25 Best Sega Games Of All Time - RANKED
21. Shenmue
Shenmue is the Marmite of the gaming world. You either seemingly love or absolutely hate this game, but there's no denying its a massively influential game in Sega's long and storied history, and is probably worthy of the cult following that surrounds it to this day.
When first released for the Dreamcast in 1999, Shenmue was quite unlike anything else available. It allows you to explore an open world filled with quick-time events and ridiculous brawls, as well as taking part in loads of minigames including an infamous forklift driving race. It's quirky, weird and if it gets its hooks into you, extremely loveable.
Shenmue is also notable for including a huge array of innovations that took advantage of the power of the Dreamcast including day-and-night systems, a huge amount of interactive objects, weather effects and even NPCs who had different schedules depending on the particular day.
Interestingly, Shenmue began life as a spin-off of the Virtua Fighter series. During development, it was known as Virtua Fighter RPG: Akira's Story (starring the character of the same name from Virtua Fighter). This was ultimately redesigned and Akira became Ryo Hazuki, a brand new character.