Suzuki Unwraps Gift to Gamers

Sega Enterprises hosted an event on Dec. 20 highlighting Yu Suzuki's latest creation, Shenmue. Described as Free Reactive Eyes Entertainment (FREE), Shenmue is an adventure RPG built around environments in Japan and China. The game will be released in the spring of '99 in Japan, and it's assumed that it will come to the US.

Yu Suzuki first conceptualized the game five years ago, but until now there was no game system that could accurately portray his vision. With Dreamcast, that has changed.

Some of the game's more interesting features are weather, time, and the landscape changes during play. There are also special events, called Quick Timer Events, which are carried out as noninteractive cinema elements - but you are required at some point during them to react, by pressing a button or choosing a direction to go. This could be an interesting way of creating a game with many diversion points from the main story.

The game's battles are based on the Chinese martial art Hakkyoku-ken, and Sega motion-captured Budo experts to make each character's movements more realistic. Sega claims that Shenmue does not contain any CG movies; instead, the game is all done in real time.

Sega of America passed on news of the game to members of the press but stressed that "the information disclosed today on 'Shenmue' pertains only to the Japanese market. No further details were released regarding the North American market." If it doesn't come to the US, we'll be really surprised.