A bunch of Shenmue development materials have just been archived online, thanks to the Shenmue-dedicated website Shenmue Dojo. This includes "over 400 original sketches, illustrations, 3D renders & more" from the early development of the game, including the period in which Yu Suzuki's team at Sega (Sega AM-2) was still developing the game as a Virtua Fighter RPG.
According to an article on Shenmue Dojo, the impressive collection of materials comes from a couple of different sources, with the main one being three listings that were discovered earlier this year on a Japanese auction website called Zenmarket.
These listings came to Shenmue Dojo's attention back in January 2025 and appeared to contain a bunch of materials have once belonged to the Shenmue 3D character designers Hideki Kawabata and Takashi Itoh. As a result, they were immediately identified as something the community should work towards preserving, with the Shenmue Dojo's co-owners Matt Oliver and James Brown joining forces with other members of the game's fanbase such as Chao (Shenmue Photos), David Deville (Shenmue Master), and Nathan (24Nathan) to ensure they won all three lots.
Since then, the team has been hard at work scanning and preserving this material to publish as part of a public archive and has also come across more rare artwork that had been hidden-in-plain sight on Kawabata's online portfolio.
You can view the full archive here, if you want to view some of this artwork for yourself.
[source shenmuedojo.com]
Comments 2
The Shenmue community is incredible. So much more dedicated to the series than Sega. The cliff temple stuff is fascinating. It's amazing how much stuff was planned out and even 3d rendered way back in the Dreamcast era that still hasn't shown up in a game.
I really like seeing the pencil sketches. The lines are so relaxed and sweeping. It looks so effortless, but also a demonstration of great skill.
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