Odds are that the average gamer, hardcore or casual does not know or has hardly heard of Shenmue. Unless that person was one of the very few that bought the game for the original Xbox or played it on Dreamcast. It is very sad as Shenmue was perhaps the most immerse and impressive game in its time.

People often cite GTA as being the pioneer in open world gameplay, but I think much of the acolade must go to Shenmue. I have not played Shenmue 1, but Shenmue 2 takes place in Hong Kong. The time moves per day. In the day time you can literally do whatever you want, and the city feels brilliantly alive. You can accept various mundane jobs such as weight lifting. Or you can choose to make money by gambling it in casinos or in the streets. Alternatively you could also make money by taking on arm wrestling or underground fighting competitions. You had to return to the residence of your choice by night time. The rent would be due every week or two, and if you were broke, depending on the landlord you could talk your way in delaying your payments.

In the story missions, Ryo met various individuals that tought him new moves. The roaming about gameplay takes place from a 3rd person perspective. The beauty was that when you engage in fights it would swtich to a view similar to fighting games. The fighting element was deep as they used the same engine from Virtua Fighter. Besides the gameplay, the story was exceptional and both the graphics and sound quality were top notch. Ofcourse that meant that development cost of the game was high.

So what killed this great series? The first and second parts were released for the Dreamcast back in 2000 and 2001 respectively which were successful. Microsoft had bought the exclusive rights for Shenmue and had Shenmue 2 released for the Xbox in 2002 so as to use the successful series to penetrate the Japanese market. The problem is that Xbox is a failed console in Japan. Even now the 360 currently struggles to post significant numbers in Japan. In addition, Shenmue 2 was released before anime became popular in the west. What resulted was that the game sold poorly and had incurred heavy losses. A rough plan for the rest of the story has already been tought of by creator Yu Suzuki. The problem now is that Sega is reluctant to release the final 3rd and 4th parts of the game because of the poor performance. Hence a great series died because it was released for the wrong console and at the wrong time. 

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