NEW MEMBER Xbox or DC, MY FINAL VERDICT.

[MiTT3NZ]

Urn*

And I'll be havin a coffin made out of the original Xbox controller. There'll be room in there for the missus too. Not enough for my penis though...

[Balzak802]

I played and beat both versions and as much as I love the Dreamcast, I would have to give my hats off to the Xbox version. Simply because the English voice acting made it a more enjoyable time. I know some of you out there say that the English voice acting was horrible but I thought it was pretty good. Maybe that is because I played Shenmue so much that I got used to the voice acting in Shenmue 2. Also, Disc 4 or the forest area is the main reason why I say the Xbox version is better. Just because my eyes got pretty tired after reading so much text from that scene and looking down on the Dreamcast version but on the Xbox version, I just had to sit back, relax, and just listen while enjoying the nice scenery.

[shredingskin]

The problem with English VA is not only that is bad (really some NCPs have the weirdest voices EVER), but is technically bad specially in SIIx. I don't know how, but they recorded some sounds like shit, you can hear all the background noise, different quality recordings and uneven sound volume, as bad as it gets. I really like the voice of ryo tough.

For me the best "version" today is playing on a dreamcast emulator, HD, less load times, you can speed it up if you want, widescreen, and won't crash as much as DC.

[Master Kyodai]

Fully agree on the VGA box definitely nice. On my 40 inch full HD sony it didn't really look ace but on my 24 inch TFT it's really pretty nice, definitely much nicer than on my old CRT.


The audio is a mixed bag i feel. Personally i think the main characters voices are pretty nice. However i would not say "English voices are better" or "Japanese voices are better". For some of the Shenmue 1 characters i personally think the English voices are better in Shenmue 1 - Lan Di and Chai definitely sound "more authentic" in English and were imho brilliant picks. Some others were rather poor. In Shenmue II some of the "unnamed random NPC" are especially poor in the English version, others were just "far off" in the Japanese version. But in the end it's just a matter of taste, not like you could measure the quality of voice acting in numbers or so.

[mue 26]

Two reasons why Shenmue's English VA rocked

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tuz8qtgXRuE[/youtube]

His accent definitely sounds like the weirdest mixture of Indian, Japanese and Jamaican. Or as I like to say, he sounds like an Indian man doing an impression of a Japanese man who wishes he was Jamaican (the Jamaican tones sounding the least authentic of the three). Still, I always thought it fitted his crazy personality and appearance quite well. Tom even looks quite like he's an Indian guy with dreads.....so maybe it was all deliberate and he's really a very skillful VA after all We need to get that guy on the forum.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuI4JM5Ad0I[/youtube]

One tells him to go "Jerk off", and the other one calls him a "twit" (!) and threatens to "slap him silly". I think Shenmue is the only game ever to have the word twit in it! But boy, these Japanese school girls aint nothing like in the anime, they're way more thuggish

[Ryudo]

As much as I don't like the VA in Shenmue. I prefer English as I'm just to lazy to read. (Tho I like visual novels) However just be nice to have the option of both. Then I'm sure like other games that offer it I would play in both modes.

[mue 26]

Yeah, I would like the option too. But to be honest , I know what you mean about the subtitles in a way. I think Shenmue is still a really good looking game so I like to appreciate the visuals in cut scenes and what have you. Usually it's not a big problem as the dialogue is usually pretty slow, but ideally it is better to appreciate the scenes without the distraction. It's the same reason why Miyazaki recommends people watch his movies in dub rather than subs, though it is obviously much more of an issue with his films, due to the natural speed of dialogue and the almost insane amount of animated motion that can be packed into a scene.