Genre: Adventure
Developer: AM2
Publisher: Sega

Shenmue featured veritable armies of artists and graphics engineers on the project, and sure enough, Shenmue reflects the effort; even though the game is faux open world, the areas are very large, with dozens and dozens of well-animated NPCs traversing-- pushing the Dreamcast to its limits. And from a purely artistic standpoint the game is absolutely incredible; driving a forklift around the harbor during a Christmas Eve snowstorm is about the coolest experience ever in a video game. And Shenmue creates these experiences as a routine matter of course, so lovingly crafted is its world.

All of Shenmue's soundtrack is actually Dreamcast "chiptune" music, but you wouldn't know it by listening to it, so incredible are the quality of its samples. As much as any game ever made, Shenmue's music is super integral to setting the game's experience and environment. The English voice acting is another story; the main characters, such as Ryo and Nozomi, have good talent behind them. Talking to random shop keepers and people on the street however yields some truly bizarre affectations.

As one of the great grand daddies of modern-day open world games, Shenmue has a flexible control scheme that easily allows the player to move, look about, and interact with the environment. The game takes notes for you, which makes the adventure easy to follow along with. Yu Suzuki coined the term "quick time event" specifically for this game, and sure enough, they play an occasional role. There is also a Virtua Fighter-lite combat engine, and an arcade-- humorously called the "You" arcade-- where Ryo can play era-appropriate Yu Suzuki arcade games, like Space Harrier and Hang-On. There is lots of variety, and all of it is well implemented.

Developer retrospectives reveal that Yu Suzuki was handed a huge purse of money-- some say in the realm of one hundred million dollar's worth of yen-- and that there was a massive cattle call conference call, with people scavenging as much money as they could. Given that this chaotic approach is probably the least likely way to actually create something of value, it's amazing that Shenmue came out at all, and was actually a cohesive game, much less a good game! Sure enough, its blend of adventure gaming, fun combat, and engaging story is a winning formula.