Endurance Run: Shenmue - Part 07

Yes

More like Shenpoo

How close will Vinny come to crossing over the edge of insanity today? Find out!

Woah, is that day again!

The "Mafia" now take your money legally in the casinos in Vegas

Why do I keep staying up til 3 for this.

Time to see how long it takes them to realize that Yokosuka is the name of the city they've been in this entire time!

Just hook it into my veins!

@papercut: I regret nothing.

Ya know, I acknowledge how this stuff was prob pretty cool in some ways back in the day, and if I had played it back in the day some parts of it could be interesting for doing those things.

But man I am falling on the side of this is a bad game, like really really bad...... Even if I do find some parts interesting and cool.

LOVE the vid series though!!

Alex: "I think you may have to actually go into some of these stores."

Vinny: "I think this is the only one I can go into..."

I yelped out a "WHAT" so loud, I probably just woke the neighbors.

Vinny the mafia apologist

That chef seems like he might be a friend of Tom, if you know what I mean.

Poor the Shenmue all over me

God, I think I could die happy if I just never heard Dan pronounce Yoke-ah-SUKE-ah ever again.

This is it! They figure out how to interact with stuff. It only took seven hours.

And they make some pretty good progress. The plot thickens!

Here's that Saturn version footage they mentioned. It's got a bunch of Shenmue II footage in it though, so spoilers and what not. Ryo's lips weird me out in this version and Lan Di has the hair of a hobo.

Japanese Austin Walker at ~6:55?

Now I'm going to have all this horrible singing stuck in my head, thanks guys.

And here's an hour-long documentary about the making of the game:

@phoenix87: What Alex said about tattoos in Japan is completely true, though. They'll get you banned from all sorts of places.

Except that cute girl in the store.

Angry, aggressive Vinny sounds really scary.

This is largely a time and place cultural thing. Even more so than in the US tattoos in Japan were something only those in organized crime had. Organized crime, Yakuza, are much more tolerated and not directly outlawed in Japan the way they are in the US. (Japan chooses to regulate and allow much moreso than outlaw - a very different system for a very different culture than the US). However, general everyday people were rightly frightened of them. Thus the anti-tattoo prejudice in the game.

Thankfully also this was not something that the "translators" removed even though it does come from cultural differences.

@squirrelnacho: They're starting to get it, it seems like.

@alavapenguin: It's easy to look back at this and scoff but Shenmue was a technical marvel for its time. It was extremely detailed, with tons of objects to interact with but after 7 hours, it seems like the crew might have finally figured that out. From the get go you can look around Ryo's room and the house and find tons of items. I can understand the frustration of having to wait around all day to get something done but at the time, it seemed cool because it felt immersive. Shenmue's weather system was also tied to real life weather data from the time period the game is set in and people had their own routines they'd follow so they wouldn't always be where one might expect so you'd really have to learn and remember.

Shenmue has moments of excitement but a lot of it is rather mundane which is why I can see people like Jeff really hating it as he doesn't usually go for slower games with the Lucas Arts adventure games being an exception, which is sort of how I see Shenmue. It may look like a karate adventure fighting game, but its appearance is deceiving. It's more like a point and click adventure. You walk around, talk to people, find clues, collect items and sometimes fight people.

A remaster for Xbox, PS4 and PC with better textures and sound, fast loading, and the ability to skip time would be fantastic. I don't know how the GB crew are capturing the game though. As you see from the video below, captured from a DC, it is plenty sharp and bright while the ER is blurry and dark, especially at night where isn't difficult to see anything.

If anyone is interested in Shenmue but thinks it looks too boring for them, I'd recommend just watching the Shenmue movie. It's about an hour long and keeps the most important things but doesn't cover every detail one might like and then play Shenmue 2. It's still the same base game but you're in a larger world with a more diverse cast, more action, more locations and like Dan said, you can skip time.

I love how they're convinced that Ine-san is Ryo's mum.

mom?

@mrcraggle: Love it or hate it, you can't say it wasn't a major influence on games. It popularized QTE's (some will hate it for that), and even invented the term.

Even today, I'd say the level of interactive fidelity has still only been matched by Gone Home.

Episode Spoilers Below.

I like how people keep posting things like "there's so many X they can look at/go into/do" and yet every time the crew discover something like that there's either nothing to do (eg the Saturn), it's effing boring (most of the arcade games) or its only one line of dialogue and MAYBE another boring / shallow mini-game (pizzeria / the gambling place).

Seriously. I do not see what people are expecting the guys or the audience to think when they/we see that shit. They even finally sparred this episode and anyone who thinks that amounts to anything of interest frankly just strikes me as crazy. There's 0 positive reinforcement in this game and yet people complain when Vinny just stands or runs around (having fun conversations) rather than look around his house with bad snap-on look controls for items he'll likely never use.

/ Rant.

Love the series haha - it's just some of the comments that get to me.

I love having a daily series to watch here on Giantbomb, and honestly, I'm starting to get into the story and the quirky-ness of this old Dreamcast game.

You guys keep it light and make it fun to watch, but I also see the somewhat somber nature of the game. Ryo is running around the streets of this small town, looking angry and asking people questions over and over. It would be sad except Ryo is actually a bad-ass and is slowly making real progress.

I have zero nostalgia for this game, but I could see how people would have gotten into it when it came out.

I played this game when it first came out and it's only just hit me that Ryo owns a Saturn in 1986. And the capsule machines dispense Virtua Fighter and Sonic characters. In 1986.

@steeeevil: His uncle worked at Sega.

This game is egregious, but oh man am I having fun watching them play it.

I don't blame them for not knowing that Tao is a Chinese name as they kept thinking of restaurants of Japanese cuisine, because that's a deep dive. But I do like that the game respects you enough to not hand that to you on a platter. All the stuff like the Tao-san clue and the tattoo aversion that most games (from then and now) would have completely ironed out in localization are untouched.

Wait, Alex has tattoos?

You learn something new every day.

Hooray, Vinny discovered the Zoom button! Well done, Vinny! Who's a good boy?!

Man Puke'n

@shtinky: It was discovered with surprisingly no fanfare. He just... started using it! I thought they were going to have a go ransacking Fuku-san's room, but for some reason it wasn't locking on to the stuff on his desk. I doubt they'll go back in there.

@selfconfessedcynic: You're 100% right dude. The other stuff is window dressing. It's not as if there is huge gameplay stuff they're missing. Wouldn't be an ER without people bitching and backseat playing.

Oh good, they found the restaurant. I was worrying they might not go in there. Another opportunity for Shenmue to show off its incredible voice-acting talent.

@selfconfessedcynic:

That's not true. They can get games for the game system in their house by completing other objectives.

@gbrading:

No, they didn't find the right restaurant.

I wish someone was crazy enough to make a modern Shenmue. I would be super into a new, irresponsibly expensive attempt to replicate every boring detail of life in an interesting city. I want to see a developer like Ubisoft put all their resources into crafting the most detailed little environment they can manage.

Mr. Dobuita.

Mr. Bob Dobuita.

Also I feel like modern gameplay mechanics have spoiled us rotten. If this game came out today, they would sure as shit know what they could and couldn't do, as the game would tell you every step of the way.

Like I'm sure just reading the manual was skipped over because manuals? The fuck are those?

@gbrading: I don't know if I mentioned this here before, but literally none of the actors had prior experience, and everything you hear is the first and only take. There's a Jeremy Blaistein interview about this, just a few paragraphs, that might be the closest we ever get to a What Happened? exposé.

@selfconfessedcynic: You're absolutely right. As long as they can keep moving forward in the game without issues while also being entertaining and trying to have fun, they're doing nothing wrong.

I rather watch Vinny walking around in circles trying to figure out the word "Fireball" than having them zooming in on objects irrelevant to gameplay.

@artisanbreads: Nope, there's tons of substantial events & side-quests that you easily miss if you don't explore. Nozomi getting attacked in the park, Delinquent girls at the lunch stand, Fight by the construction yard, etc.

The criticisms that they aren't exploring enough are completely valid. Especially after the last episode where they did nothing for nearly an hour.