 Originally Posted by darth los
If that's the case then i'm gonna scoop that up when it comes out. If only on the strength of caps glowing endorsement for the series. I haven't had the pleasure of playing them , is the game that good?
Uh-oh Darth, you've opened a big phat can of worms now dude. I could stand here in front of you and cry (in grown man tones, of course  ) about how abso-f**king-lutely amazing the Shenmue series is.
Shenmue (シェンム) is an adventure game for the Sega Dreamcast, produced and directed by Yu Suzuki of Sega-AM2. Suzuki coined a new genre title, "FREE" (Full Reactive Eyes Entertainment), for the game, based on its unparalleled interactivity and freedom, as well as the innovative real-time and weather systems. However, Shenmue most resembles an adventure game in terms of gameplay focus. Shenmue covers the first chapter of an epic story which continues into Shenmue II. Shenmue is the most expensive video game ever produced, costing an estimated US $70,000,000.
Just think of a third person adventure game (maybe along the lines of Silent Hill but without the horror and more open-ended) and combine it with the Virtua Fighter engine for when you get involved in fights. In the first game, you have a whole Japanese town to explore and you have to find out who murdered your father, who was a respected martial artist that ran a successful little dojo. Yes, if you are into martial arts movies, this could well be the ultimate adventure game for you.
Instead of following the story, you can just explore the town which has capsule toy machines on every street corner (Sonic toys, Virtua Fighter toys, etc), you have a walkman on you at all times and you can buy new cassette tapes every week as they are released, even the batteries run out and you have to replace them. There is also an arcade, which boasts Space Harrier, Hang On, Sega Darts and slot machines among many others. Hell, if you don't want to waste your money on them, you can even win them on disc at store raffles to play on your Sega Saturn at home, how cool is that?
However, if you are more the type who is serious and less bothered about materialistic things, you can spend your money on martial arts moves to practice in the dojo or one of the many parks in the game. There are thousands of characters to interact with in this virtual world and they all have their own lives and homes (if you hang around a store 'till 11pm, you will see the owner lock up shop and go home).
You even have to work for a living as a forklift driver and every morning you race the other workmates in a tricky little forklift race which yields it's own prizes.
The second game went even further by adding more arcade games, gambling dens and three towns (each one is about five times bigger than the original Yokosuka from the first game). Seriously man, the series is well up there with the best but the unfortunate thing is that both games bombed. They were so expensive to make that even if they were technical successes, Sega would've still had trouble breaking even. Darth, you have to check them out and they are well worth re-purchasing a Dreamcast for. Failing that, a graphically updated and re-jigged version of Shenmue II was released on the original Xbox and actually features a bonus movie disc of Shenmue I professionally made from the Dreamcast game. Anyways, here's a vid (or three  ) to show you how amazing Shenmue is.
Intro
The death of Iwao Hazuki
Shenmue trailer
Anyways, back to the boring Agency... 
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