Saturn Shenmue

This video is of the game Shenmue when it was in production for the Sega Saturn. Development of the game was later moved to the Sega Dreamcast. This video is unlocked as a bonus for completing Shenmue II on either the Sega Dreamcast or Microsoft Xbox console.

The Sega Saturn was notoriously difficult to program for due to its needlessly complicated design, which made it both costly and time consuming to develop software for compared to its competitors. Very few developers could utilise the Saturn's dual CPUs effectively, never mind the various other processors needed to make the console work smoothly.

Yu Suzuki, a game designer and producer at Sega AM2 behind many successful game series and the director of Shenmue, had this to say of the Saturns hardware.

"One very fast central processor would be preferable. I don't think all programmers have the ability to program two CPUs — most can only get about one-and-a-half times the speed you can get from one SH-2. I think that only 1 in 100 programmers are good enough to get this kind of speed [nearly double] out of the Saturn."

As such, this video is quite mind blowing in what Sega AM2 was able to achieve on a stock Saturn and would have set an incredibly high standard for a game on any platform to follow had it seen release.

I ripped this myself from the Shenmue II Disc 4 GD-Rom. There are slight borders added at the top and bottom of the video but it is to preserve the original aspect ratio of the video.

Category:

Gaming

Tags:

• Shenmue
• Saturn
• Sega
• AM2

[jehad78]

This video breaks my heart every time i watch it ! It keeps bringing back the question of what if and what not !

Im sure things would be different for sega if this was released !

Oh well .......

[TimePilot2084]

It appears so far into development!  Most of the characters are there, and I recognize some plot points... man, I sure wish someone'd find an ISO for the Saturn.

[freeedom22]

whoaaa the graphics are mind blowing for the saturn and seem to me at least at the level of the best Playstation 1's 3D games, if not better...

[theNerdGamer88]

how many cd's would this game have if it was launched for the sega saturn ?

i bet more than 4 maybe , just seeing the graphics and animation , this is excelent .

[tmsods]

@aubba

in a way, but sega was dumb enough not to release some development tools for 3rd party game maker so most of it's games aren't as well made :s

[TheSuperNESman]

wow a lot of the levels looked like they were almost all done

[aubba]

wow the saturn was more powerful than the ps1

[vipwest]

@City2villain maybe but it wouldnt of been the same experience as it was on the dreamcast ^^

[GamerBoyGU82]

if they decided to keep this game on the saturn it would definitely helped the saturn's fight against the PS1

[City2villain]

It was mean to be two games in one, as it appears.