drunken fighting style inspired the Virtua Fighter 2 character Shun Di.

Infatuated with everything the country had to offer, from the martial art of Bajiquan to street vendors selling pork buns, Suzuki was determined that his first foray into story-driven gaming would draw from the richness of the Chinese culture.

Disappointed with the RPGs (role-playing games) that existed at the time, in particular their lack of voice acting and basic graphics, in 1995 Suzuki put together a prototype for the Saturn called The Old Man & The Peach Tree. Set in Luoyang, the historic capital of China, it followed the well-worn trope of a young student seeking the wisdom of an old kung fu master. The prototype was not known to the public until Suzuki brought it up in ancame the beginnings of Virtua Fighter RPG.

Early concept art for Virtua Fighter RPG of Akira as a high school student. Before deciding to go into programming, Suzuki considered a career as an illustrator.

Initially centred around Virtua Fighter’s Akira, Suzuki determined that it would be the first truly 3D RPG. Players would talk with fully-voiced non-playable characters (NPCs), and there would be real-time fighting against multiple opponents.

The original script for The Legend of Akira, and what would become Shenmue I & II. 3 of these sold for $10,000 each during the Shenmue III Kickstarter.

Unusually for a developer, Suzuki is not particularly fond of gaming in his own free time. In the case of Shenmue, he sought to draw inspiration from films, in particular the kung-fu movies of Hong Kong