Yu Suzuki returns to Shenmue by showing never before seen concepts and development stages

akira and ryo
During the Shenmue Postmortem stream, Yu Suzuki, the former lead producer of AM2, displays never before seen concept and development stages of the Shenmue franchise.  For more information and pics from the stream. Make sure to click the jump!

– During development, Shenmue started out as “The old man and the peach tree” where the goal is to search more for a Kung Fu grandmaster named Ryu and  “Virtua Fighter RPG” for the SEGA Saturn which starred Virtua Fighter’s Hakkyoku-ken fighter, Akira Yuki as the main protagonist seeking revenge on his father’s killer and travels to China to meet other warriors.

– The original game title was called Virtua Fighter RPG: “Akira’s Story” and changed to Shenmue ~Chapter 1: Yokosuka~ along with the code-names from “Guppy” to “Berkeley”

– Maps were shown to where the player has to travel during Akira’s journey.

– He also explained other concepts that are featured in the franchise such as the Quick Time Event (QTE) which fuses gameplay and movie cutscenes in visual quality with interactivity and Behavior control of NPC where he shows a scedule of certain events and a bug where the NPCs all appear in a convenience store with the Virtua Fighter Kids cast as a small cameo.

– Another interesting concept that was shown during the stream was the “Theory of Seed” where Suzuki-san explains how using a seed to grow a plant that can take ennormous data to make a 2km x 2km forest along with buildings constructed  of units such as rooms and corridors.

– The stream ends with a picture of Shenmue 2 with a quote “2000, Shenmue 2 development start. To be continued.

Yu Suzuki, as a game producer, has once again shown us the masterpiece that is the Shenmue franchise. Tell us what you guys think of the Shenmue Postmortem?

Here are the pictures of the concept and development stages of Shenmue.

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5 responses to “Yu Suzuki returns to Shenmue by showing never before seen concepts and development stages

  1. Centrale says:

    Lots of cool information to pore over, much of which was new to even the most ardent Shenmue fans, researchers and speculators. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to watch it live, so I really appreciate those who did recapping it and sharing screen captures.

    • Hitrax says:

      You can watch the whole thing on YouTube right now, it was recorded life while it was on going, and the repeats have been uploaded across different sites now.

      I hear they are supposed to be going through Shenmue II tomorrow (20/03/14) which began development in 2000, maybe they will talk about Shenmue III and Shenmue IV the next day after.

    • Mengels7 says:

      Says who?

    • Lenticular Leo says:

      On the Shenmue 500k group on Facebook.
      And also at the end of the presentation video of Shenmue I, it states the following “2000, Shenmue II development start To Be Continued…”

    • Hitrax says:

      It shows you on the video (which you can now find all over Youtuube), either that or it refers to next years GDC (unlikely) as there are still another 2 days or so left of GDC 2014.

      Also I found this interesting quote/tweet from someone who spoke to Yu Suzuki at the event;

      “Ali Novin
      I talked to Mark about Shenmue….(He’s awesome)

      It’s not easy these days to find publishers who want to afford those much… That’s what Mark told me.

      He said Yu is trying hard to find a publisher (that’s why he’s here…)

      I personally catched the fact that remaining chapters of Shenmue is much bigger than Shenmue 1 & 2 so for that Suzuki needs lots of money & a strong publisher.

      Something that grantees that saga comes to a conclusion not that we end up waitting 15 more years for Shenmue 4.

      I may edit this & add more of what he told me, but basically that’s all we must know as of now. ‪#‎SaveShenmue‬ ‪#‎GDC2014‬”.

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