SHENMUE: The Worst "Greatest" Game Ever Made... 

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Shenmue is so immersive that it takes decades to release a sequel just go make time progression feel more realistic

The fact that they captured weather data from those regions on those specific times and inputted them into the game for immersion and realism, sounds underappreciated.

Not only this game has one of the greatest stories of all time, it still to this day has the best built in Forklift simulator. This game will help me get my Forklift certification.

"Years ago, I was Chinese. Now I am a naturalized Japanese"

Muta's first love: Shenmue Muta's wife: Yakuza Muta's lover: Siege

Shenmune is a “Revenge” Story where you occasionally have to file your taxes That’s somewhat accurate

I still remember when Mutahar nearly fkn died in a hospital and his final thoughts deadass were "i cant fkn believe shenmue is the last game I'll ever play" Never change bro

This is the exact definition of a toxic relationship.

Shenmue walked so Yakuza could run, then sprint a marathon, so Shenmue III could crawl.

Fun game : Take a shot whenever muta gives something credit where credit’s due.

Some things to mention: -You need a flashlight a lightbulb or you can ignite the candles to see stuff beneath the dojo. -QTE might seem tedious today but back then they were really fresh and something new, we liked it because alternating cut scenes were something new. -Every single NPC does not only have voice actors but a name a place to live and shedules, they are not just faceless loaded in nobodies. When you meet an npc in the game he has a "reason" to be there.

To me, Shenmue III is basically "You see that house? Ryo doesn't want to go there. You need to go there at some point but Ryo will do everything in his power to fight the player and outright refuses to go there until he's good and ready. You have to put up with this for several days until he finally does so."

"It's a game from 1999" cries in MGS dialogue from 1998.

Muta needs to do a series where he talks about the yakuza games like a retrospective

I actually enjoyed Shenmue as like...a time-traveling virtual tourism thing. I may never get to travel to Japan and certainly never Japan in 1985. But I can kind of get a glimpse of Yu Suzuki's impression of it through Shenmue. It's probably the same reason I enjoyed LA Noire (although I've been to LA on several occasions).

Was lucky to get this game on Holiday season when it was originally released on the Xbox in 2002. What won me over was the cool ass cover, saw it at Toys are US and it looked too cool at that time. One of my favorite shows at the time was Tech TV's Extended Play with Adam Sessler. He gave Shenmue 2 on the Xbox a 5 out of 5 ,which he did not issue many 5 out of 5's during the shows history before the Show was renamed X-Play and Morgan Webb became the co-host. That was def more than enough to have that on my Xmas list that year. My brother and I played the shit out of it. Since we didn't have strategy guide and Internet text based strategy guides were inconsistent to where we didn't bother to use one. It took us 10 months to beat the game. But my god that was one of the most satisfying games I finished , also a bit disappointing that it ended on such a cliff hanger. Its def one of those games you had to play during that era to truly appreciate and enjoy. Added note. Xmas 01-02 my brother and really thought we were getting a PS2 for Xmas , just to see an Xbox, we never heard of or seen til that day. Apparently my dad did some research on this console, thought it far better and knew a guy that knew a guy at his job that was selling them for very cheap. So he decided to get that console for My brother and I Xmas 01-02. Possibly the greatest decision in our families gaming history.

Saw Muta stream Shenmue 3 the other day and I still got mixed feelings if I should try it Edit: I ended up buying Shenmue 1 and 2

This game was simultaneously ahead of it's time and behind the times.

I played this when it came out, and I was blown away when all of your items and progress from 1 were transferred over to 2, really groundbreaking for a Dreamcast game in 99 lol

I got lost in Shenmue as a child ! It felt like they were flirting with the edge of gaming ! But real talk shenmue taught me the basics of operating a forklift !

Shenmue, as a series, just feels like "We have Yakuza at home".

Growing up with Shenmue was really cool. The game was super unique and really fun. Then Yakuza happened and I never looked back

Shenmue is so realistic it makes you have suicidal ideation like the real charachter whenever you have to wait in game hours for next available activity.

It's so weird seeing this calm, introspective side of Muta when talking about a game he hates in a put-together, high production video like this versus the fiery ball of anger spewing his vitriol of Shenmue on stream where he has no filter.

The fan base behind PSO is insane, you can connect to fan servers on the DC and GCN versions via changing settings in-game and using the respected LAN adapters. All you need to connect to the fan servers is the little serial code printed in the cases during the initial set up. But, I’m sure you can fudge it by looking around online if you don’t happen to have the serial code on hand.

Man, you're really trying to stretch to that 10 minute mark, aren't you Muta

One key aspect of this love/hate view of Shenmue is linked to whether you played it at the time. This game invented a lot of the open world conventions we have today, pre GTA3. When I played it back in 2000, I was absolutely taken by how different the experience was to anything I had seen. In retrospect, I think a lot was a mind trick from Suzuki. You were told that characters had their schedules, would go to work and then back home, stores would open and close as in the real world, that the weather was taken from real world data. Add to that the ridiculous attention to detail. The drawers around the house, how every house had the family name, even when they had no part to play in the story. The careful designed, and meticulously detailed areas felt absolutely believable. All that contributed to making you feel like you were there. It absolutely worked on me, playing Shenmue I felt like I had moved to a sleepy Japanese town and was learning my way around. I wasn't playing a game, but living that life, so much so that If I wanted to play a game, I'd head to the Arcade. I loved every minute of it, have played it several times and I'm sure I'll play it again. It just takes me back there. Funny that you mention that it would be a good movie, because it was, in Japan, and in fact, the US version of Shenmue II came with the movie on DVD so you could catch up with the events. Shenmue is a special point in gaming, something almost magical and unrepeatable. Notice how all the love and reverence, even the pilgrimages only apply to the first one? Shenmue II is more of the same, yet no one, not even the fans, talk about it. That's because Shenmue II came out in a post GTA3 world. By then Rockstar had found a way to make an Open World game as opposed to an Open World experience. Though I never figure out why Ryo was always walking around with that band-aid in his face.

Oh my god. We really have to explain memory cards these days. I'm old.

oh yeah let's play a game about talking to sailors for 19 hours

The fact that the level of detail Shenmue provides for the player to access, even if it's near meaningless to do so, yet Cyberpunk was gonna be praised for levels similar to it but with the added fun factor of the gamey lite rpg aspects, only to fall flat on it's face, also proves how even tho Shenmue's dev invested so much into the game, at least your final product was still as solid as ever. I just thought about it, but I feel like each entry in this series has a subtle hot-take on the state of the gaming industry around the time they're released, but still guises itself as Shenmue doing what it's known for. It's like this series interprets "quality of life" much more differently than how the mainstream has applied the phrase towards.

SHENMUE was way ahead of it's time. The devs had to invent new tools and things just to get it done. It was an overwhelming project.

The closest thing to shenmue's immersive game play that I expirienced was probably playing breath of the wild without using any map markers. Usually you still have a very clear path to take but I felt that sense of just noticing a weird light from a hill, a weird big forest. I absolutely agree that getting and letting players figure out on their own where they should go it's a lost art and one I'd really like to see more of

It's one of those games that I think more people pretend they've played it, than actually have played it. *Horsen Stance*

Watching Tom dance is the greatest pastime of our generation

I understand why people dislike Shenmue but for me it's always been a relaxing game I could play to unwind.

I think shenmue is a great game. That being said I totally understand where this guy is coming from and truly appreciate that he encourages others to play and understand games that are not always to their taste. Respect.

I like how in 3, the hired amazing actors and made them sound as bad as possible so it matched the original voice acting because people totally wanted that.

It had its moments... "But, Itoi-san...how do you know about the Three Blades?" "Years ago...I was Chinese."

I was a wide-eyed teen when Shenmue was released, I can tell you now, Shemue was my favourite game, the first I completed and the first I actively pined for a sequel to release, I always thought of it as a lifestyle simulator, what I was drawn to and loved was the feeling that I was in a new world as a different person living a completely foreign lifestyle that I could kinda relate to. It was and is magnificent.

I think what it also makes a product of it's time is that in '99 the world wasn't as fast as is now. I played this back then with my uncle and we never experienced it as a slow game.

They should have ended the story in the third game.

shenmue's pacing is like yakuza 5 if someone took the saejima prison part and then extended it for 14 hours

Shenmue crawled so yakuza could kick flip over it’s dead body

The thing that separates Shenmue from almost all games ever was why it was made. It wasn't made to make money, it wasn't made by a ton of people just doing a job, it wasn't made to promote a product or an idea. It was made because of Love. The things in this game was things that Yu loved with a story, in a place and time he loved as well and just like the concept of Love it can bring you great joy or great sadness and it's these very emotions you'll experience if you play these games. You'll love the music, you'll love the combat but you'll hate the waiting or doing mindless chores. But just like real life you put up with the things you don't like to experience the things you love. I totally agree Shenmue is a bad game but it's one of the best and most unique experiences you'll ever have. That's why it will be one of my favs of all time.

It's a lot of walking, i got lost in the first area of the game after you feed the cat. Then i stopped playing.

As a massive fan of both Shenmue and Ryu Ga Gotoku, they feel very different to me. Shenmue is almost a meditation in enjoying the slowness of life. I still feel a lot of wonder at wandering around 80s Japan/Hong Kong/China. It's janky to play but it's part of the charm to me. Yakuza is a balls to the wall crime drama. And while it's inspired by Shenmue like nearly every open world game, there's really nothing like it past or present.

6:10 perfect representation of everyone I've seen play this game.. because lord knows I wasn't going to.

Loved this game as a kid. I'll never forget how happy my dad was when he bought it. Still have fond memories playing darts in the arcade and competing with my dad's score.

random npc: wow how did you become so strong? ryo: every time i have to wait for the next event i spam a move at the parking lot

it was the first (big) open-world game being the first open-world game, it had no idea what the hell it was doing

I'm still waiting for any game to dethrone Shenmue 1&2 from my 2 top GOAT steps, 20 years later. Shenmue III feels like a weird filler episode.

Quite literally it is depressing that advertisements for ball trimmers are absolutely high-brow and acceptable after RAID destroyed the bar

From the title alone, I knew Muda is a long time lost brother. I loved shenmu, it was fucking evolutionary.... Until it wasn't!

On the lost art of games giving you context clues to find something and let you put in that effort instead of just giving you a waypoint is so important. Outer Wilds is a game that is honestly underrated for how breathtakingly amazing it is. No objectives, no waypoints, just dialogue and clues that you discover through the pure love of exploring and interest in the backstory of the universe. If anyone hasn't tried it, please do yourself a favor and try it (and try not to look at any reviews).

Apparently Shenmue was intended to be a multi volume saga. But if you honestly made gamers wait for a third game for more than a decade regardless of reasons, then you might as well just make the third game the final game where Ryu finally gets his revenge.

Muta pls bring back SWAT 4 gameplay i missed it soo much

I still remember when he went on stream and went on a 1 hour rant about this game And I love how the most difficult part about making the video was actually sitting down and playing the game for gameplay And he decides to make another hour video

Muta, love this new style of video. Hope to see more documentaries like these, it was very interesting!

Muta, thankyou for giving us such awesome content lately!

I recently played this game and beat it for the first time in my life just the first one though, this was the first game I regret not beating when I was younger and I loved the dreamcast, thought it was way beyond the ps2 at the time, I was rooting for Dreamcast to win that console war but boy I was so wrong, I respect this guy so much more for actually buying the hd remake and playing it most gamers today would never take that chance or even know what shenmue is

you know its serious when the text goes outside the borders of the thumbnail

The music in the background is actually a good touch to the videos

35:26 - Back in the day (8 or 9-years-old) I would actually go to the bathroom and stand there for a few seconds, pretending to pee... One day I even went to school with a band-aid on the same spot as Ryo's. Today my current avatar is Akira, from Virtua Fighter. Tomorrow I'm gonna start 'planking', but not the type of planking you're thinking of... If I'm not here after that, you'll know the outcome.

He wasn't lying, the mad man actually went and made a full hour video about why Shenmue's bad. You can call Muta a lot of things, but he's a man of his word.

Whatever about shenmue. When’s the PC port of Illbleed and Blue Stinger

I love Shenmue, and I find it weird how everyone on the Internet seems to be united in hatred and rage for this game.

Shenmue is where I learned how to drive a fork life. It even got me a job doing it. I don't even remember the plot 😅 but I do remember working hours in the game*

Muta, I'm not gonna lie man, you're honestly my favorite youtuber and one of the greatest bar none. The amount of quality you put in your videos is insane, and usually I wouldn't watch an hour long video, don't even get me started on how long the MGS videos are, but dude they're all fuckin awesome and I'm hooked everytime I watch. Just wanted to let you know your content is fantastic, you're the main reason why I got into modding my favorite consoles, you're the main reason why I discovered my love for computers. So thank you so much and keep doing what you're doing. I can't wait for the next Shenmue video you do, Shenmue 2 is genuinely one of my favorite games of all time because it was genuinely so immersive to me, I was really young when I first played it, and even though there are quite a few times where the pacing is bad, and the voice acting is what it is, oddly enough the voice acting was charming to me and Hong Kong is fuckin awesome to explore! Especially the betting games like the epic arm wrestling contests and running your own betting stand. So much goddamn fun

Dreamcast was such an underrated system. I got it on Christmas as a child and is one of my favorite memories as a kid.

Thanks for the video Muta, had a great time. Can't wait for the second one!

Shenmue is a beautiful memory, 3 was a mistake, because it showed Shenmue was always that, just a beautiful memory. Even when 2 came out, its mechanics were already dated. Some things are better left alone in the past...as beautiful memories.

The Dreamcast was "more powerful" than the PS2 just FYI for anyone interested in the comparison. With larger VRAM and tiled rendering, the DC can render a larger framebuffer at higher native resolution (with an on-chip Z-buffer), and with texture compression, it can compress around 20-60 MB of texture data in its VRAM. Because the PS2 has only 4 MB VRAM, it relies on the main RAM to store textures. While the PS2's CPU-GPU transmission bus for transferring polygons and textures is 50% faster than the Dreamcast's CPU-GPU transmission bus, the DC has textures loaded directly to VRAM (freeing up the CPU-GPU transmission bus for polygons) and texture compression gives it higher effective texture bandwidth. Dreamcast games were effectively using 20-30 MB of texture data (compressed to around 5-6 MB), while PS2 games up until 2003 peaked at 5.5 MB of texture data (average 1.5 MB). PS2 games up until 2003 rendered up to 7.5 million polygons/sec (145,000 polygons per scene), with most rendering 2-5 million polygons/sec (average 52,000 polygons per scene); in comparison, Dreamcast game engines rendered up to 5 million polygons/sec (160,000 polygons per scene), with most games rendering 2-4 million polygons/sec (average 50,000 polygons per scene).

Shenmue at the time blowed my mind. It will always have that special place in my heart as one of the top 3 of all time

Bob's Pizza theme in this game is certified Hood classic

amazing presentation as always muta. literally never heard of this game but you always make everything engaging to watch

This really speaks on the socioeconomic climate in America

"Shenmue is a great movie but a bad game" So that's why Sony wanted the 3rd one so badly?

I've watched this like 5 times already, there's something so calming about listening to you talk about this game with that nice music in the background. Please do the second game!

Phenomenal video. Extremely detailed and funny. While I will never play this series myself, I would love to see you follow this video up. Very, very interesting!!

this is like the best positive negative game review I've ever saw^^

I can vouch that Shenmue is "The Room" of video games.....Not Shenmue 3 though...that's just a beautiful looking mess of a game.

The downfall of the Dreamcast is that it had most arcade games. Sega thought that people still gave a shit about arcades in the 2000s like they did in the 80s and 90s so the console was doomed even before it was conceived.

I didn't know how much I needed this. Hilarious and informative! I'm excited for the next one 😌

*Catch 10 other chickens for me*

Now you *need* one to make for the Yakuza series…

27:00 Tom's dreadlock physics do be really impressive tho

I got Shenmue II at Gamestop because of the trailers that came with the xbox JSRF/Sega GT 2002 game. It looked cool like a martial arts epic you see in chinese kung fu movies. Took me most of the summer to beat it and watched the Shenmue I movie that came with it. Shenmue series had a level of detail that became standard in games after release. So imagine my surprise when Shenmue III decided to do the exact opposite because they wanted to draw a mainstream crowd...After crowdfunding for fans of that specific set up. Gone were the tight martial arts from Virtual Fighter, gone was the immersive storytelling, and gone was any hope that story progression would happen.

Lol I thought it would be ridge I never saw manscaped coming at all no pun intended 🤣

Ugh now my manscaped lawnmower 3.0 is outdated

This video had me literally cracking up the whole way through... Toms crackhead dancing is so funny to me I cant

Great video!!! So many good times just returned memory, Daaaaaaamn thanks my boy!!

Adam Koralik is somewhere right now dealing with a mysterious case of heartburn.

6:05 Rob is a legend LMAO

Take a shot every time Muta mentions watching Tom dancing. XD

38:50 There's a game series I've played that can capture this amazingly. I don't know about Forza Horizon 1 or 2 but from playing 3 and 4 I can say that this is captured perfectly with the barn finds.

Sit back and relax grab some popcorn we’re gonna watch a 56 minute video by Muta

I see why people hate it, fortunately I have the patience to play shenmue. I loved it a lot! It is on my top ten games list. But I understand why people dislike it.

"Manscaped is much larger than a ball trimming corporation."

The background music that you're running in the video is giving me great vibes