Trivia / Shenmue II

• Cross-Dressing Voices: In both dubs, Wong is voiced by a woman. He's voiced by Kumiko Watanabe in the Japanese dub, and is voiced by Akasha Scholen in the English dub, who also voices Shenhua in the second game.
• Cross-Regional Voice Acting: As with the first game, the English dub used voice actors from the New York and Tokyo areas.
• Network to the Rescue:
  • The english translation was nearly done when Sega Of America decided to cancel the release beacuse they felt that it was already too late to release the game. Luckily, Sega Of Europe decided to take the risk of finishing the translation and release the game on european markets.
  • According to Peter Moore, former COO of Sega of America at the time of the game's original release in 2001, the English dub (NOT the traslation, that was done by Sega themselves for the Dreamcast version before SOA pulled the plug on the american release) for the Xbox version of the game was only made possible from the game being published by Microsoft Studios.
• No Export for You:
  • The game was never released on the Sega Dreamcast in North America, and the Xbox release came a year later. Many die hard fans imported even though it was expensive and required a special disc that could cancel regional lockout, but was still cheaper than buying an Xbox which had just been released. As mentioned on the main page, even local outlets such as GameStop carried the PAL version of the game with the region-lockout disc.
  • The Xbox version was not released in Japan, not surprising considering how the system performed there. However, the 2018 Compilation Re-release did, which uses the Xbox version of the sequel.
• The Original Darrin: The HD re-release restores Yuan's original voice actor Takahiro Sakurai from the original japanese version. This is notorious beacuse the HD version is based of the PAL version where the voice was redubbed by an unknown japanese voice actress, which meant the developers had to go out of their way to re-incorporate the original voice clips into the new port.
• The Other Darrin: In the English dub, Akasha Scholen voices Shenhua, replacing Debora Rabbai. Lisle Wilkerson voices Xiuying, replacing Amanda Satchell.
• Unfinished Episode: The second chapter of the saga was to take place on the Ferry boat that Ryo takes to Hong Kong at the end of Chapter 1. During the trip, Chai would have snuck onto the boat and take a little girl hostage to fight Ryo again. The incident was referenced at the beginning of Shenmue II after Ryo has his photo taken, and while an unlockable comic in the Xbox version of the game reveals what happened, it was originally intended to be playable with the necessary areas modeled out and the motion capture completed for it. However, because they weren't able to fit it into the game, it was cut out. Chai's model still exists on the game disc, and the script originally had other people also arriving to Hong Kong recognize Ryo and refer to him as "that one guy on the ship". Chai appeared in Shenmue III but made no reference to what happened on the boat.
• Uncredited Role: The japanese voice actress who redubbed Yuan's lines for the european Dreamcast version is still unknown to this very day.
• What Could Have Been:
  • The second chapter of the saga, while it exists in the story was meant to be playable. See Unfinished Episode above.
  • Prior to the game's release, interviews indicated the game was to focus on the real dangers of living alone in Hong Kong. Ryo would have to look for places to camp out and could potentially be robbed and beaten depending where he stayed. Furthermore, he would suffer injuries in fights and his in-game model would reflect bruises and cuts. Neither of these ideas made it in the final game.
  • Files in the second game revealed two scrapped locations near Guilin, Miao Village and Miao Guang Temple, where martial arts training was taking place, but was removed as it didn't fit with the tone of the rest of the game.
  • On November 23 of 2021 a prototype of the American Dreamcast version was released to the public. This prototpye was compiled on September 14, 2001 according to the internal data, revealing that the cancelation of the american version was a very last minute decission (The european version was released only two months later on November 23.)
• Word of Saint Paul: According to Lisle Wilkerson, who voices Yuan in the Xbox English dub, despite being redubbed with a female voice in the EU version and given a female voice in the English dub, the character is still a male transvestite, and there were discussions to give him an androgynous voice (though the voice Wilkerson went with is husky enough to sort of work for either case).