Homebrew developer Frogbull is back at it, this time showing off the fan-favorite New Yokosuka Harbor District forklift racing from Dreamcast classic Shenmue running on the Saturn in glorious 32 bits.
This demo, like some of Frogbull’s previous efforts (Metal Gear Solid, Crash Bandicoot, Final Fantasy VII), is shown in a YouTube video; its description says that it’s running on a real Sega Saturn:
Also like Frogbull’s previous efforts, the Shenmue demo has not been made publicly available to play.
Frogbull has made a name for himself by giving Sega fans a glimpse into a hypothetical past where the constellations aligned and various fifth- and sixth-generation classics came to Sega hardware. He burst onto the retro gaming webspace almost out of nowhere when he dropped a video showing Metal Gear Solid partially ported to Sega Saturn in October 2023 — see TraynoCo’s reaction to the reveal here.
Frogbull has since come to be a well-known contributor to high-profile fan projects, notably the DCA 3 (Grand Theft Auto 3) and DCA VC (Grand Theft Auto Vice City) Dreamcast ports.
Anyone who would like to support him can do so on his Patreon.
Beginning life as a Sega Saturn project, the Sega AM2-developed and Yu Suzuki-directed Shenmue released on the Dreamcast in 1999. Shenmue places the player in the shoes of a young martial artist named Ryo, who, while in pursuit of his father’s killers, explores an ambitious, almost living, open world recreation of the Japanese city of Yokosuka circa 1986.
Shenmue’s approach to world building pioneered an approach to game design that would be later refined by Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto and Sega’s own Yakuza franchises.
The legacy of Shenmue is such that it was recently selected by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts as the “most influential video game of all time.” Shenmue remains a fan-favorite Dreamcast title to this day.
Be the first to comment