Shenmue (1999) reverse engineering reveals possible sun position oversight
wulinshu.com
wulinshu.com
The same development studio, Sega AM2, recently had a developer reveal that he had put an Easter egg into Fighters Megamix for Saturn. However, he mistakenly introduced a crash bug in it.
This set me off looking for the Easter egg. After a couple days of reverse engineering, I finally found it [0]! I love looking for this stuff.
https://www.google.com/maps/@35.2781594,139.677597,3a,75y,27...
If you google "Shenmue locations in real life" there's a lot of cool stuff. They really did do a great job on that and the ERA as well.
I am waaay better at driving that forklift 20+ years later. The foreman loves me now.
Most Japanese towns are not even functional, they are just a chaotic maze of tiny streets and ugly buildings. I know because I live in one.
Yes
> Is it on purpose
Yes? Electrical wiring is built deliberately, of course it's on purpose. Where else would you put it, and why? You're implying it's somehow normal to bury it? That sounds like it would be expensive, both to build and to maintain.
Yes, it's normal. It's called undergrounding.
It is in my neck of the woods (the Netherlands) too, the only places you see overground electricity is high tension lines outside of towns. Here's a random suburb I just picked randomly, looks like it was built in the 80's: https://maps.app.goo.gl/7DeZiTyKuB4DZKdG8. Or else Amsterdam, which is much older: https://maps.app.goo.gl/FWm6vYgbV5h2CkZu5.
I'd argue (based purely on gut feeling and handwaving) that having it out in the open is more expensive and dangerous; weathering, wind, trees, cars crashing into it, people climbing up into it, birds, etc.
Anyway, your comment sounds like US defaultism, be wary of that.
i'm a US citizen that is surrounded in underground electrical networks; i'm not sure there is really a 'US defaultist' stance on whether or not one prefers above or underground wiring.
The town is definitely Different but recognizable in a lot of ways. Lots of small landmarks that were gently adjusted or changed to make it simpler
Making it marginally more accurate for a real product would only have been a bit more effort.
I don't think I found the sun/moon code (or more likely I did, but didn't realize what exactly it was doing, Ghidra SH4 has serious problems with floating point instructions making following anything that uses them almost impossible) but I did find most of the other time related code for updating the clock/calendar.
One weird thing I found while doing that is about the in-game watch. You always have a watch in your inventory, so you'd think it would be hard coded in, but it's treated like any other item. The game also has code to check if the watch is missing and add it back in anyways. But the code that draws the on-screen clock also checks if you don't have the watch, and won't draw the clock if you don't have it (or at least part of the UI clock logic is disabled, I haven't actually tried seeing what happens if you don't have a watch to verify if my interpretation is correct).
On the PAL version, the code that checks for a missing watch is at 0x0c180dc6 (that's where the code is loaded into memory, subtract 0xc010000 to get the address in 1ST_READ.BIN), and I think the code for drawing the clock (or at maybe it was just updating the hands of the clock?) is at 0x0c18290a.
Dreamcast Shenmue has code to support other video modes, like alternate resolutions (320x240p!), antialiasing, and 24/32 bit color. They're a bit bugged, like when using antialiasing, the 2D elements being squashed into the left half of the screen, and some strange issue with the screen position for the RAMDAC being setting incorrectly, causing the screen to vibrate left/right by a pixel or two, but the 3D models were drawn correctly.
24-bit color worked surprisingly well (even if the flag intended to enable it didn't seem to work, and I had to force it elsewhere.) I would have thought that having less video RAM free would have caused serious problems, but the game just loaded fewer NPCs. It was strange playing without dithering.
https://www.phantomriverstone.com/2020/09/ryo-goes-to-moon-s...
My favorite part of the game was playing space harrier in the arcade.
The move from Shenmue I to Shenmue II almost makes me think that was the direction Yu Suzuki was heading but never really ended up there. Have not played Shenmue III yet so I could be wrong.
I read it and I’m not sure I get the point—it seems in the end what they discovered is the simulated sun position in the first two games are based on each other's locations. Not familiar enough with the series to understand what implication that has, but in any case, is it an easter egg or an oversight? It can't be both.
My qualms with the game were more story related.
Also excellent write up and discovery, truly inspiring *clap_emoji *bow_emoji
Shenmue was one of the first 3D games where realistic human characters had details like individually movable fingers. It was a very big deal for the year it came out.
I've been thinking about the game a lot since having my first child last year. She often lifts things and rotates them in her hand just to see and experience them. When I was a kid playing Shenmue I always found it funny that they added that mechanic because "who does that?" but now I feel a very deep appreciation for it.
At the time it was a unique, first of it's kind, game. Now there have been a lot of advancements since then so I didn't have the same "Wow" feelings of just being in the world. But the nostalgia still hit me hard and it still has a special place in my heart.
It's similar phenomenon to people hearing the Beatles or the Rolling Stones (or any of the artists they ripped off ...) with modern ears.
There's hope, though. I do think in both cases, it's possible to develop an appreciation once you learn about the lineage of a particular work.
I guess it depends on what you're trying to accomplish with playing Shenmue now. Is it the story or the immersion?
"Do you remember... that day?"
"The day it snowed?"
NO! The day I got it right as it came out. A Friday after school and I played for like 4 hours straight. Yes! I remember THAT day!
Half Life 2 did but in a different way.
Maybe when a game just leapfrogs what's been thought of as cutting edge and you're so amazed that you forget that you're playing a game.
I'm not sure if my fascination for Japan started with Shenmue but it certainly grew from there. I was so happy to visit for the first time last year.
Just saw this reply, but I agree with this statement 100%! Next time I'd like to take a trip out to Yokosuka and check out the real-life areas.
So much of the game was still there IRL though, from the gacha machines to the neighborhood hole-in-the-wall arcades
It accidentally imbued a lot class awareness into us; all we wanted was to revenge our father but here we were, driving boxes around hours and hours being paid pennies.
Unfortunately, I think the lost enchantment is just a product of aging. Things I were so enthusiastic about as a child (videogames, particularly) no longer have the same appeal, despite my best efforts to reignite some passion. That said, I did put in a good chunk of playtime with the remaster and I was still having fun with it. Though, not to completion as my attention span for videogames has dwindled.
A seemingly unlimited amount of content, nearly everything could be interacted with, and the graphics were very good compared to other games in 1999. Heck, the y had teeth meshes.
The background music for nearly every environment lives rent free in my head some 20-odd years later.
If that's what's going on, it's sort of hard for me to wrap my brain around how that might've happened. I could see them "fixing" the Shenmue I code base and then forgetting to "unfix" it for Shenmue II, but I can't - even knowing that there were already plans for where the sequel would be set - come up with a story for how they would've accidentally used Shenmue II's latitude for the original game.
(This has an approximately zero chance of being correct.)
The coincidence of the wrong position matching the location of the next game is strange though.