And frankly, the emulated screenshot shown looks too dark, and not because of good contrast, since the color contrast still looks more vibrant in the port shot imo. I don't remember the game looking that dark back in the day, but it's been quite a long while since I've played it on DC so as I said, I can't tell.
You're right! I pulled the comparison frames from Mr357's Shenmue 2 movie, and I forgot there was a known problem with the entire thing being too dark on one of the YouTube uploads. Sorry about that.
We're having another discussion about this somewhere where it won't bother anyone, and someone pointed out the same thing and posted a hardware shot for comparison. I don't want to hotlink it here for obvious reasons, but you can still make out the wall textures in the background in the hardware shot unlike my comparison. The wall textures are still far brighter in the new shots, but there's a noticeable difference. I'll see if I can get proper footage (unfortunately not in HD) and update the comparisons above in case people are hotlinking the images elsewhere. But...
Ultimately it doesn't matter, so I'll drop further discussion on this issue. I still think it was worth pointing out the differences from a factual standpoint, and I look forward to seeing more comparisons made between the different versions of the game after release!