Shenmue II (2001) — a 90% game that arrived five months after its console stopped being made

Released September 6, 2001 — five months after the machine stopped being made

Hello, this is Toki. Episode 49 of “Today Is Release Day.” Today’s game reached shop shelves after the console it ran on had already gone out of production.From a screenshot on the Steam store page for Shenmue I & II (Sega)

Shenmue II. Developed by Sega AM2, published by Sega, for the Dreamcast, at 7,800 yen.

The release date was September 6, 2001. It sits under that day’s heading in Famitsu’s September 2001 release schedule and in Gamer’s list for the same month.

On January 31 of that year, Sega announced it was leaving the console hardware business. On March 1 it cut the Dreamcast from 19,900 yen to 9,900 yen, and on March 31 it stopped manufacturing the machine.

So this big-budget game arrived five months after the hardware it needed had ceased production.

Set in Hong Kong. You can ask strangers for directions, and fast-forward the clock

The first game, Shenmue: Chapter 1 — Yokosuka, came out on December 29, 1999, and was set in Yokosuka. In the sequel the hero boards a ship and crosses to Hong Kong.

The places you walk are Wan Chai, the Kowloon Walled City, and the hills around Guilin. The year in the story is 1987.From a screenshot on the Steam store page for Shenmue I & II (Sega)

Two additions were the kindest to the player. You can ask passers-by for directions. And you can fast-forward the clock until an appointment or a shop opening arrives.

Earning money changed too. In the first game a part-time job was built into the main story; here it is optional. Gambling, arm wrestling, street fights, minding a pachinko stall — any of them will do.

The fighting is 3D combat in the Virtua Fighter mould, and Ryo can take on several opponents at once. In a 2017 interview, Yu Suzuki said that for the fighting side, “Shenmue II used the Virtua Fighter II engine.”

The arcades in town held Hang-On, After Burner, Space Harrier and Out Run — a corner of Sega’s own shelf, carried over to Hong Kong.

Famitsu 8/8/8/8. A 90% average abroad. Sales a third of the first game’s

The reviews at the time were strong. Famitsu’s four-critic panel gave it 8 out of 10 apiece, 32 in total. On the English-language aggregator GameRankings, the Dreamcast version averaged 90%.From a screenshot on the Steam store page for Shenmue I & II (Sega)

GameSpot gave it 8.7 out of 10, saying it greatly improved on Shenmue and refined nearly every aspect. GameSpy gave it 9. Britain’s Official Dreamcast Magazine gave it 94%.

Eurogamer gave it 8. Tom Bramwell called it an effective swan song for the Dreamcast, one that took the machine to the very brink of its capabilities.

Sales did not follow the scores. In a ranking of Japanese Dreamcast software sales, the first game, Chapter 1 — Yokosuka, sits fifth on the platform with 355,000 copies. Shenmue II is 24th, with 125,000.

That is close to a third. The game had not become a third as good. The machine to play it on was simply no longer on sale.

North America never got the Dreamcast version — though it had been built

In Europe the Dreamcast version came out as planned, on November 23, 2001. The region that went without was North America.

In October 2001 Microsoft secured the rights to an Xbox version. That version reached North America on October 29, 2002, and Europe on March 21, 2003.

The North American Dreamcast release did not vanish at the planning stage.

In November 2021, an English Dreamcast disc image was found and released for preservation. It is version 0.991, built on September 14, 2001 — eight days after the Japanese release.

Parts of the translation were still unfinished, but the thing ran. And for twenty years it had reached nobody’s hands.

Twenty-five years on, the same Hong Kong runs on PC and PS4

On August 21, 2018, the pair was reissued as Shenmue I & II for PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. The Japanese PS4 edition followed on November 22 that year.

You no longer need a Dreamcast to play either game. The flagship title of a discontinued machine has become one of the easiest Sega games to buy.

Below is the launch trailer for that reissue (Sega’s official channel).

Which game do you think outlived its console?

The story was planned as eleven chapters. The first game was chapter one; this was what came next. The tale stopped partway.

It did not stop because of the reviews. After the 90% and the 32 out of 40, it was the machine that ran out first.

2001. Let me write the year down. From the release on September 6, 2001 to today, September 6, 2026, is exactly twenty-five years.

Which game do you think outlived its console? If you remember its release date too, so much the better.