“But there’s one kind of super-healthy place in the whole game: a convenience store!”
Sega and Yu Suzuki’s behemothic creation has guided Shen’s career as a developer himself.
He createda Shenmue fangamea decade ago, roundabouts the launch ofShenmue 3’s Kickstarter.
“And then I realised that we could actually do a Japanese store.
I was like ‘wow’, I got chills all over my body.”
This includes putting things on the right shelves.
The game’s pleasingly pocket-sized shop layout is dressed in warm, lightly textured colours and gently cartoonified proportions.
The products themselves, all fictional, beg to be picked up and rotated and arranged to perfection.
I find this eerie.
Shen seems both thoroughly aware that he is weaving a fairytale and entirely lost in that fairytale.
“One time I even tried to get a job there.
I was invited for the interview,” he says.
“And they were asking me questions, and it was like, okay, everything’s cool.
And they said wait here until we return.
The encounter supplied evidence that working at a konbini isn’t exactly a dream career within Japan.
The store owners found Shen baffling.
And it was like ‘what?
Why do you love a low-paid job that’s no fun?'”
