Shenmue Walkthrough

NOZOMI’S MESSAGES

If you are
stuck this acts as an online guide. It will only show tips on what you need for
your current location and situation in the game. The two sections in the messages
are Information and Clue. Information not only gives game tips but it gives advice
about game settings too. More information will become available as you progress.
Clue isn’t always available but will appear if your save data shows that you are
stuck (it could be if you have gone a certain amount of time without making any
progression). It will give you a clue to get you back on track again with your
game progression.

NETWORK RANKING

Here you can upload you high scores
on Space Harrier, Hang-On, Darts 7, the 70-man battle, slot machines, forklift
races, and the QTE games onto a world, country, and state-wide ranking. You simply
choose a user name, the game that you have a high score for, and the game will
do the rest.

DATA REVIEW

This is just an analysis of your data. The
data varies from the obvious like number of game completions and completion time
to the downright pointless like how many cans of drink you have bought or how
many times you bumped into a wall during the game (303 times in my case).

ONLINE
MANUAL

This gives more detailed information than the instruction booklet.
It covers a lot of the aspects of the game in detail such as the Notebook and
the in-game Help menus.

EVERYONE’S SPACE

This is one of the more interesting
aspects of the Shenmue Passport. As well as weather reports that you can
get in the game proper by using the telephone, you can get stats on your kitten’s
growth. In the game when you go to a vending machine and buy a can of drink there
is a chance (the odds are about 1 in 5, I think) that you may get a special can.
If you do, you can do one of two things with it. You can either take it to a convenience
store to get a free go on the prize draw or you can use them in the Shenmue
Goodies section in exchange for characters on your VMU. You must first download
the Shenmue Goodies program onto your VMU (50 blocks), then every character’s
data that you get will take up an additional 2 blocks. The Free Market lets you
trade the toys from toy capsule machines for ones you need and ones that can only
be traded for here. Finally the What’s New section gives you information on all
the latest news and services.

SHENMUE.COM

This is simply a link to
the official Shenmue website. Apart from looking good, the site is almost
guaranteed to have any new announcements about the latest instalments of Shenmue
before anywhere else. Still visit the Shenmue Fan Site all the time,
though!

URGENT MESSAGES

This is where the Shenmue team will
post new announcements about the game under the headings "Topics" and
"Troubleshooting." If there is new info the icons will flash.

(v)
MOVES LIST, NEW MOVES, AND TRAINING

You can view all the moves that
you can do on the inventory screen by selecting the icon that looks like an open
scroll. Some of the moves are black which means you haven’t found them yet. The
moves are found on small cards with Japanese writing on them, or are taught to
you by various characters. By inspecting the cards from your inventory you learn
the move.

Here is a list of all the basic moves (that you already know at
the game’s beginning):

HAND/ARM MOVES:

X—Tiger Knuckle
R+X—Elbow
Slam
L+X—Twist Knuckle
R,R,X—Elbow Assault
L,L,X—Upper
Knuckle
R,L,X—Sleeve Strike
L,R,X—Rain Thrust

LEG MOVES:

A—Crescent
Kick
R+A—Trample Kick
L+A—Side Reaper Kick
R,R,A—Against
Cascade
L,L,A—Surplice Slash
R,L,A—Thunder Kick
L,R,A—Hold
Against Leg

FRONT THROWS:

B—Overthrow
R+B—Sweep Throw
L+B—Vortex Throw
R,R,B—Mist Reaper
L,L,B—Demon Drop
R,L,B—Shoulder Buster
L,R,B—Tengu Drop

SIDE THROW:

B—Darkside
Hazuki

REAR THROW:

B—Back Twist Drop

POWER MOVES:

X+A—Big
Wheel
R,X+A—Twin Hand Waves
L,X+A—Backfist Willow
R,R,X+A—Avalanche
Lance
L,L,X+A—Katana Mist Slash
R,L,X+A—Brutal Tiger
L,R,X+A—Dark
Moon

RUNNING MOVES (while holding L Trigger):

X—Mistral Flash
X—Cyclone Kick
X+A—Windmill

When the move is being taught
to you, it will first be shown to you, then you must pull off the move in a Free-battle
style part. If you fail to work it out after a few attempts, your VMU will give
you a clue until it eventually gives you the whole move.

I think these are
the locations of all the moves in this game:

1. In Fuk-san’s room on his
table.
2. In a basket in the corridor behind your father’s room.
3-8.
In the antiques shop on the main street. Their price ranges from 300 to 3,000
yen.
9. Sometimes in the morning when you go towards the dojo Fuk-san will
teach you a new move.
10. In your hidden basement below the dojo in the bookshelf.
11. Taught to you by Gui Zhang in disc 3.
12. Taught to you by the homeless
Kung-Fu master in disc 3.
13. Also taught to you by the homeless sensei.
14. Taught to you by Tomo-san (he calls it the Tornado Kick).
15. Taught to
you at the very end of the game by Chin.

You can train in 3 locations in
Yokosuka. The first is in your dojo. If Fuk-san is there he will spar with you
instead. The second is Sakura Park in Sakuragaoka but this will only work if the
park is empty. The third is the empty car park near Game You.

If you bring
up your moves list by pressing the L TRIGGER you can learn your moves better.
You can tell what standard you are with the move by looking at how high the bar
behind the move name is. The lowest line represents the "learning" level,
the middle is "moderate" level, and the top is the "advanced"
level. Aim to get your most powerful moves up to "advanced" by using
them often. My favorite move is the running jump kick which is done by pressing
L TRIGGER+A.

Training methods can be selected by going to Ryo’s bed and
selecting the bottom option. This will set how much each type of move will increase
in level whenever you train. The selections are:

ALL
MOVES will increase all moves (funnily enough) by an average amount. All the others
will increase the certain type of move by much more than the others. I recommend
focusing on hand moves as they are faster than kicks or throws.

(vi)
FREE BATTLE AND QTE

Free battle and QTE are the two fighting systems
in Shenmue.

Free battle is a real-time fighting system similar to
Virtua Fighter. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if Virtua Fighter 4
had a similar engine and Ryo as a hidden character. In a free-battle, when
you knock down an opponent, they are out, and you have a life bar in the bottom-left
corner. New moves that you find or buy can be used in a Free-battle.

QTE
stands for Quick Timer Event. A button (either a + Pad direction or action button)
appears on screen and you have about a second to press the button before you are
hit or attacked. It generally makes a fight more interesting than Free-battle
as you do much more interesting moves.

(vii) SAVING

Sorry
if this seems like a pointless little part of the guide but you’d be surprised
by the number of emails I get about this.

Quick Save—A quick save can
only be used once so if you do this make sure to save again before turning off.
If you access the menu with Y, you can select the VMU icon and save. To load it
select Load & Start from the main menu.

Full Save —This is the
proper type of save. To do it go to Ryo’s bed in his house and select the left
option. This is loaded from the option opposite Load & Start (I think).

(viii)
"THE BAD ENDING"

Shenmue’s bad ending is like the Loch
Ness Monster, Bigfoot, UFOs, and ghosts—everyone knows about them, but no-one
knows where they are, or even if they’re actually real. This however, is real,
and I know how you can get it. Read on …

Step 1—Go to the part
of disc 2 where you have to sneak to warehouse 8 to meet up with Chen.
Step
2—Keep getting caught by the guards until you are thrown out of the docks
for good.
Step 3—Just watch as the time fast-forwards a few months and
… well you’ll have to watch it to find out!

If you don’t want to do this
you can just download a save with this ending on it at http://www.booyaka.com.

(ix)
SECRETS

1. HIDDEN HI-RES ARTWORK

To see this put any one of the
Shenmue game discs except the Passport into any PC CD-ROM or DVD-ROM drive
and access the file named "omake." It is full of .BMP files of different
Shenmue artwork.

This artwork can be used as great desktop wallpaper
if you set it to the right size.

2. PLAY THE 70-MAN FREE-BATTLE WHENEVER
YOU WANT

Complete the game and save the complete data at the end of the
credits. Now if you put in disc 3 and enter the options menu you can go to the
bottom (the box with a 70 in it) and replay the 70-man battle again and again
to beat your best times. You can submit your hi-scores to me via http://www.shenmuefansite.com.

3.
WARNING MESSAGES

Put one of the Shenmue discs into a CD player and
play track 2. One of the characters will give you a Japanese warning about the
game damaging your speakers. The first disc has Ryo speaking, the second has Nozomi
talking, and the third has Chai.

(x) THE KITTEN

By
no means an essential part of the game, looking after the orphaned kitten is a
quite good sub-mission. When you first venture into Yamanose the girl Megumi will
ask you to help look after the kitten that was orphaned thanks to Lan Di’s car.
When you first have to feed her choose the dried fish (right option), not the
tofu. From now on visit it once or twice a day to feed and pet it. You can buy
food for it from convenience stores or by checking the Hazuki refrigerator.

When
Megumi asks you a question she is asking what to name it. I named mine "Tama’"
(the bottom option) which means "lovable" in Japanese. You can call
it anything apart from the left option which Megumi doesn’t like.

Whenever
you look at the cat you get 4 options. These are:

As the kitten grows
and becomes healthier various things will happen to it until it becomes big and
healthy enough that you don’t need to look after it any more. When it disappears,
head up towards your house and you’ll find her. Just look by the front door of
the nearby single-story house.

(xi) THE DISC 3 BUG

I
haven’t heard of this happening in the Japanese version but I know it does in
the US version as it’s happened to me and I get about 10 emails about it a day
>:(

What happens is on the second day of work the Mad Angels Free-Battle
that is supposed to happen doesn’t. This means you can’t progress and you’re stuck
on that day until you restart disc 3 (or in several tragic cases, readers of this
FAQ and visitors to my website have had to start the entire game again only to
have it happen again) or you use this method which will work no matter how many
times you’ve repeated the day:

The scene you need won’t be triggered unless
you approach the area with warehouse 3 in it from the correct side, which is the
side with the white van on it. Take the route along the long road where the forklift
races start and past the white van into warehouse 3. Keep going there this way
and coming back to the crates this way and you should get into the desired fracas
at about 4 pm.

3. (i) CREDITS

Thanks to CJayC
at GameFAQs, Yu Suzuki, AM2, and Sega for making such a great game!

Also
thanks to Angelo Arifi for reminding me and pointing out a couple of small oversights
in the guide.

(ii) CONTACT ME

You can email
me at , or visit
my dedicated Shenmue
website.

I will gladly
help or elaborate on anything in this guide if anyone needs help, and will try
to answer every email personally.

(iii) REVISION GUIDE

12/30/99:
v0.5: Got the game and wrote down everything I did as I did it.

1/2/00:
v1.0: Finished disc 1 and finished guide to disc 1, finished background information.

1/3/00:
v1.5: Started disc 2 walkthrough.

1/3/00: v1.6: Corrected some minor spelling,
grammar, and general mistakes.

1/4/00: v1.8: Did most of the disc 2 walkthrough.

1/6/00:
v2.0: Finished disc 2 walkthrough.

1/8/00: v3.0: Did disc 3 walkthrough.

1/8/00:
v3.1: Updated story translation, and updated New Moves section to include all
of the new moves acquired throughout the game.

1/10/00: v3.2: Corrected
a few minor mistakes and typos.

6/28/00: v4.0: Added Corrections and Saving
sections.

7/30/00: v4.2: Added "Bad Ending" section and Secrets.

11/11/00:
v4.5: Added "Changes to the US Version" section. More US version related
material coming soon. Began updating as I get further into the US version.

13/11/00:
v4.6: Updated most sections, added "The Kitten" section, and finished
updating disc 1.

19/11/00: v5.0: Finished updated walkthrough, got rid of
"Corrections" (I could finally be bothered to get rid of the mistakes),
added the "Disc 3 Bug" section as I’ve been getting a ton of mail about
this.

"Follow me into Hell!"—Terry