Do you remember the first time....

[giz_119]

Do you remember the first time you read a shenmue preview or a review, do you remember the first time you looked at screenshots of shenmue? Do you remember the first time you popped the disc in your dreamcast and watched the extremely long cutsceen and thought am I ever gonna get to play?

[Jacob Marley]

Do you remember the first time you read a shenmue preview or a review, do you remember the first time you looked at screenshots of shenmue? Do you remember the first time you popped the disc in your dreamcast and watched the extremely long cutsceen and thought am I ever gonna get to play?

Yes.

I remember way back in 1997 hearing about Project Berkely for the first time. This was back in the Saturn days and the info was posted on www.saturnworld.com. Upon hearing more of the project's details, I began to follow the development of this game and was initially disappointed to hear that it was switched from Saturn to the then unannounced new Sega system. Eventually, as the DC news became more frequent, shots of Shenmue became available.

One day, my local Planet X (now a Gamestop franchise) had the import version of Shenmue on a demo kiosk. I thought it was pretty cool, but you were confined to the Hazuki house since the damn demo station reset periodically every 20 minutes. It was cool, but it was in Japanese and the freedom of movement just wasn't there yet. I still had my hopes high and waited for the US release, at which I was blown away (as I had expected).

[Henry Spencer]

Everything about Shenmue astounds you.

[Saki Amemiya]

I never heard of Shenmue before my brother got it a couple of years ago

[Samanosuke Akechi]

i remember that.the good old days for me.

[VulkanNinja]

I had heard mention of a Yu Suzuki Virtua Fighter RPG in an issue of Gampro sometime in 97 or 98. I was big into Virtua Fighter at the time so it interested me greatly. The first time I ever heard the game by the name "Shenmue" was in a news piece titled "What's Shenmue?" in an earlier issue of the Official Dreamcast Magazine. That was such a great mag Ah, the memories

[Bluecast]

Hi new here!


The first time I heard about it was in a magizine (no longer printed) called nextgen I saw and read about it back in 1998 and I wanted the game that moment I read about it.

I now just love the series even though the first one is my fave.
I do think it was cool of Sega to include footage of the saturn shenmue (never released) on the Xbox version after you beat the Game.

[Samanosuke Akechi]

welcome to the forums BlueCast!:)

[choinkees]

I always used to go to a website called Cyber Hippy Vision.
(it was www.chv.net (and some other long URL before that.. dartmouth something))
Anyways, it's gone now but they were a huge source of game intros, gameplay movies and stuff.
That's where I first saw Shenmue. I downloaded clips of just really ordinary stuff.. like the dude walking around and buying a drink from the machine and playing darts.. and I was like "fff!! that's so boring and really awesome!" I loved the idea of just walking around and doing whatever you want. I spent the rest of the day downloading tens of clips of stuff like the weather changing and all that kinda thing, plus the graphics were pretty amazing at the time.

[Hei Long]

I remember reading the first preview thing in CVG and thinking "wow, I have to get a dreamcast" lol.

[pico]

Never heard of it until that darned Dreamcast magazine started doing coverage on it, then I thought "HAAAAAAY DIS LOOKS COOL", then I forgot about it for awhile until I got a demo disc with the preview of it, then I forgot about it again until my brother bought it for me. That was September 9th, 2001!

I remember trying to pick up a cat that was wandering around when I was playing it for the first time. Then, after a few minutes of play I started thinking "DIS IS JUST ASKING SOMEONE ABOUT SOMEONE AND THEY TELL YOU TO ASK SOMEONE ELSE" ... what a fucking moron...

[Silas]

(Told this story here so many times, anyway here goes.)

I'm not a big buyer of games magazines, but I did happen to see this in a Dreamcast magazine. There was one screenshot and the copy was all about the revolutionary freedom of this upcoming game. I thought the name was intriguing. Anyway, logged onto Amazon and pre-ordered the game.

Then in the week before it arrived I read some reviews, and started to worry. A lot was said about how it wasn't as Free as it was made out to be - it was a bit short and increasingly linear. I almost wished I hadn't bothered.

Then it arrived, and I thought, "What the hell, I'll try it once before sending it back."

And I went to bed at 3 o'clock the following morning! An addict, I was instantly hooked. Obviously I recognised a lot of necessary limitations, but principally I really liked the interface for looking at and picking up items, I liked what the camera did when you moved it around (and I'm still waiting for another game with as good a camera program) and I was really impressed with the true 3D environment.

Basically it was the game I'd been waiting my whole life for.

[Snoopbob2006]

I can remember hearing about it on a game's channel called game network they were so excited for it to come out so I got it the day it came out. Then I got addicted after playing 15 minutes of it.

[b_ren]

Shenmue was almost the first game i played for dc but i was using a crap tv ander 50kz so i had to play something else. I loved it the first time i played it i new it was going to be a game i liked but i didn't think it would end up being my favorite game.

[ChaiOgawa]

I never read one preview for Shenmue, because back then I didn't care about video games very much. I still played them but didn't follow them closley. I had no idea about shenmue untill my brother brought it hom with a couple other games from his work for my newly aquired dreamcast. It took me awhile to finally open it up and play it cause I doubted if I would like it, now it's the greatest game I have ever played and made video games my life.