Cost over $20 million to develop and was the most expensive Video Game to ever be developed at the time. The project took seven years to complete by Sega's game-development AM2 division. For this feat, it has a place in the Guinness Book of World Records.
If you go to the altar room in Ryo's home and ring the bell before praying for his dad every day till the games end, After the final credit roll you'll get a secret ending with his farther and a Young ryo fishing
Yu Suzuki originally wrote Shenmue with 16 chapters and originally intended to have the series span 4-5 games. However, with only moderate success achieved with Shenmue (Chapter 1), Shenmue 2 contained chapters 3-5 in one game and some parts of the intended game were cut out. The time Ryo spends on the ship traveling from Japan to Hong Kong was meant to be part of the game (Chapter 2).
The game was originally set to be released for the Sega Saturn. But due to the huge failure of the Saturn in the USA and Europe, and the fact that the Dreamcast was coming to Japan in 1998, the Saturn version was canceled. Sega even released a 3-minute clip of the game being programmed on the Saturn's hardware. Reference from Shenmue II are present here as well, which shows that both the Shenmue games were in development for a long time. The clip can be unlocked after you beat Shenmue II.
In Japan, the vending machines allowed players to get various real-life drinks from the Coca-Cola Company. These include Coca-Cola, Sprite, Fanta, and Georgia Coffee Original. However, because Sega only got the rights to use them in Japan, they were changed to more generic Bell Wood machines. These instead offer Jet Cola, Jet Soda, Fruda and Bell Wood's Coffee.