PART 1: Shady Dental Practices
In Shenmue II, there are five dentist offices that can be found in Kowloon – specifically, they all reside on the 6th floor of the Moon Child Bldg. in the walled city’s Stand Qr. This appears to be a reference to some of the shady goings-on within the real-life Kowloon walled city (built in 1898 and demolished by 1994 – so would have still been standing during 1987 when the game is set) – it was well known for its high number of unlicenced dentists (as well as doctors) who could operate there without threat of prosecution. Little details like this, coupled with the overall run-down and grimy atmosphere, show how much attention to detail and desire to be faithful to the real-world locations depicted there is within this series of games.
But why are we concerned with these dentists in the context of this post, do you ask? Well, there is a strange anomaly which involves two of these dentist NPC’s in the game– a curious issue which seems to have somehow arisen in between prototype builds and the final build. First of all, let’s consult the character profiles of the first three dentists, from the Shenmue II Perfect Guidebook and the Shenmue II Complete Guide, to see which office it states each dentist can be found in (below images are from the Perfect Guidebook, translated from the original Japanese):
Date of Birth: 31st January 1923
Age: 64
Zodiac Sign: Aquarius
Blood Type: A
Gender: Male
Height: 161 cm
Weight: 55 kg
A doctor at Unicorn Dentist on the 6th Floor of the Moon Child Building.
Date of Birth: 13th January 1935
Age: 51
Zodiac Sign: Capricorn
Blood Type: O
Gender: Male
Height: 165 cm
Weight: 50 kg
A doctor at Seventh Dentist on the 6th Floor of the Moon Child Building.
Date of Birth: 18th May 1918
Age: 68
Zodiac Sign: Taurus
Blood Type: AB
Gender: Male
Height: 165 cm
Weight: 50 kg
A doctor at Moon Child Dentist on the 6th Floor of the Moon Child Building.
PART 2: The Two Trickster Dentists
Now…for the first three dentists we have just covered, everything is as it should be – in the final game, these NPC’s can indeed be found in the same respective dentist offices that their guidebook profiles claim them to reside in. However, for these latter two dentists, things become a little more complicated:
Date of Birth: 5th April 1933
Age: 53
Zodiac Sign: Aries
Blood Type: A
Gender: Male
Height: 165 cm
Weight: 50 kg
A doctor at Golden Dentist on the 6th Floor of the Moon Child Building.
Date of Birth: 24th July 1937
Age: 49
Zodiac Sign: Leo
Blood Type: A
Gender: Male
Height: 165 cm
Weight: 50 kg
A doctor at Kowloon Dentist on the 6th Floor of the Moon Child Building.
First, let’s check the Golden Dentist, where Zai Hongen is supposed to be working. However, upon entering the office, we find:
…nobody at all.
No NPC’s can be found in the Golden Dentist office at all – neither in the entryway or in the main room. So what happened to Hongen? Presumably even if he was discovered to be unlicenced dentist, it wouldn’t be necessary to run away given it is within the lawlessness of the Kowloon Walled City…
In Kowloon Dentist, which is next door, we find our answer – although not necessarily straight away…
Upon entering Kowloon Dentist, we find the beaming face of Wen Chengxiao – just as the guidebooks state he should be:
However – bizarrely it is not always the case that you will find Chengxiao here.
To explain – the above images are captured from one of Bluemue’s fantastic Kowloon Room Raid videos, this one obviously covering the Moon Child Building (you can skip to the part covering the dentist offices here).
I bring this up because Bluemue later made another video, shortly after yours truly had made him aware of a discovery I made – this was in 2015, a long time after I had completed the Shenmue II Character Database project back in 2012. Watch below and witness the bizarre phenomenon of…The Shapeshifting Dentist!
As you can see, the first time Bluemue walks into the Kowloon Dentist, he finds Chengxiao in there, just as he did during his room raid video. However, upon leaving the room and then entering again, Zai Hongen has suddenly appeared in his place! Upon leaving and re-entering yet again, he still finds Hongen there. However, the next time he does this, we witness Hongen completely disappear, with Chengxiao appearing in his place a few seconds later! Truly bizarre. After leaving and re-entering yet again, Hongen is again in the office. It seems a bit tricky to time actually witnessing the transformation!
To clarify – all of this applies to the final versions of both the Dreamcast and Xbox versions (all regions). Although Bluemue did discover that the transformation doesn’t seem to occur nearly as frequently in the Xbox version.
Indeed, before I was even aware of the transformation phenomenon, I must have only ever seen Zai Hongen in there, and must have only mainly checked the Xbox version– as back in 2006 I declared that Wen Chengxiao was isn’t in the game at all and must be an unused character! (the folks at this Shenmue wiki seemed to have came to the same conclusion!) Hence, I left him out of the Shenmue II Character Database that I later completed in 2012 – I still need to go back and add him in and update some other details in the database, so watch this space!
Interestingly, in the later HD re-release of Shenmue II that came in 2018 (packaged with Shenmue I), the bizarre switching behaviour is retained, albeit in a slightly different way – as again demonstrated by Bluemue in this video:
Basically, the two don’t seem to switch with each other nearly as often, and it no longer seems to be possible to witness the transformation itself. (The Golden Dentist office also remains completely empty) So the issue was kind of fixed, but also not really?
As Bluemue theorises, it seems the programmers may have accidentally put one of the dentists in the wrong room, so has to share the placement with the other – possibly occurring due to the offices being next door to each other. It’s also possible that something went wrong when putting the final build of the game together, that then played havoc with NPC placements, as seems to be the case with the previous case we have covered of the ‘Phantom Teahouse Lady’. So the question is – is this behaviour still seen in the recently discovered Game Jam prototype of Shenmue II, or are their placements as intended and outlined in the guidebooks?
PART 3: Perfectly Normal Dentists in the Game Jam Prototype
Then, in 2022, the ‘Game Jam’ prototype of Shenmue II was found and released. Please see the release page, the Shenmue Dojo article and my own page about the proto for more information about it in general, as well as several differences and oddities from the final game. One of the first things I checked when playing this prototype was whether Hongen would appear in the Golden Dentist as intended, or whether we’d still see the bizarre happenings with him and Chengxiao in the Kowloon Dentist. So let’s see what happens when we pay the Golden Dentist a visit in this prototype:
Ah-hah! We can see that Hongen is now there, as he should be! (he asks Ryo if he’d like a check-up upon entering, but you can’t then initiate any further conversation) Chengxiao can also still be found in the Kowloon Dentist, without any of the strange transforming behaviour seen in the final release!
So what went wrong between this build and the final one, to force these two to share the same dentist office and transform between each other? I can only theorise that it is a similar situation to the ‘Phantom Teahouse Lady’ NPC – another victim of an undisclosed issue between the Game Jam prototype and the final – where something in the game’s code was likely changed which had unintended knock-on effects. It is pleasing nonetheless to finally definitively confirm and see what the intended placement of these two was, thanks to the recent discovery of the prototype.
As a handy summary, see the below table which outlines the placements of each dentist between the Game Jam prototype and the final game:
And so ends the bizarre tale of the Shapeshifting Trickster Dentists – forced to share the same dentist office and literally fighting for the same exact position in time and space for it, due to some undisclosed disruption in the universe between one game build and another! Stay tuned for more in-depth articles of the weird and wonderful oddities and interesting things I have discovered from the prototype!
Thanks to:
Bluemue for the videos linked in the article, providing an easy reference point to demonstrate the bizarre behaviour of these two dentists, as well as a great image for the article header!
Until next time,
Stuart/Miles
Shenmusings 
interesting read – something slightly sinister about this!
cheers
SG
LikeLiked by 1 person
Haha, isn’t there indeed! Thank you 🙂
LikeLike