Frogbull’s Shenmue Project Is More Than Just Forklift Racing and You Can Play It Now

Frogbull is full of surprises — the latest being a larger Shenmue project on Saturn than he initially teased, and it’s publicly playable, no less.

The homebrew developer updated his Patreon with a free post that included a Mega.nz link to download the game, called “Shenmue: Back in Yokosuka.” It uses a collection of WAV files, which may not agree with some emulators, but users can load the game up in the Sega Saturn Patcher and rip it as BIN/CUE to avoid that problem.

Frogbull revealed the full scope of his game Sunday during a livestream on Twitch. He showed off an isometric pixel art recreation of Ryo’s house and the town of Dobuita from Dreamcast adventure Shenmue. As players guide Ryo, they find characters from other Sega games like Sakura Taisen’s Sakura Shinguji, Streets of Rage’s Axel Stone and Fighting Vipers’ Bahn.

Eventually, players enter an arcade, at which point the game changes to a 3D polygonal recreation of Shenmue’s You Arcade … complete with playable Master System games that use an emulator developed by longtime Saturn homebrewer VBT.

The arcade features Master System versions of Space Harrier, Hang On, Choplifter, Action Fighter, OutRun, After Burner, Fantasy Zone 2, Quartet, Shinobi, Wonder Boy and Wonder Boy 2. It’s also got a playable “QTE Title” boxing cabinet, just like Dreamcast Shenmue’s arcade.

VBT’s work on a Master System emulator for Saturn dates back to the early 2000s. He entered it into the first SegaXtreme Saturn homebrew competition in 2003 and won.

Shenmue: Back in Yokosuka also includes the polygonal recreation of Shenmue’s forklift race that Frogbull showed off in a YouTube video Thursday, as SHIRO! reported last week. Players reach it after progressing far enough in the isometric adventure portion of the game. TraynoCo showed it off live after last week’s SHIRO! Show.

“It was a pleasure to share SHENMUE: Back in Yokosuka, our fan-made homebrew project developed with vbt, running on actual Sega Saturn hardware,” Frogbull said in the description of his livestream’s YouTube video. “This project is a love letter to all the developers who worked at SEGA and made us dream — especially Yū Suzuki — as well as to Shenmue and the Saturn.”

Frogbull is well known for recreating PlayStation games on the Saturn, such as Metal Gear Solid, Crash Bandicoot and Final Fantasy VII, over the last couple years. He’d never made any of them publicly playable, though. So his Shenmue game represents a couple firsts for him: not only is it playable for everyone, it’s also his first foray into recreating part of a Dreamcast game on the Saturn.

He revealed in a SegaXtreme thread Friday that this is a submission to the forum’s Sega Saturn 30th Anniversary Game Competition — it’s apparently the secret entry in the original game category.