First, a quick and heartfelt premise: Thank you all for the warmth and affection dimostratomi with your wonderful post and I hope to deserve great praise in speeches this baby blog.
I hope you will help me to grow it mainly thanks your views and any questions that I will be happy to try to answer.
Let us now turn to the subject of the day: as in the previous post, I will remain in the field of videogame masterpieces that have been a deserved commercial success (but I promise the next action to change the class) to talk about Shenmue, the 'opera par excellence of the great Yu Suzuki. Please note that this is a title in 1999 (but its gestation began in 1994) and watch this trailer, where it is well made the idea of \u200b\u200btechnical quality but also unprecedented artistic - directed by the fantastic soundtrack - this amazing game:
Yu Suzuki (born 1958) is one of the most brilliant game designers of all time and one of the minds that contributed crucially to the flowering of the electronic entertainment industry in the '80s ; time when video games were still a niche product (which would then experienced a massive clearance on the mass market until the mid-'90s, thanks to Sony Playstation and the character of Lara Croft) and their reign was unchallenged represented by arcades, where they were proudly displayed through cumbersome and colored cabs. Given their nature as entertainment fast, the coin-op (short for coin operated, meaning "coin-operated) were to attract and win in just a few seconds to shift your attention, which was still to be hypnotized and now feel so motivated to insert coins to start a game. For this reason, such as graphics quality, the immediacy of the game mechanics and the simplicity of representing the real strengths of a successful coin-op. What better title for a frantic game of motorcycle racing with three-dimensional perspective, then, to attract the attention of the public? It is with "Hang On" Yu Suzuki in 1985, after stato assunto in Sega come programmatore nel 1983 (fortunatamente per noi non era riuscito a passare l’esame di ammissione per studiare da dentista), firma il suo primo videogame di successo. Legandosi a questa formula del gioco dal ritmo veloce e incalzante, appartenente per lo più al genere delle corse con prospettiva tridimensionale (e visuale posteriore in terza persona), Suzuki traccia in appena due anni un percorso costellato di grandi titoli che si imporranno all’attenzione del pubblico mondiale: come Space Harrier (uno shoot’em up sempre del 1985 che riprende le meccaniche di un racing game), Out Run (videogioco del 1986 che rivela la passione di Suzuki per le Ferrari, poi consacratasi tredici anni più tardi con il coin-op Ferrari F355 Challenge, also praised by Ruben Barrichello who wanted to buy a copy to practice driving :-)) and After Burner (a fast-paced game of air combat between the product several months later on the success achieved by the famous movie "Top Gun" ).
These products will cross the threshold of the playroom and was a consensus that to motivate their transpositions for all gaming platforms at the time, from Sega's console to the home computer.
After several years of break (during which were still produced the sequels of his early works) Suzuki back in the limelight on the world stage in 1992 inaugurated the series of Virtua Games (characterized by the replacement bitmap graphics with the polygonal time to build any kind represented in the game using three-dimensional solids), which after the coin-op racing (What a coincidence!) called Virtua Racing, will reach its zenith in 1993 with Virtua Fighter, the first consecration of three-dimensional video game martial arts fighting, a title of world's prodigious success that won numerous awards, coming to join - the only Japanese game - the permanent collection on Information Technology in the National Museum of American History in Washington, DC It was
thanks to a trip to China made during the processing of Virtua Fighter and his passion for kung fu that Suzuki began to conceive a project that would have committed for five years and would become Shenmue. Originally designed for the Saturn console (32-bit Sega's most successful direct competitor of Sony Playstation) and then, because of limited technical resources of the machine, redesigned for the most powerful hardware of the unborn Sega Dreamcast and provisionally identified with the code name Project Berkeley, Shenmue was presented to the public through a GD-ROM (it was called the special optical discs from a gigabyte of memory supported by the Dreamcast) included in the special edition Japanese Virtua Fighter 3TB for Dreamcast console, Sega launched in 1998 ( and in fact, initially, was to tell the story Shenmue just one of the combatants of Virtua Fighter: Akira, then replaced with a new protagonist and a story of more comprehensive). Here are some of the rare documentary (strictly in Japanese) are contained in the GD-ROM is dedicated to Yu Suzuki and his Project Berkeley, where Suzuki traces the highlights of his career and begins to specify that Shenmue is not a role playing game classic (to emphasize that the role-playing game genre are the most popular and appreciated in Japan). The whole is preceded by a short introduction which shows a beta version of Shenmue:
Designed as a work divided into sixteen chapters, Shenmue most likely will never see its completion, since there are only two episodes so far released (the first available for Dreamcast, and the second, dating back to 2001, also for Xbox) that tell the history up to the fifth chapter. In 2005, Sega began work on a version of MMORPG (massive multiplayer online role playing game) of Shenmue for the Asian market, then canceled in April 2007, and are also circulated the rumor that talked about a Shenmue III for Xbox 360 that ended the story (also including the first two episodes of the series), but Yu Suzuki has officially denied all much to the chagrin of hundreds of thousands of fans.
Shenmue is a game famous for many reasons, one of them is that was entered in the Guinness Book of Records as the most expensive production videogame of all time (surpassed only in recent times): seventy million dollars, as he confesses the Suzuki at the end of this movie, which also illustrates some of the innovative features of the game (for the time it was released on the market):
The plot of Shenmue, set in the second half of the eighties, the young protagonist Ryo Hazuki, the son of a martial arts master who is murdered at the hands of an enigmatic Chinese mafia boss named Lan Di, who takes from a precious ancient artifact from the unknown powers. Ryo decides to get on the trail Lan Di to shed light on his father's death and revenge, at the same time solving the mystery linked to the stolen artifact. Thus began a long journey that will see him from his native town in Japan to penetrate into the heart of China. With Shenmue
Suzuki wanted to create the ultimate adventure game, which would merge with the impact of cinematographic and audiovisual interactive experience worthy of an alternate reality. To achieve this goal, decided to construct a detailed world in which context the game, starting from the Japanese port city of Yokosuka (where it is entirely set on the first episode), reconstructed in detail, to the metropolis of Hong Kong (this in the second episode), teeming with life as its real counterpart. The environments are so vast and the districts visited (especially in Hong Kong) to make it necessary to buy some maps to orient himself. In case you lose, you can still ask for directions to passers-by will be even willing to accompany us to the destination. One aspect still amazing Shenmue is the extreme care put in the most seemingly insignificant details, which allows an almost total symbiosis between the player and the protagonist from environments (such as shops filled with hundreds of different objects) to the weather conditions that change dynamically (from the sun rain, an overcast sky with snow), not to mention the variety of minor characters and the realism of their behavior. As in real life you will see the employees get to work in the morning, or merchants open their shops and then close them at night and go home, you can interact with each character and visit every place, and handle virtually all objects in the game . As in life we \u200b\u200bmust eat and sleep, earn money by finding a job (there are many different types) and maybe even recreation, for example even in some games room where you can enjoy the exact reproductions of video games created by Yu Suzuki ( Space Harrier, Hang On, Outrun e After Burner); e qui Shenmue diventa un gioco dentro il gioco, un perfetto meccanismo di scatole cinesi.
Pur possedendo un filone narrativo principale piuttosto articolato (diciamo degno di una telenovela), Shenmue lascia libero l’utente di comportarsi come vuole, esplorando il mondo di gioco, chiacchierando con i personaggi o svolgendo numerose azioni, spesso inutili ai fini dell’evoluzione della trama, ma comunque appaganti in termini di immedesimazione nella dimensione virtuale; a tal proposito basti ad esempio citare la possibilità di acquistare innumerevoli oggetti, tutti esaminabili da ogni punto di vista prospettico: dagli accendini ai portachiavi, dalle miniature giapponesi di personaggi dei videogame Sega alle bevande cans from vending machines.
Apart from the phase of exploration, dialogue and adventure with puzzle solving, Shenmue has the classic kung fu fighting style in Virtua Fighter (after all it is a figment of Yu Suzuki) against one or more opponents at the same time . From this point of view, the game assumed a rpg as to enhance the skills of Ryo, must learn the techniques of struggle that we will be taught by some characters, or through the parchments found in certain places.
In a few moments of the match, it will trigger the scenes in which we must be able to perform an action (pressing a button on the controller or directional movement) to complete successfully the following sequence: the so-called "quicktime events", events visually spectacular (mostly chase scenes or fighting) which take the gameplay of the old lasergame like Dragon's Lair and Space Ace, the emphasis on spectacle freedom of interaction to represent and highlight the best film of the size stake.
And speaking of the size film, the excellent director of Suzuki and the way in which these issues are dealt with in Shenmue (friendship, loyalty, love, revenge) can create a strong emotional involvement in the player, as evidenced by the introductory movie the first episode ("Forgive me because they are forced to leave. Keep close to you friends and people you love, "are the last words uttered by Ryo's father before he died):
Another example of skill narrative of Suzuki, who manages to enchant you with its delicacy and depth, is the love story of the protagonist with the sweet Nozomi, a girl of the same country that Ryo will then have to relocate with his family. This love story, dashed in a typical Oriental, is not an explicit realization, but it is an exchange of desires never clearly disclosed, through intense looks and dialogues touching and sad. Worthy of praise
the evocative soundtrack of symphonic setting, which is still universally recognized as one of the best ever made in a video game. Here's a taste: the main theme underlined by a montage of scenes from the game.
setting film Shenmue enormous amount of audiovisual material in this game even allowed to Yu Suzuki to create a feature ninety minutes using only the most memorable scenes of the first episode. This movie Shenmue was shown in cinemas in Japan and then sold in videocassetta; in seguito è stato riproposto, a vantaggio di quanti non lo avessero giocato, in un DVD incluso nell’edizione Xbox del secondo episodio.
Nonostante il fatto che già solo il primo episodio abbia venduto oltre un milione di copie, Shenmue fu comunque considerato un insuccesso commerciale, visti i costi esorbitanti sostenuti per la sua realizzazione. È questo uno dei rari casi in cui l’industria non si è piegata al profitto, ma ha foraggiato la creatività artistica dando alla luce un prodotto unico, che ha lasciato una traccia indelebile nel cuore di quanti hanno potuto giocarlo, come provano i prossimi due filmati: il primo è un arrangiamento al pianoforte del tema di Shenmue a opera di un appassionato asiatico; mentre il secondo mostra, attraverso oltre quattrocento scatti fotografici, una pittrice a casa di un amico polacco intenta a realizzare un murales di quattro metri per tre che ritrae una classica inquadratura del gioco (Ryo a Hong Kong).
Se al giorno d’oggi Shenmue e il suo seguito non sono più tecnicamente così spettacolari e a posteriori, rigiocandoli, si ritrovano in essi le stesse meccaniche ormai consolidate e probabilmente migliorate in titoli più recenti e certamente più noti al grande pubblico, non c’è da stupirsi o da svilire l’opera di Yu Suzuki per this: on the contrary, it shows clearly how it was copied and became the cornerstone on which they heard from the unavoidable need to rely all the subsequent games of a certain thickness and narrative art. For me, if savored slowly and with due attention to the thousands of details that characterize it, Shenmue, and especially its second episode is an experience of rare value and, in many ways, truly irreplaceable.
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