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A bit of backstory here. The original game was rather infamously one of the most expensive games ever produced at the time. But it's not commonly remembered that part of said budget was reserved for making a sequel. Or rather, the original game was so massive that they initially tried to split it into 2 parts. Before both halves got delayed into becoming released about 2 years apart. Early marketing material for the original game even mentioned and shown elements that would only appear in the sequel, such as Ryo's trip to Hong Kong.
- Next Generation Magazine, Issue 10/99
But by the time said sequel had launched in Japan, SEGA had already announced they were leaving the console market entirely.
Regardless, a team at the company was hard at work on localizing the sequel for the English market. With a noticeably smaller budget than before (Notably, there were no plans to do an English dub. Despite the fact the original game lacked dual audio support.)
But for whatever reason, the North American branch decided not to release it initially. Leaving the rather unusual decision of having the localization be locked to Europe for the time being.
Enter Microsoft. In the midst of SEGA's defeat in the console war, they were making a game console of their own. The legendary Xbox.
Looking for 3rd party studios to bring on-board. They rather quickly took an interest in SEGA, the Dreamcast had a customized version of Windows CE made for it, so some of the groundwork was already laid down.
While the initial plans to implement Backwards Compatibility with Dreamcast games went nowhere, SEGA would go on to become a major supporter of the Xbox. Which infamously lead to one of the most notorious bouts of console exclusivity out there.
Yes, part of the reason why Shenmue II didn't hit the Dreamcast in North America was because Microsoft seemingly bought the publishing rights. Considering one of the big features of the sequel was that you could transfer your progress over from the original. People were incredibly furious.
- Peter Moore, Gaming Steve Episode 56 (56:22)
While the port brought on various extra features that otherwise wouldn't actually exist (Notably a proper English dub.) Shenmue fans would prove to be incredibly persistent in attempting to continue their adventure on the Dreamcast, importing the European copy in droves, and used various hacks to convert their North American saves to work with the EU release.
Of course, the dream was always to have a US version available in some form. Which seemed unlikely, until now.
(Note: Box-art is a mockup, the actual disks were reportedly just standard blank GD-ROMs without any labeling)
As for the technical details of this build. The internal version number is V0.991, and is mostly finished by this point. With the occasional bit of untranslated text and grammar issues.
The build also contains multiple debug menus, one of which is accessible by inserting a fourth controller into the system, and pressing start on it during gameplay.
The other one (See the screenshot at the top of the thread.) requires a patch made by the dumper to access. The build also contains a surprising amount of unused/debug maps accessible through these menus.
