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Back in the late 90s, SEGA’s Shenmue was the last bastion of the Dreamcast. Alongside its sequel, the cinematic open-world fighting game was a leap forward for gaming technology, but it failed to save SEGA’s hardware.
Instead, SEGA turned towards third-party development for PlayStation 2, Xbox, GameCybe and more. Shenmue 2 was eventually ported to the Xbox with an included DVD recapping the original game, but it turns out that SEGA had already made a full port of the game to other platforms that it just never released.
SEGA’s Shenmue PS2 port
Spesaking to Famitsu, lead programmer Takeshi Hirai and programmer Makoto Wada revealed that there was a working, playable build of the original Shenmue for PlayStation 2. Over 20 years ago, the team behind the game created a “fully playable” version of the game, but it never made it to market.
“I actually made a PlayStation 2 version of “Chapter 1” once,” Hirai revealed. “It was never released, but internally there was a version that ran on the PlayStation 2. I also made an Xbox version, but only “Shenmue II” was released in North America.”
Hirai revealed that he had to “fix the source code” by converting it “back to C”, the same programming language used in the game’s sequel. The original game was coding in a scripting language that made porting particularly complicated.
Makoto Wada explained that the team even fixed all the graphical issues, making it a relatively bug-free experience for PlayStation players.
“The shaders for the Dreamcast were fixed, and the PlayStation 2 had to be programmed to support the shaders,” Wada explained. “The GPUs for the PlayStation 2 and the Dreamcast are completely different, so we redesigned them and installed them. From a game perspective, if you had wanted to release it, you could have done it.”
Why wasn’t it released?
In the interview, the Shenmue programmers explained that the ports of Chapter 1 were likely unreleased due to the game’s large amount of real-life brand usage. While paying for these licenses was worth it for the release of the sequel’s Xbox port, it wasn’t for the original game.
“The Xbox version of “Chapter 1” was [also] not released,” Wada said. “I think it was due to rights issues, not technical issues. You see, it was tied up with real companies, like TIMEX watches and Coca-Cola drinks. That contract was only for the Dreamcast version of “Chapter 1”, so I think it was shelved for reasons such as not being able to be used on other consoles.”
Shenmue 3 eventually released on PlayStation 4 and PC in 2019 with mixed results, and the series’ debut duology has since been ported to modern platforms. Nowadays, the series is dormant, despite a planned fourth entry, and it seems fans will never see an official ending to the story.