History on the Macho looking Ryo Xbox Cover?

[GYO6161]

I sometimes see this image around in the internet and it makes me wonder, what was SEGA thinking making Ryo look like this in this picture? Anyone know the history of this image?

[BlueMue]

It must've been a joke. Don't know from where and why but this can't be a serious concept drawing or something.
It's clearly not Ryo, he doesn't even have the patches on the jacket.

If there is any real story to this, I'd like to know it too.

[johnvivant]

i'd love to know the story behind it. who drew it? and who requested it be changed? was this an old artwork even pre dreamcast, or something done specifically for the xbox release?

thank god it was changed, but poor old lan di remained weird looking.

maybe they thought that this image would be more appealing. can't quite see how. maybe some clueless marketing people at microsoft were behind it

[Testament]

Quite simply, this is just the cover Microsoft showed off before the release of the game, though I don't recall it having that Shenmue The Movie cover on it--the one I saw was more to the left and had the original Japanese logo on it.

[Sonoshee]

Fucking hell, I've never seen this cover before. Ryo's face is utterly ridiculous! He looks like something out of Jersey Shore

[SMDzero]

He looks like evil Ryo once he's corrupted by the dark-side.

And yeah, I always thought Lan Di looked like he had down syndrome on the xbox cover.

[MiTT3NZ]

There's an interview flyin about the Dojo that explains this. There may actually be two if I'm not goin completely fuckin mental.

[FlagshipFighter]

lol what is that? Gotta say I do like the cover for the Xbox release (that looks like this but a better Ryo face) it's very Drew Struzen-esque and I think it captures the epic themes across quite well...

[squall]

When I see that Ryo...I think of this...

[SMDzero]

When I see that Ryo I think of this:





Seriously though the Shenmue 2x cover was BUTT UGLY compared to the gorgeous cover of the Dreamcast original.

I'm sure the atrociously inappropriate cover art was a factor in the game selling like crap on Xbox.