By now, it’s more than likely that most gamers have glimpsed this old test-build demo footage of Shenmue (originally Virtua Fighter RPG) running on the Sega Saturn and featured in both SEGA’s release of Shenmue II for Dreamcast and the Microsoft Game Studios enhanced port for the original Xbox…
However, we’re nearly 20 YEARS down the road from that footage, without the slightest hint of that or any similar builds being leaked…
One can logically assume that in order to create this footage for the bonus content, SEGA still had both the build and the hardware to run it on in order to capture the footage we see here. So then the real burning question becomes…
“Where have that build & hardware gone..?”
This is a question that our own resident editor, Peter Malek, recently floated out into the digital ether, soliciting anyone who might have any leads regarding the whereabouts of this now famous and impressive tech demo…
While there have been folks here and there in groups and forums claiming ownership of an odd piece of this gaming history puzzle, none have actually come forth and offered any physical proof… And if anyone truly does own such a piece, they’ve been sitting on it now for over two decades, just letting it’s rarity and value appreciate to astronomic proportions.
So then.., what do we really “KNOW” about Saturn Shenmue..?
Well.., back in 2014 we were provided a wealth of information from Suzuki-san, himself, in his GDC (Game Developers Conference) Shenmue Postmortem keynote. If we follow along closely, taking notes, we can come to a better understanding of the game’s development timeline and the Saturn version’s place in history…
Here’s an outline of what we can conclude so far, given available info:
- 1993 – Suzuki takes a trip to China to research culture and fighting styles for his upcoming Virtua Fighter sequel, VF2.
- Suzuki captures many assets for the game and returns inspired to create an epic RPG that breaks from conventional design.
- 1995 – Suzuki writes the story “Old Man & The Peach Tree”
- Suzuki creates a rough demo with a small team from his AM2 division on stock Saturn hardware, with the primary goal of testing the Saturn’s capabilities and determining what might be possible.
- The first draft is made using the Virtua Fighter 2 engine and is burned to disc after a few months of development. This draft tests everything from camera angles/movement, to character movement & dialogues and other RPG elements. (Nothing from this draft was intended to be preserved. It was likely discarded and has never been seen outside of SEGA)
- Suzuki-san is satisfied enough with the Saturn’s performance that he decides to move forward with his RPG concept.
- 1996 – (late summer) RPG Project begins development by AM2 after the completion of Virtua Fighter 3.
- The project is assigned the codename GUPPY and is based on an original script written by Suzuki.
NOTE: GUPPY is also the name of a new Saturn hardware design in the works by Sega of Japan. This coincidence suggests that Suzuki’s project would be the software demo made specifically to show off this new hardware. In other words, GUPPY would consist of both Hardware & Software components. (see the following video for evidence of this. timecode: 17:19)
- “The team had already remade it once in order to run on a Saturn that had been specifically EXPANDED with an ACCELERATION BOARD” -Okayasu (citation)
- Following numerous discussions with AM2 and SEGA management, it is concluded to be a spin-off of Virtua Fighter, taking full advantage of the franchises’ popularity and the characters, who’s identities and combat animations are ready for use.
- The official title becomes “Virtua Fighter RPG: Akira’s Story”
- Suzuki-san and his AM2 team return to China to obtain visual assets, historic & contextual reference and further cultural inspiration.
- AM2’s artists design an illustration for each chapter of the story, and as the project gains momentum, it quickly expands to novel consisting of 11 chapters.
- Everyone on the AM2 team receives a disc copy of this new build, in addition to a musical score written and recorded months prior…
- Development on the extended Saturn hardware takes the story all the way up to “Guilin” and it performs “pretty well, for a Saturn” claims Suzuki-san, but becomes obvious that more power will be needed to make his vision a reality… (citation)
- 1997 – (4th quarter) Suzuki is informed of the Katana hardware and AM2’s development shifts to it’s third and final wave on this new hardware under the new code name Berkeley.
- 1st Build: stock Saturn hardware – “OLD MAN“
- 2nd Build: “extended/accelerated” Saturn hardware – “GUPPY“
- 3rd Build: Katana hardware – “PROJECT BERKELEY“
- 1999 – Shenmue is released on Dreamcast – December 29.
- 2001 – Shenmue II is released on Dreamcast in Japan & PAL territories, including the now famous demo video “Saturn Shenmue”, consisting of game footage captured from a Saturn development unit.
- 2002 – Microsoft Game Studios release an enhanced port on Xbox in North America, incorporating the same demo footage.
So we know that several copies of the Saturn build exists, since each of the AM2 members received one, and we know that at least one copy was preserved by SEGA in order to aid in the creation of bonus material for Shenmue II… Now we just have to hope that someone out there will come forward at least to show evidence of this build and perhaps even share the story of how they acquired it…
If you are reading this and you happen to be one such individual, please do not hesitate to reach out to us. We would be thrilled to hear from you.
Hope it happrns soon.
Hi there, try finding the Hollywood and Japanese producer/directors that Yu suzuki tried to hire at the time they were still working on the Saturn version, they might have also been given the discs with some footage or development build as well
Included with the Japanese version of the Virtua Fighter 3 release, there’s a bonus disc named “Project Berkley”, containing an interview with Suzuki explaining a bit more on this topic, albeit entirely in Japanese without any subs obviously.
I may’ve found a lead. From a journalist who claims to have discussed this with old sega employees.
https://mobile.twitter.com/Manga56/status/1325070183388614656
It’s in French, but apparently they told him that it was never fully playable on Saturn…only on dev kits.
Found a interesting lead.
https://mobile.twitter.com/Manga56/status/1325070183388614656
Even if it was barely playable and needed a dev kit to be ran, it would still be a dream for this demo to actually be found. Just for the sake of preserving the knowledge and work that went into this project.
I find it very sad that such little information exists about the massive scale of development that went into shenmue. All we’ve got is a few stories, this video and some screenshots from virtua fighter rpg (maybe I’m missing a few artifacts but there isn’t much).
Plus I’m sure if something was release it could be hacked into something playable. Hopefully one day it will come out, until then all we can do it hope!
Just waiting won’t help.
Isn’t there a chance to contact various people who worked that project?
“and we know that at least one copy was preserved by SEGA in order to aid in the creation of bonus material for Shenmue II” — Unfortunately, that’s an incorrect assumption. If you look closely at the footage we saw in Shenmue 2, you’ll see that it’s digitized from VHS.
That doesn’t mean that a build doesn’t exist, of course. Just that what we saw was made from a recording of the hardware, probably in the mid-to-late 90s, not the hardware directly.