Acclaimed Flop: It was hugely popular and considered a masterpiece by several gaming outlets upon its release (89.34% on GameRankings), and it won the Excellence Prize for Interactive Art at the 2000 Japan Media Arts Festival. Unfortunately, despite the quite impressive feats of selling 1.2 million copies and being the fourth best-selling game for the Dreamcast, the sales numbers were ultimately too weak to cover development costs (not entirely surprising as Shenmue was the most expensive game of all time at the time of its release, with a budget of $47 million, equivalent to about $70 million in 2018).
Acting for Two: Given the large cast in both games, many of the voice actors for both dubs ended up voicing two or even three characters in a single game. Perhaps the most goes to actress Claire O'Connor, who voiced five characters in the first game's English dub alone.
Cut Song: Over the years, fans have uncovered a multitude of unused songs and music hidden within the files for both games. Among them was "Let's Go Away" from Daytona USA!
Creator's Favorite: Yu Suzuki has stated that Shenhua Ling is his favorite character, which probably explains why she appears the most in the series' promotional material.
Cross-Regional Voice Acting: For the English release, Ryo Hazuki (Corey Marshall) and Shenhua Ling (Debora Rabbai) were voiced by New York City-based actors, while the rest of the cast were English-speaking actors from the Tokyo area.
Defictionalization: Finding one that's perfectly accurate to the in-game version is fairly tricky, but replicas of Ryo's bomber jacket are widely available online.
Killer App: Of the Sega Dreamcast. In fact it was the 4th best selling game in the white console, just after Sonic Adventure, Soulcalibur, and Crazy Taxi. Back in the day, playing Shenmue was one of the reasons alone to go and buy a Sega Dreamcast. It does, however, also hold the dubious distinction of being an example of a Killer App that despite very good sales, ultimately ended up as Acclaimed Flop and contributing to the sinking of the console it was meant to help keep afloat.
Magnum Opus Dissonance: This was slated to be Yu Suzuki's — and in general SEGA-AM2's — best, but unfortunately, it ended up being an Acclaimed Flop at best. This changed with the Shenmue III Kickstarter though, which met its goal in less than half a day.
Saved from Development Hell: After failing to make its release on the Sega Saturn due to a really difficult development on the project, which itself was started in 1996, Shenmue saw the light of day through the Sega Dreamcast in December 1999.
Vaporware: The MMORPGShenmue Online that was hyped after the release of Shenmue II, where players would be allowed to join three clans, led by Shenhua, Ren and Xiuying. The game suffered from Development Hell as it switched developers over the years, and was never released. Yu Suzuki attempted to relaunch the series years later with the social RPG Shenmue City, announced in 2010 for cell phones and PCs, but only a cell phone version was released which was discontinued the following year.
Building upon the prototype for The Old Man and the Peach Tree, the game was conceptualized to be a Virtua Fighter RPG that would have starred the game's protagonist, Akira Yuki, and be set in China to tell his story. However, it was later decided to go into a more original direction, although the influence is clearly evident. Based on images from the Shenmue III Kickstarter, an early script is shown titled "The Legend of Akira".
As noted on the main page, the game was originally planned to be released for the Sega Saturn, but its time in development caused the project to be shifted over to the Sega Dreamcast.
In the first game, it was planned for Ryo to gain access to a bicycle to navigate through the town streets more quickly. Between the foot traffic, the multiple paths into town, and the main street of Dobuita not being big enough to warrant it, the bicycle didn't make the cut.
An especially painful example for fans is the planned graphical overhaul/remake of the original games, which was axed for budgetary reasons in favor of the 2018 HD re-release.
According to a former employee of Sega, Izumi Takano was originally a rejected character design for Nozomi Harazaki. While a character with Izumi's design appeared in the What's Shenmue demo, she became a full-fledged character in the second game after one of the developers pushed for her design to be used in the sequel.
Working Title: At GDC 2014, Suzuki revealed the game began as an early prototype titled The Old Man and the Peach Tree. The prototype would have the main character named Taro approaching a peach-obsessed old man asking about a Kung Fu master named Ryu. The prototype ends with the old man skipping stones across the river to hurt fish leading to believe that the old man was Ryu all along.
When the game began development as a Virtua Fighter title, the game was codenamed Guppy. It was later changed into the ever familiar Project Berkley.
Due to the 2022 anime's English dub being recorded in Houston instead of Tokyo for the first two games and Los Angeles for the third game, every role was inevitably recast. For example, Ryo Hazuki, voiced in the video games by Corey Marshall, is now voiced by Austin Tindle.
Ditto for everyone except for Ryo, Lan Di, Shenhua and Ren in the Japanese version as noted below.
Denial of Digital Distribution: The dubbed version becoming unavailable on digital platforms as a result of the rights being vaulted by Crunchyroll.
Keep Circulating the Tapes: While the Japanese version is currently available on Crunchyroll, the English dub was removed from Adult Swim's website in September 2022 as a result of the series being vaulted by Warner Bros Discovery, rendering the dub unavailable for streaming.
Promoted Fanboy: Haruka Fushimi, who plays Nozomi in the anime, had played the original game and was a fan of it.
Role Reprise: In the Japanese version, Masaya Matsukaze and Takahiro Sakurai reprise their roles as Ryo and Lan Di respectively from the original games. Haruka Terui and Osamu Taira, who took over the roles of Shenhua and Ren respectively in Shenmue III, reprise their roles here as well.
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