Shenmue
Game Rankings Score: 89%
One of the older examples of an overly ambitious title, Shenmue was the poster child of its day for incredibly expensive to produce video games. Striving to make an open world title long before it was the norm to do so, it showed Dreamcast players just how immersive a game world could be with lively characters, realistic settings to explore, and a wealth of side content to keep people occupied for hours on end. Sega and Ys Net sunk an exorbitant amount of funds into the game’s budget to pull this off, with estimates for the cost once sitting at $70 million for game development alone (now closer to $103 million when adjusted for inflation). This was scaled back and confirmed to be $47 million by the creator in a 2011 GDC talk, which would total to $69 million with current inflation, but the game was truly a sink or swim endeavor and, at the time of its release, was one of the most expensive video games ever produced.
Unfortunately, this proved to be too great a challenge for the final product to overcome. While it was well received by critics and garnered a strong cult following, the title was considered a commercial failure and made the eventual development of the series’ second installment, which also underperformed, that much harder. This in turn led to the third installment being trapped in development hell for several years before finally being funded through Kickstarter in 2015.
*No Metacritic score is available for the first title, and so the older Game Rankings score was used instead. We apologize for the lack in consistency.
