Tell us your Shenmue story! Tell us how you got to the Dojo!

[adrian92]

I remember hearing about Shenmue when it first came out but I didn't own a Dreamcast and kind of forgot about it. I got an Xbox around 2002 and remember watching the Shenmue 2 trailer on the Jet Set Radio Future disc, but I never remember seeing the game in stores and once again I forgot about it.

Then just a couple years ago I started getting real heavy into the Saturn and Dreamcast. I had never owned either so it was a pretty new and exciting time discovering all the great games on each console. Anyways, I had bought a spare Dreamcast and to my surprise a complete copy of Shenmue in perfect condition had been bundled with it! I proceeded to play through it and was completely hooked. Before I knew it, the game was over.

I quickly ordered a copy of Shenmue 2 for the Xbox and breezed through that one as well. Between the rooftop scene and the entirety of the Guilin chapter, I was pretty amazed by the time the game was over. And of course I knew there was no Shenmue 3 and just kind of assumed there never would be and got a bit sad.

And then about a month ago the kickstarter happened!

[johnvivant]

i original found the dojo back in around 2002/3 when i was trying to find the game's music to download (obviously years before youtube). i browsed the forums and enjoyed reading my fellows fans appreciation of the games, as well as all the theories and modding discoveries (and obviously any info on our eagerly awaited shenmue 3). that stuff really kept me hooked to the forums, and it still does! i did open an account around the same time, but i never posted anything - and i have long since forgotten that account name. i then become a hardcore lurker for 14 years. i opened another account in 2008 and started contributing more often. however since the shenmue 3 announcement my activity on here has exploded. so happy to be a part of the wonderful community. its going to be a great couple years reading all the new info leading up to shenmue 3's release. its so great how the community was instrumental in making the sequel a reality. thank god for twitter too! i'm sure without that instrument we would never have had this level of success, especially when emailing/mailing sega all those years did nothing - or at least seemed to do nothing.

[AnimeGamer183]

I was in high school, 9th or 10th grade, my friend was telling me about Shenmue. Said he was up all night trying to figure out how to get back to the Hazuki Residence in the game after getting lost in Dobuita. Was going on and on about the level of freedom in the game, and that i had to check it out, he was also a fellow martial artist. I went over to his house some time after and we played for a while and it sparked my interest in getting a Dreamcast. Shortly after that my friends were going on and on about Phantasy Star Online, I think I spent the night at my friends and we played all night and he let me create my own character. After that I had to get a Dreamcast, so I traded in some old stuff and bought a Dreamcast and a VMU and PSO and borrowed Shenmue from my friend. I got so sucked into the game immediately and was obsessed with it ever since. I came to the dojo I think by the way of google when I was trying to find information about Shenmue II, when we were still on forum planet toward the end of 2001 just lurking. I Remember the ebay link provided for the american members so we could import the PAL version of Shenmue II, download and burn the boot CD etc. so I spent the $70-$80 (I think it was actually for my christmas that year). Christmas came, I played the game like fuck beat it, and joined the forums shortly after in early 2002. Also after I beat Shenmue II I let my friend borrow it that originally let me borrow Shenmue I, we rode the same bus to school actually and he lived close by so we were just talking and talking and talking about it. Some of the best days ever were at that time...

[Yokosuka]

I was 5 and dreamed about a 3D game with open world and action with something close to QTE. Then the dream came true.

I came to the dojo right after the GDC, I felt that something would happen after all these years of despair and I was right.

[Miles Prower]

Early 2002. I'd just beaten Shenmue II on Dreamcast, which I had got on Xmas Day 2001, and the original game the Xmas Day before in 2000. Our family had just gotten the internet - AOL dial up! - and naturally I started looking for Shenmue websites/message boards. The Dojo was the first I found, and the first message board I ever joined The rest as they say, is history - I certainly wouldn't have predicted that we'd be getting excited about Shenmue III in 2015!!

[Sh3ppy]

Bought my first DC in 2001 I think it was.. Had never really heard of Shenmue until a friend of mine borrowed my DC about a year later & lent me Shenmue II when he returned it. It took me a while to decide to load it up & play, but by the end I was absolutely hooked & slightly obsessed with it. Hunted down Shenmue I & bought it used for peanuts- I remember being slightly disappointed with the English voiceovers initially after having played II in Japanese with English subtitles, but it didn't actually take me long to get over it. After completing I, I played II again & so on & so forth. All this coincided with a horrendous break down of my relationship with my then long time partner, & as cheesy as it sounds, being able to immerse myself in Shenmue really helped me at the time. Just to be clear, Shenmue had nowt to do with our breakup- she did hate it though.

The Dojo was the only site I continued to lurk on throughout the years- I knew if anything concrete surfaced this was the place to be. Then last year's rumblings began & here we are today. I'm as excited about III today as I was back then, before I came to realise (or so I thought) that there was slim to no chance. Never been so happy to be wrong.

[PILMAN]

I've told this story various times but I don't mind posting it again.

I found out about shenmue when I was in high school, probably around 2001 or 2002, I was living in wheeling, Illinois which is a suburb of Chicago. I had a tech class and a student I was friends with was big into anime and silent hill, he was telling me about shenmue that you could find in a 100 man battle, play at a arcade, and walked around in a immersive Japan with various npcs. He showed me an announcement at the time for shenmue 2 that it was coming out to dreamcast. Naturally I took an interest and wanted to try it, however being 14 or 15 at the time, I didn't have any money and already had a Xbox. A friend borrowed me a dreamcast but he didn't have shenmue, I did like the console however. Played phantasy star online.

I did some research and figured one day I'd get a chance to play the game. I moved to Florida in August 2002, my parents ended up separating as my dad was bipolar and suffered from mental illness and it was a difficult time, lived with my aunt and would watch outlaw star on my Xbox, around October or November 2002 I heard about shenmue 2 coming to the Xbox and remember seeing a advertisement about it and info on the Xbox website, at the time my mother had just rented a house so we left my aunts and were dirt broke. My mother found a cheap TV that looked like it was made in the early 1980s, colors were poor and no composite cables. I went to radio shack to buy a coax splitter that fed composite cables. I received the official Xbox magazine that had a shenmue 2 demo, it wasn't that great of a demo but the qte action was interesting, I rented the game at blockbuster around I think November 2002, my mother ended up getting me the game for Christmas for Xbox.

My dad had passes away March 2003 due to a suicide, so that was a difficult time, so I pretty much just played shenmue finding comfort in distracting myself avenging Ryos dads death in game, I would spend hours trying to find out everything I could do and pay attention to whatever details I could. I found out about shenmue dojo sometime in 2003 and I recall the dojo was using a third party forum at the time, and I reregistered in January 2004, I finally bought a dreamcast around 2006 or 2007, got the first shenmue and the second game and just continued to play up until today.

[Chaos]

I got some demo disc in a magazine that had a trailer that got me instantly hooked. Got the game for Christmas that year.

Apparently didn't find the dojo til a couple years later.