"Home from the studio! And found out money is being raised! The S3 festival continues! Since it's a festival, here's a Shenmue treasure for the first time. A 'Iwao's letter' signed by Mr. Fujioka. It's from 1999. What an amazing life I've lived!"
Unfortunately, the image associated with this 2015 tweet is no longer available but we can imagine a physical reproduction of the in-game letter left for Ryo by his father. Murata's letter was even signed by the actor for the character of Iwao Hazuki in the Japanese version, Hiroshi Fujioka.
The letter left for Ryo by Iwao Hazuki in Shenmue.
Every month Phantom River Stone holds a poll among our patrons to choose a topic for the blog in the coming month. After tallying the votes (including accumulated votes from previous months), the winning topic that has been voted this time is:
"Character profile comparison: Shiro the dog English vs Japanese versions differ!"
The original Shenmue Passport provided detailed character profile descriptions for every character in the first game. These profiles (or abbreviated versions) were also published in various strategy guides and magazine features at the time. Until now it had been widely assumed that these profiles were identical between Japanese and English versions, but recently an exception has been discovered.
In the English profile for the white dog, whose name is given as Shiro, we are told that she is to be found wandering around the streets of the residential area of Dobuita.
Bio for the white dog (screenshot from the Suka Pass app)
However this profile raises a couple of small but puzzling points. One is that the background graphic for the dog in the Shenmue Passport shows New Yokosuka Harbor, despite her location being described as Dobuita. The second is that, in the game itself, this white dog can indeed be found wandering around the docks at the harbor.
Some light can be shed on this by inspecting the equivalent profile description for the Japanese version - it is in fact completely different from the English description, and gives Shiro's home as being at the harbor in Amihama.
In this post we will be translating the information presented in Shiro's Japanese profile, for comparison with the English version.
It is time to add to our Miao Village series with the announcement of an exciting discovery of a working section of cut game play, making this the first time we have ever experienced Miao Village cut content in a playable form!
This incredible finding was discovered by Brian Park, who runs the Shenmue Park account on X/Twitter, after intense efforts. On a recent Shenmue Dojo stream, Brian commented that he had "checked through thousands of entry points" (referring to the debug menu available on certain prototypes of the game) over the last few months before finding it.
The part of the story relates to Ryo's meeting with Zhang regarding the whereabouts of Yuanda Zhu, and Brian has made a video that captures everything. Not only does it contain a brand-new cut scene and QTE event, but (depending on the outcome of the event) it can even develop into a team battle with Ryo and Zhang taking on a gang of thugs!
The dialogue in the ending cut scene matches exactly with the Zhang meeting subtitle text for the Miao Village storyline that we examined previously. However we now see additional interactions between the two prior to this discussion - and it also reveals that their meeting place was not the Dou Jiang Diner, as had been assumed, but Lotus Park in South Carmain Quarter.
Video
Watch the incredible footage of the full cut scene from the Game Jam prototype, from Brian Park, which includes the QTE success & fail scenarios as well as other variations of the scene found on Disc 2 and in the unreleased US Shenmue prototype:
You'll note that the voices are not those of the official voice actors for the release. Due to the scene being still under development at this point, stand-in voices were used (for example, those of staff or developers) as placeholders until the scenes were finalized.
Credit for screen shots in this post to Brian Park (taken from his video).
Cut Scene, QTE and Team Battle: Synopsis & Dialogue Translation
Here is a synopsis of the interactions that occur in this extended cut scene, which also includes a QTE interaction and - depending on whether you succeed or fail at this - a team battle together with Zhang against the loan sharks!
Ryo enters Lotus Park, which appears to be empty, and looks around as if searching for someone.
A few seconds later, a man in a brown suit walks out from behind a tree, and bows. It is Zhang.
