Shenmue II - Differences Between The Xbox and Dreamcast Versions

Differences Between The Xbox and Dreamcast Versions

When the U.S. Xbox version was released in 2002, it brought some changes and enhancements to the original with it. The most significant difference is the inclusion of a full English dub, with Corey Marshall reprising his role as Ryo Hazuki (芭月 涼 Hazuki Ryō) from the first game. There are two new gameplay features – a Snapshot mode to take pictures of gameplay or cutscenes to store on the Xbox's hard disk and Filters to alter the color filters used on the entire screen. The graphics were improved by the Xbox's more advanced hardware (bloom lighting during the night hours, better looking water, among other features), the lengths of the load times were slightly reduced, Dolby Digital 5.1 support was added for the game's cutscenes, and the frame rate now ran at a much more consistent 30 frames per second with less loss in characters on-screen (the Dreamcast version used an aggressive character LOD that caused pedestrians to fade in and out of plain view in very crowded scenes). This was all done without many sacrifices to the original game design, with only one instance (the Worker's Pier,) of noticeable pedestrian reduction from the Dreamcast version. The Xbox version also used Quincunx Anti-Aliasing (like many Xbox games) and although the technique reduced "jaggies" associated with aliasing, fans are generally split down the middle as to whether this and the new nighttime bloom lighting effects hurt the image quality in the Xbox version of the game giving it a somewhat "blurry" or "washed out" look.

There are also many other graphical differences, mostly involving the signs on buildings, labels on jukeboxes, signs on gates, etc. having been changed or simplified from the Dreamcast version.

Also added was a mode to view the player's snapshots and six side stories that could be unlocked by taking an in-game snapshot of certain characters. These side stories took the form of manga and four of them expand on areas of the story that the main game touches on, while the remaining two contain bonus art.

While the original Dreamcast version came on four GD-ROMs, the Xbox version is on one DVD and came bundled with Shenmue: The Movie on a separate DVD for play on a standard DVD player. The film is composed entirely of scenes from the first game.

One feature the Xbox version lost was the ability to import a save file from a completed Shenmue game, allowing the player to bring items and money collected in the first game to the second. However, since the player could not import his or her inventory, the Xbox port started the player off with (nearly) every item obtainable in the first game, including a majority of the capsule toys and other collectibles, though the cassettes (amongst a select few other items that can be re-obtained in this installment) are mysteriously missing. This is identical to starting the Dreamcast version without a cleared Shenmue save file.

When the Xbox version reached Europe, Microsoft chose not to utilize Sega's European localization, choosing instead to do a straight conversion from the North American release. Because of this, the European Xbox release only supports English, whereas the EU Dreamcast release features support for multiple languages.