First off, the presentation of the book is outstanding and far more than one can expect from a small publisher such as Geeks Line. The book comes in a beautiful book jacket with the words "Yu Suzuki" printed in a slightly convex way which gives the reader an interesting feeling while touching the book's cover. The paper is pearly white and the font size makes it a very agreeable reading experience. The book spans 500 pages plus a roundabout 30 color print pages which show pictures of advertisement flyers for Yu's Arcade machines. The quality of those pictures is very good and the colors come out vividly. Unfortunately there are no pictures of Yu Suzuki himself in the book.
The book's content covers Yu's entire life starting with his childhood in a small coastal town, his beginnings at Sega, Yu at the peak of his power at Sega in the late 90's/early 2000's all the way till the emotional E3 followed by the succesfull KS campaign for Shenmue 3 earlier this year.
As a long time Yu Suzuki fanboy, I wasn't expecting a lot of new information from the book, but there was actually a lot of small details in the book which I had either previously overlooked or forgotten about as time went by. Anyway, Benjamin Berget did one hell of a job accumulating heaps of old interviews from magazines dating back as far as the 80's and also loads of online interviews and other source material.
Also, I think most western readers didn't know a lot about Yu Suzuki's early years, unless they were able to read Japanese and thus understand Yu Suzuki Game Works. I found it really interesting to learn that Yu was a die hard fan of Ritchie Blackmore's in the 70's and in his teenage years spent most of his time practing guitar, trying to become a guitar hero just like Blackmore. But fortunately for all of us, just before the final exams in high school were about to happen and with his parents worried about his long hair and indifferent attitude towards studying, young Yu came to the conclusion that despite all his dilligent practice, he lacked the musical talent to become a rockstar. So our Yu got a haircut and enrolled for programming in University. The rest is history.
Benjamin Berget covers all the games of Yu's career, regardless if he was involved as a director, producer, supervisor or something completely different. He gives detailed information about the development, the technical specifications of each arcade machine, the console conversions and the commercial performance (sales) of each game. That alone is an achievement in itself but it is the small anecdotes and details where Berget's book shines. Hitting the letter G in the fourth stage of Hang-On gives you a million extra points, not just Nintendo but also Sega was super close to striking a deal with Sony in the early 90s but the narrow-minded executives of Sega of Japan fucked it up which led to Sony taking bitter revenge on both Sega and Nintedo by releasing the Playstation. Yu worked for Lockheed as an advisor and helped them create a tank simulator of which Sega released a civilian version as "Desert Tank". Shenmue 3 was almost announced for Xbox at E3 2004 and for some reason we still don't really know the announcement got cancelled at the very last minute. Yu initially wanted to do a Shenmue 3 Kickstarter in 2012, but Sega asked too much for the license.
Granted, all those things may not be new to some of us but as I said before I had either forgotten or never learned about them. And God, how much this book made me hate Peter "I put the nail in the Dreamcast's coffin in order to take its IPs to Xbox" Moore and Hajime "I want Sonic on my Pachinko machines to seduce a younger audience to gambling" Satomi and Sammy again.
Yeah, I know, I need to calm down and there's nothing I can do about Peter Moore being an asshole and Sammy being a money-grubbing piece of shit company which unfortunately has taken over Sega. 
Still, the truth needs to be said from time to time. 
Shenmue gets most attention of all games in this book with S1 & 2 being covered in a massive 100 pages chapter, Shenmue Online and it's cancellation being examined in great detail and Shenmue 3 being the finishing sub-chapter of the book with about a dozen pages. I also found particularly interesting the way Yu underwent the development of Shenmue. He first took a ton of location pictures which he showed them to the composers (Mitsuyoshi, Iuchi, Koshiro and so on) who he would then ask to compose some music for those locations. After they were done, Yu listened to what the composers had created and when he found a track he liked, he would play it to everybody involved (graphic artists, programmers,etc.). He asked them to listen closely and to go to work with the music in mind. In that sense, Shenmue's development started with its music and the incredible athmosphere could be created because everybody had the music in mind while working on Shenmue.
With its sheer amount of information and all his little dietails, this book is a great read for every Yu Suzuki fan and all those interested in Sega or Shenmue. However there is one thing about the book I didn't like one bit. While the price (25 Euros) is reasonable, the binding is very cheaply executed and very poor quality. Geeks-Line really need to find a new partner for their bindings. I read about 20 to 30 books a year, some digital but most of the still physical. I have never before experienced this with a new book. I have only read it once and I've treated my copy in an absolutely normal way but still the binding is so bad, some of the pages just came loose and fell out of the book!
However, I'd like to stress, that this is in no way related to Benjamin Berget's work or the contents and reading value of the book. It's an issue the publisher needs to deal with.
I advise every Shenmue fan to read the book, but if you buy the original version, treat your copy with extra care. Hopefully the English language publisher will do a better job with the binding.
