project berkley

Shenmue / Project Berkley [Saturn – Cancelled]

Originally the ambitious game of Yu Suzuki and his AM2 studio, Shenmue, was planned to be released for Sega Saturn instead of Dreamcast. Finishing Shenmue 2 for Dreamcast or Xbox, you can unlock a rare video of the Saturn version of Shenmue. It was just an early demo, but you can see the untapped 3D graphical power of the Saturn, with an amazing graphics for its time and hardware, all in real time on the original Saturn, without using the famous “booster cartridge”.

Shenmue was in fact considered a “killer app” for the Saturn, but it was canceled because of time needed to complete the game and the arrive of the new Sega 128 bit console. The first chapter of Shenmue for Saturn would have been published on more than 8 CD!

The game was originally going to be “Virtua Fighter RPG” a role-playing game based on Akira, a character from Virtua Fighter (a fighting game developed by AM2) that looks a lot like Ryo, the protagonist of Shenmue.

Thanks to John for the english translation!

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