Very Early Access: Shenmue Redux

Here's the other "script I've been sitting on for a long time for one reason or another." This one has a bit of a story behind it.

Why this got written

Many years ago, friend and patron Setsune suggested I could go back over and freshen up some of my first Youtube video reviews. I think she initially was only suggesting I keep the content the same, but revoice the same scripts and capture high quality video. I wasn't against that idea, but if I was going to go back to these videos again, I wanted there to be a bigger reason.

The NiGHTS script has been kicking around for a long time. Technically, that script dates back even further, maybe even as far back as 2007, when I was first considering video reviews. It was far enough back that I didn't have a way to capture video from consoles yet, and did not have a PC good enough to emulate the Sega Saturn, so what I had written then was shelved. When I heard GiantBomb's Jeff Gerstmann go on one of his many rants about how much he hated NiGHTS, I rewrote the script from scratch, leading to what I posted previously.

When Setsune mentioned redoing my oldest videos, the first one to jump to mind was Shenmue. The original Shenmue video is kind of vapid -- I explain (spoil) both Shenmue games and then the video unceremoniously ends with the point being "I just think they're neat." It's all fluff and no substance. But again: if I wanted to redo the video, I wanted to have something better to say.

While moving from Colorado to Nevada, I loaded up on stuff to do while I presumed we would not have internet at our new place. I bought a temporary subscription to GiantBomb premium, downloaded a ton of videos, and quickly discovered one of my favorite shows was Demo Derby, where the GiantBomb crew would load up an old demo disc and forcibly engage with every individual piece of it. And one of those was when Jeff and Ben Pack watched the six-minute Shenmue "cinematic" trailer on an Official Dreamcast Magazine disc.

That's a very nostalgic trailer for me, and Jeff using it as an excuse to launch into an angry rant once again inspired me to explain my viewpoint. This script was maybe a little more angrier from me than NiGHTS, with the title originally being "You Don't Know Shenmue."

So why didn't this get finished?

The original intent of this script predates the release of Shenmue 3. I'd wanted to get it out before that came out, but I was either too busy or in the wrong headspace. As such, in a post Shenmue 3 world, I figured I should play and finish that game before considering this script "complete."

As the years went on, I also realized that some of the points I bring up in here should probably be fact checked by people who know better than I do. I bring up a lot of stuff about Japanese adventure games in the opening of describing Shenmue's importance, but my experience in that realm is mostly cursory -- a few episodes of Game Center CX, a few hours of Ace Attorney, and that's kind of it. I'm not exactly an expert, and I'd like to talk to someone who is. Which... I don't know any, and I never got to asking around in order to find one.

So it sat, in need of more work it hasn't gotten, like your dad's half-restored classic car in the garage. Too much else keeps moving up on the schedule for it to get the attention it needs.