Endurance Run: Shenmue - Part 22

hi

i started to get scared

I don't know what I'm going to do with my life without a forklift in it.

Its like Ryu is Asexual or something. Take a picture with hot girl that likes you and stand as far apart as possible.

and then,

Hot girl: "Ryu, I am going to Canada because you are a robot weirdo"

Ryu: "Ok"

Shenmue was all worth it for Vinny to discover his latent forklifting powers.

For @vinny and anyone else also fascinated by shipping containers this book sounds kinda lame but is actually super interesting:

The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger by Marc Levinson

I highly recommend it!

How could @alex say that Goro is useless when he's the one who got you the job at the harbor!

Laughed way to hard when Vinny finished his first lap.

At ¥450 a crate, doing 10 crates a day, working 5 days a week, 4 weeks a month, that's ¥90,000, which according to a website I googled would have been $363 in 1984 dollars, which in 2016 dollars would be $847.

So Ryo is making about the equivalent of $850 a month. Not bad for a kid who apparently dropped out of high school to avenge his father's death. I guess?

No he didn't. In no less than two cutscenes the game established that it was actually Mai who got you the job and that Goro is in fact just a useless poser.

"Robot Ryu...Rajo."

God damn it.

"War of the Worlds, was that HG Wells or Orson Welles?" Well...you've managed to name the one thing that is actually both.

@hans_maulwurf: But Mai wouldn't have known to get it for you if you hadn't asked Goro first. So he still helped in his own way.

I was very ready to make fun of this game when it was just about wandering around and asking random people about random bullshit. And I don't regret it. I'm not buying the argument that those things feel in anyway grounded or realistic.

But I'm really enjoying this part of the game. Going to work at the docks every day, connecting with your coworkers, and things happening that feel like they are moving the plot along at a regular pace. If the whole game had been like this I'd view it a lot more favourably. Obviously not always stacking crates, but this general structure.

Techincally both Orson Wells and H.G. Wells are War of the Worlds guys

Also, I don't think there's an episode of 99% Invisible about it, but there is a Planet Money episode.

The briefest of summaries is that before shipping containers everything had to be done manually and it would take workers (longshoremen?) days to load and unload ships, box by box. Having a standard, large, stackable unit that can be moved by crane and put on the back of a lorry provided enormous efficiency improvements.

That said, for a while there was a shipping container near my office that I'm sure was smaller than the standard size, which seems completely counter to the point. Perhaps there's a secondary standard for small vessels or something, but it still seems strange. Or maybe it's a competing standard that didn't catch on.

Also in the realm of mundane things that are in their own way very significant, and even more related to the exciting life of Ryo, is an episode about blue shipping pallets. If memory serves, the blue ones are a special design that can be approached from all four sides (instead of being solid on two), and I believe they're blue because they're rented, but I don't really remember.

It's worth a listen, honest.

This is for sure the hardest endurance in Giant Bomb history. The game is rough, and when things get dark it's not wrong to enjoy some fun games.

For example this simple little "spot the error in the picture"-game that I just made:

What is wrong with this picture?

Maybe Vinny can solve it? ^^

(I'm finding creative ways to report youtube related flaws.)

@dudelongcouch: He is special, that's for sure. But Mai and Ryo know each other anyway (and Ryo probably knows she's working at the harbor?), so he could've just asked her directly. The only reason Goro could broker the whole thing (before Ryo could ask her) was because he apparently doesn't have to do shit and can just hang out at the docks all day speaking to random passers-by.

I'm sure turning a dog into a Waluigi amiibo is a crime.

+1

BigSteelBox, a Canadian distributor of shipping containers, visited a China International Marine Container factory, the biggest container manufacturer in the world:

Also check out shipmap.org, which visualizes the routes of cargo ships in the year 2012.

@mjhwwbg: I want to say Rorie mentioned that book on an UPF a while ago. I like that the book covers the not so great stuff too, like the affect it had on smaller port towns.

@jamesm: Apparent;ly there's a new trend of people actually converting shipping containers into homes, so maybe that was what that was?

@danryckert You doing a JRPG thing sounds like a great idea! Patrick and Ryan did a Chrono Trigger Endurance Run already and it was really fun.

Ryo! look at the new profile pic!! Want a dog?

I hope Shenmue 3 is a racing game.

The only cool thing that has happened in this game.

@ildon: Don't forget that daily 50 yen raise! I wonder what the going rate was back then/there.

When I'm at work I drive a forklift for 7 hours and when I'm at home I watch even more forklifts

Forklifts are a way too big part of my life at this moment

In during a pre-gregalor world of a Shenmue ER episode comment section.

After staring at Tom's truck: "Tom's not even here today." I really hope they don't miss the last couple of Tom cutscenes.

"Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me" is a quiz program, it humorous, but the point is to solve puzzles. I think Dan would like it is he realized the point was to solve the puzzles before the hosts do. Its not easy to do in a car because sometimes writing things down, like re-arranging letters of one word to make another words, is easier for a lot of people if you write it out.

So @danryckert wants to fill gaming blind spots on GB without it being too grindy? Yakuza series, my man.

No new revelation here, but Vinny seems like the kinda guy who could get lost on his way to his mailbox.

Dan, Vinny and Alex play through Secret of Mana co-op.

Giant Bomb, make it happen.

P.S.

Nice Weird Al reference from Alex.

@threeoct: I know how you feel

Except it was the lunch counter lady who did that.

Somehow this daily routine of forklift race and then moving a bunch of crates is actually more fun than running around the streets asking people questions.

This... I couldn't agree more. I was like... dude, you were just there like 10 seconds ago...

Man, I wish I could get a raise every single day just because I go to work and do stuff.

I would watch an endurance run of Dan playing through FF6. He would definitely need someone with him along for the ride, like with this game, because I think he'd lose his mind playing a JRPG.

I'd watch gbeast play Persona 3.

It's hard enough explaining AMERICA to Dan. The discussions about Japan would probably kill me.

Jeeze, sometimes Dan's generalizations about minnesota people are just crazy! Shocking, right? But come on! People there are not convinced that Garrison Keillor is the most famous person. The people he knew there gave him weird impressions of Minnesota.

I wonder how Dan would feel about Fallout New Vegas. It's not Bethesda developed but it's Obsidian who make up a portion of the people who made the first two.

And, Orson and H.G. are both the War of the Worlds guys. Orson adapted it to a radio drama, H.G. wrote the book. H.G. also wrote The Invisible Man and The Time Machine.

Man, I know the minimum wage and living costs are a lot lower in the US, but that sounds reallyyyyyy grim.

I'm currently living in a run down old share-house in Perth, and $850 a month would hardly cover my rent, let alone utilities. I'm pretty sure that's only like 30-40% of what is officially designated as a "poverty" wage in this country.

@hassun:

@wiseblood:No it wasn't? As someone else already pointed out, it was the lunch counter lady's sister, Mai, who got him the job. And it was facilitated by Goro. Hisaka-san (the "lunch counter lady") and Mai are not the same person.

@gregalor: I don't think it's possible to miss them. Pretty sure they'll be forced into it through the course of the day.

It's almost like he's trying to actively engage in the conversation with the others and be entertaining all at the same time. C'mon y'all...

"You could drink a soda..."

"Nah. I know! I can go get some raffle tickets from the store."

Arrrrrggh, they never found out that soda cans ARE part of the raffle.