kit, so we MAY have System Shock 2 and thief 2 on our lost of leaked unrealeased games!
Anthony - tell us more!!!
ReplyDeleteWell, we are waiting on more news of if it can be made into a bootable disc, which seems to be very much possible, but Theif 2 looks like it is over 1gb and has no first read bin file with it, but if I hear anything else I will let you guy's know.
ReplyDeleteYou can find the thread at this link below.
http://dreamcast-talk.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=2047