shenmue

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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Shenmue / Project Berkley [DC – Beta / Tech Demo]

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Yu Suzuki has stated on several occasions that during its early stages, Shenmue was a traditional style RPG based on the characters and storyline of the hugely successful fighting game title Virtua Fighter. The Ryo character was simply Virtua Fighter character Akira to begin with. The final Ryo character has several key differences, but there is a very clear visual resemblance between him and Akira. As the game’s development progressed, the characters became original and the storyline moved away from its Virtua Fighter roots.

As the gaming industry became more aware of Sega’s next generation console towards the end of 1997 and beginning of 1998, Shenmue was also getting noticed. At this time, however, the game was only ever known as Project Berkley. Tech demos from the game were being used by Sega to show what the Dreamcast was capable of producing. Many of these sequences were very well developed, and some were even used in the final retail version of the game. This has led many to believe that Shenmue was probably one of the very first Dreamcast titles to begin production. Shenmue quickly became Sega’s flagship Dreamcast title – representing the systems powerful graphics capabilities and also its ability to render immersive, cinematic characters and settings. – [info from Wikipedia]

Thanks to KEK8 for the contribution!

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Dreamcast Tech Demos [Tower Of Babel & more]

ENG: This entry in the archive doesn’t have a description yet. If you want to add some info about the beta / cancelled stuff that you see in these images, just write a comment or send us an email! We’ll add your info in the page. Thanks a lot for your contribution! :)

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Dreamcast Tech Demos: Tower of Babel

Dreamcast Tech Demo: Irimajiri