Endurance Run: Shenmue - Part 03

In this episode, everything breaks.

They call me Kid Murderer.

Episode 4

http://www.giantbomb.com/videos/endurance-run-shenmue-part-04/2300-11539/

I love the brilliantly calculated decision to start a new endurance run (one of the most popular premium features by far I believe) right during the membership sale. That's smart, I certainly would've signed up now if I hadn't already been a member.

Otherwise, despite their obvious enjoyment of playing interesting but "bad" games together, I think most of the staff duders dislike the intense commitment to do 50-100 hours of Let's Plays!

So, thank you, GB.

Sometimes it amazes me how people who have been immersed in video games for decades have managed to avoid learning anything about Japanese pronunciation. It's not even one of the harder languages to learn how to pronounce. It's completely phonetic.

Oh, Dan. Place is called Manpukuken. Dan pronounces it "Rampyukin." :' )

Listening to the most recent Bombcast, when the email about the Ranking of Zelda comes in, the first thing Dan says is "Let's set some ground rules." LOL

Johnny, does your mother still hang around dockside bars?

I've noticed that Dan looooooves to invent rules to adhere to on video series that he's involved with. The first episode of something will usually start with, "Okay, so let's lay down the ground rules..."

When did this Endurance Run rule of "no looking for help on the Internet" ever start? In the Persona 4 ER, Vinny and Jeff constantly looked at the comments for tips, and it was fine.

I know it doesn't matter ultimately for this ER since they already played through it, but I'm just saying.

Take me down to Shenmue City Alex, rock on!

Real classic finish at the end.

I've seen glimpses of this game over the years but this is the most I've been exposed to and holy hell I am stunned by how crappy this whole thing holds up. Yes, it was ambitious for the time. BUT. This also came out after games with reasonable voice acting (MGS, for example) and games that controlled better. It's not WHAT the game is that seems bad (an open world adventure game) but the elements that make it up like voice acting, etc.

Three episodes in and we're hitting technical difficulties. What a ride this will be.

That ending. Nothing stops the ER!

@jarno: That's amazing. I remember hearing an interview with Yu Suzuki that talked about how there were hundreds of little touches like that in the game.

I think I'm getting confused between this episode, where they're battling power outages, and the episodes when they lost a fight and hadn't saved so had to replay the whole dungeon again.

Alex's little quip about working well with Vinny because Vinny likes broken things is so fucking dark.

Is it a visual trope in Japan to have all old people bending over at the waist? They think if we see them bent over we will be like, "o he must be old, he can barely even hold himself up."

Is Shenmue anime?

Fun little detail. Maeda Barbershop has recently dropped prices. Must be due to competition from Liu Barber & Hair Salon.

"There's no park here." as they look at a map that says PARK right on it.

Jesus Christ, fellas.

Dan's right: McDonald's had sold all of its stake in Chipotle's by 2006.

Are all these plagued with video glitching so far for everyone?

@passivespiral: is this a thing? Can we somehow go back in time and warn Alex? Dead kitten would be too sad.

Would not be an ER without a catastrophic technical failure threatening the future of the series.

Good stuff, folks. This run is the funniest thing to come out of GiantB in a long time.

shout-outs to home movies

what a great show

this run is sick

If they're playing it through video capture equipment, some kind of converter box, on an LCD monitor, etc, the controls are going to be all lagged to hell. This was a game designed for CRTs with/without the VGA adapter box.

Lockup, brutal lol!

so much anger in comments, another great episode. can't wait for the next one

@dixavd said:Do you think the old woman from the first episode has died waiting yet?

Or if the kitten died because they aren't feeding it?

Sailors? What year is this?

IM LOOKING FOR THREE BLADES MOTHER FUCKER

@dovah: How could you forget....."NOTHING STOPS THE ENDURANCE RUN MOTHERFUCKER"--Jeff.

There was a documentary about the ordeal.

I've never witnessed Shenmue, or a Dreamcast, ever lock up like that. We can always depend on the great folks at Giant Bomb to break video games.

@stordoff: oh yes when they lost power. That was awesome. Thanks for reminding me..

Vinny mentioning the date at the beginning made me realize that the release of Shenmue in 1999 was closer to 1986 than 2016 is to 1999 and I had a mild freak out.

Fuck you, time!

@holt_allen: Uh excuse me this is giant bomb lmao

I think the Dreamcast just cast Hama on @vinny

They mention at the start of the power cut episode (Part 61) that they lost some progress before putting the PS2 on the UPS (which is still one of my favourite things this site has done, weirdly enough).

The recording of Part 50 bugged out, but I don't recall any issues with the game save.

That was actually a corrupt video file rather than a game glitch. Which I'm sure must have been super stressful since that was Episode 50 -- the much-famed summer camp episode, that ran longer than any episode thus far.

What he did that day is still super impressive to me. Hex-editing a video back to life takes some real chops. I've dipped my foot into that world and it's scary.

@mrsmiley:

That was fucking hysterical

Ah yes, finally some context for this Mega 64 gem!

@superkenon: wasn't there a day that the save was corrupted and Vinny had to spend hours and do his magic to save it?

Man, I can't remember that at all. Where did that happen? I can only remember a handful of times when they lost progress due to game freezes in Deadly Premonition.

Awww come one Dreamcast, you can't be crapping out on episode 3. NOTHING STOPS THE ENDURANCE RUN!

@grondoth: I think he was caught off guard in that scene since QTEs have been very infrequent so far. I'm sure he will improve as the series goes on.

I was so mad when the others convinced him he was wrong about that shortcut into Dobuita though. Cause he was totally right. And you have to go to that area at one point to learn one of the best moves in the game, but I have a bad feeling they're going to miss it.

HOW is vinny so bad at QTEs?