Frogbull has put together a facsimile of the Dreamcast classic on Sega's 32-bit console, which is impressive in itself – but fans of the series will be aware that there's a historical connection to this, too.
Yu Suzuki and his team at AM2 initially prototyped the game on Saturn in 1996 before development was shifted to the more powerful Dreamcast in 1997. Initially entitled The Old Man and the Peach Tree, the tech demo would evolve into a Virtua Fighter RPG before it eventually became the epic quest for revenge we know and love today.
Sega would include footage of Shenmue running on Saturn as a bonus in Shenmue II, but Frogbull's mock-up goes way beyond even that. It's not a full game and only includes the arcade environment and a few emulated Sega coin-op classics, but it is running on real hardware.
Shenmue would launch on Dreamcast in 1999 and reportedly cost Sega between $40 and $70 million, although that figure includes the 2001 sequel, which was later ported to Xbox.
In 2019, we finally got Shenmue III, the rights to which have recently been picked up by ININ Games.
Sega Saturn Finally Gets Its Own Version Of Shenmue (Kinda)
Homebrew modder Frogbull does it again
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