Back in June 1999, when the Dreamcast was still alive and Shenmue was topping most-wanted charts everywhere, Sega gave away a demo of Shenmue with all new Dreamcasts in Japan, simply called 'What's Shenmue?'. This humble demo disc is now one of the most sought-after pieces for fans of Shenmue the world over. Here is the full story of this great little oddity.
A couple of months before the original Shenmue was released in Japan, Sega started hyping it up by giving away a demo disc with all new Dreamcasts. This demo, What's Shenmue?, was hard to obtain even in Japan and because of this it was up to $100 in importers and even then you'd be very lucky to get one. The demo takes about 10 minutes to complete and limits the player to Dobuita Street. The player as Ryo must find Sega's president, Yukawa-san, to ask him about Shenmue by collecting information from various sources and beating up some thugs in a QTE (the Enoki QTE from the full game). When Ryo tracks him down, you have to chase Yukawa-san in an alternate version of the Jimmy Yan QTE from the end of disc 2 of Shenmue. It's short and simple, but it would really whet your appetite for the full game! The demo even has it's own little ending in which Yukawa-san is sitting in front of piles of unsold Dreamcasts but cheers when he sees a Shenmue poster on the wall. In addition to this little playable section, the disc contains the videos of characters explaining the various systems in the game from the Shenmue Passport.
You'll be very lucky to find one now, and even luckier to find them for less than $100. You could check eBay, but I haven't seen one on there. Maybe if you strike lucky your local import store might get one though. If you decide to go on a hunt for this rarity, the box art looks like this:
