The Shenmue series

SEGA
41

It’s not just because it’s bigger. It’s ugly and you can’t put anything on top of it (and since it’s bigger than everything, nothing underneath it, too). It simply wouldn’t work in a Japanese gaming setup.

When you have apartments where the kitchen is the entry hallway, the bathrooms are so small that your knees hit the wall when you sit down, and there isn’t enough room for a full sized refrigerator, you think they’re going to buy an Xbox when they don’t have to?

But… yeah. Japanese are weird. But, they’re my peeps, so I gotta love them! :anjou_love: The best part of my job is the frequent trips to Japan. They really take care of me over there >:) LC knows.

42

Hehe a japanese guy once told me that he would never picture me in a japanese bathroom XD

(im not the eiffel tower but im kindda tall)

43

When I was just in Japan, I stayed over at a friend’s place… but I also either had the stomach flu or a light case of food poisoning. Let’s just say that I got used to sitting in awkward positions. :anjou_embarassed:

44

I’m sorry to diverge on a side-topic, but speaking in all honesty (i.e. not just as a raving Sega fanboy) I never liked the design of the Playstation 2. One petty point is that I’ve always associated black with Sega consoles (as everyone of them except the Dreamcast has been that colour). However from a serious point of view I’ve always gained the impression that the PS2 is sneering at me. It appears far too clipped, exact and precisely geometrical - as if it’s saying in sarcastic condescension: “Look at me. I’m smooth and calculating and modern and cool. You just know that you’re going to have to play me, don’t you?”

Excruciating. :anjou_angry:

45

I agree to a certain extent that it is a bit forced retro-80’s cool, but in comparison to the Xbox? Xbox just says, “I’m a big brute of a machine in an ugly, boxy package, much like most modern American cars.”

:wink:

(Just had to throw in that last bit… haven’t seen an American car with a design I like since, well… since before I was born.)

46

Abadd, that reminds me of the infamous Warp Curry episode… not the most auspicious day in British games journalism.

I presume you know Kenji Eno, the founder of Warp, who was responsible for titles like D and Enemy Zero? Beyond the fact that most people I’ve seen commenting on him consider him borderline insane, Kenji is famous for touring around giving away masses of promotional gifts for his games - and one such product to land through the letterbox of Warren Owen, Sega Saturn Magazine’s Japan correspondent, was a packet of Warp-branded curry. To immortalise the moment, Warren took a photograph himself preparing to enjoy his free repast. SSM’s news report ended on the note: “what this doesn’t show you is pictures of him being rushed to hospital and having his stomach pumped.”

[/random trivia]. :anjou_wow:

47

Haha, nope… never met the guy, though I’ve heard similar stories :slight_smile:

My incident was most likely brought about by a rather shifty-looking piece of barbeque pork in the bowl of ramen I had the previous day. Tasted a bit funny, but my grandmother assured me it was okay…

That night, I awoke at 4 am to go to the bathroom. I took a quick glance outside (since the weatherman said it was going to snow… sure enough, it was), and went back to bed. Then, I started shivering unstoppably. I turned on the electric blanket to full blast, and still couldn’t feel the warmth for nearly an hour and a half. Finally, I warmed up, then came morning… I popped a few pills, travelled to the other side of Tokyo (about 1.5 hours by train) to meet with my fiance’s sister at Asakusa Temple, then went to Shibuya to go shopping, and then spent the night at my friend’s place… where we were up drinking and stuff until 6 am.

All the while, I had a 38 degree fever (about 101 for the metric-imparied). :anjou_love:

Nothing gets in the way of my vacation!

48

I was about to bet that the reason for your problem was that one dish japanese like that has poison in it and is considered a delicacy.I think it’s some fish.Who the hell would eat something with poison int? :stuck_out_tongue:

49

Fugu? (Blowfish)

Apparently, it’s really tasty. My friends keep telling me they’re going to take me out to have some of that, or suppon (snapping turtle).

Last year, I had raw horse meat and raw whale :slight_smile: Not bad, but certainly not something I’d order intentionally myself.

That outta freak you non-Asian folk out for a bit.

50

Shenmue 2 to Maddox to the future of the gaming industry to the prohibative size of the Xbox to Warp Curry to poisonous fish? That’s the kind of awesome topic deviation that makes me feel bad about going back on-topic. :slight_smile:

Yeah, I’m not so sure about the QTEs’ appropriateness myself; I got through them fine, but I spent each sequence staring rigidly at the dead-centre of the screen waiting for the next command to pop up, so I tended to miss what was going on in the scene itself. As they’re essentially interactive cut-scenes, that did seem to defeat the object a bit for me; I did think they were much more interesting and better integrated into the action in the second game, though. (Oh, and I’ll be sure to search out the duck racing and Fangmei side-quest when I replay the game.)

I forgot to mention, but this is partly why I was so surprised with Shenmue 2: I was never really gripped with the first game because of its extremely slow pacing, and I was disappointed that the main storyline barely progressed between the opening sequence and the sudden end of the game, too. I’d feel harsh calling Shenmue 1’s story and characters “filler”, but I do think the main plot could have been developed more than it was in that length of time (which is something that Shenmue 2 seemed to do a better job of).

Not many reviewers seem to pick up on this, but I thought exactly the same thing; Ryo’s walking feels like the old Resident Evil walking to me, but slightly more awkward. I guess it doesn’t get in the way of the experience too much in this kind of game, though…

Can you find them in Shenmue 2 as well as Shenmue 1? I’ll certainly have a look when I replay the game if you can…

I know I’m heading back off-topic here, but wasn’t the N64 period a very good time for Nintendo in terms of game quality? If we’re talking about in-house games, things like Super Mario 64 and Zelda: Ocarina of Time were crazily important, and other games like Mario Kart 64, Star Fox 64, F-Zero X, 1080 Snowboarding, Super Smash Bros, Paper Mario and so on were fairly top-quality games that more or less kept the system afloat (when paired with the exclusives coming out of Rare).

I’d say that the N64 era was possibly a better time for Nintendo games than now, as most of the company’s current top titles are updates of those N64 games - they’re being criticised for unoriginality more than anything else. Nintendo’s N64 output seemed of a considerably better quality than Sega’s output in the last few years, at least in my opinion (which I think was the topic at hand)…

51

[quote=“Abadd”]Fugu? (Blowfish)

Apparently, it’s really tasty. My friends keep telling me they’re going to take me out to have some of that, or suppon (snapping turtle).

Last year, I had raw horse meat and raw whale :slight_smile: Not bad, but certainly not something I’d order intentionally myself.

That outta freak you non-Asian folk out for a bit.[/quote]

Hey I eat raw things all the time.Apples,bananas,watermellons you name it :stuck_out_tongue:

And yeah that’s it : Fugu.I’ll reserve my judgement until I actually eat japanese food.I haven’t even tried sushi.But I probably wouldn’t like it since I don’t like fish that much.

52

[quote=“Lance Way”]

Can you find them in Shenmue 2 as well as Shenmue 1? I’ll certainly have a look when I replay the game if you can…[/quote]

I’m not sure, I had one when I played Shenmue 2, although that was because I had it in the first game and I got to carry over all my stuff when I played the second one. In the first game you could get it from the purple machines that had a picture of Nights on the front, but i’m not sure if those machines were in the second game. If you can find one of those machines you could probably get one.

53

[quote]

I know I’m heading back off-topic here, but wasn’t the N64 period a very good time for Nintendo in terms of game quality? If we’re talking about in-house games, things like Super Mario 64 and Zelda: Ocarina of Time were crazily important, and other games like Mario Kart 64, Star Fox 64, F-Zero X, 1080 Snowboarding, Super Smash Bros, Paper Mario and so on were fairly top-quality games that more or less kept the system afloat (when paired with the exclusives coming out of Rare).

I’d say that the N64 era was possibly a better time for Nintendo games than now, as most of the company’s current top titles are updates of those N64 games - they’re being criticised for unoriginality more than anything else. Nintendo’s N64 output seemed of a considerably better quality than Sega’s output in the last few years, at least in my opinion (which I think was the topic at hand)…[/quote]

Mario 64 was considered crap as was FZero X. Only few of the titles nintendo released themselves received any acclaim during a five year period.

54

You better wash your ears or maybe your eyes.Mario 64 was considered crap?

I’ve seen more than one magazine granting it 100%

55

Who by? It launched to enormous critical acclaim and was praised as being one of the most important games ever made. Now I wouldn’t argue that it’s aged well - several later N64 platformers did more or less the same thing and made a better job of it - but at the time of its release the overwhelming opinion of the press and the gamers who played it was that it was excellent. If you can show me some links or sources of intelligent criticism that say otherwise though, I’d of course be interested to read them.

Now personally I wasn’t overwhelmed by F-Zero X, but on the other hand I’d hardly call it crap. When it came out it was finding review scores of 4-5 out of 5, 8-9 out of 10, mid80%s-mid90%s and so on, and I honestly don’t remember gamers seriously complaining about it.

Nintendo may not have released an enormous amount of in-house games during that time, but as far as I’m aware and as far as I can remember almost all of the games they did release were critically praised, and when they weren’t held as being excellent they were generally thought of as being very good. As I say though, I’m not trying to tout my recollection as law: if you can point me to any respectable sources that said otherwise, please do so.

56

Mario 64 pretty much ushered in the new age of 3D platformers, and was anything but crap. I bet it isn’t to some peoples liking but I doubt the N64 would have debuted as well as it did if this game was a flop.

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[quote=“Goonboy Panzer”]
Mario 64 was considered crap as was FZero X. Only few of the titles nintendo released themselves received any acclaim during a five year period.[/quote]

That’s complete and absolute bull****. The N64 had lots of acclaimed titles during it’s title: Mario 64, FZeroX, BOTH Zelda games for it…

Mario 64 is in the top 50 influential games of all time on 1up.com. It received 5/5 from CVG, 100% from Nintendo Official Magazine and an assload of 90%+ from other magazines.

Please get your facts straight before posting, boyo.

59

Only 95% from Nintendo Official Magazine; they were a bit overgenerous with their scores, but not that shameless. It definitely got 100%s from some other magazines, though.

60

[quote=“Lance Way”]
Only 95% from Nintendo Official Magazine; they were a bit overgenerous with their scores, but not that shameless. It definitely got 100%s from some other magazines, though.[/quote]

Oops, my bad. I know a Nintendo magazine DID give it 100% (it was in the papers), so I assumed it was NOM. Soz.