FOR A VARIETY of reasons -- the relative youth of the medium, the limits imposed by technology and imagination, and the conflicts that necessarily arise when marketing departments are at least as powerful as creators -- video games have always been rigidly genre bound. You’ve got your shooters, your strategy games, SIMS of various kinds, puzzle games, sports games, RPGs, and that’s been about it. In Japan, gamers have favored portentous narratives that lift the experience from mere game to mythology. (The eleven-volume Final Fantasy series has sold millions of copies based on precious little else.) Americans, on the other hand, generally prefer to blow things up. Fortunately for gamers on both sides of the Pacific, game designer Yu Suzuki -- whose latest creation is this fall's Shenmue -- has something completely different in mind.

Shenmue starts out in full epic mode. An eagle soars over an immense mountain range, plunges down over a cliff, and finally up over a young woman standing at the edge of another precipice. Dressed in an indeterminate tribal nomad outfit, she's beautiful in that slightly cartoony way. She talks about the conflict between destiny and free will as a misty landscape stretches across the screen. The dragon and the phoenix are mentioned. But after this blessedly short blast of mythic frippery, we're asked to press the start button on our Sega Dreamcast and embark on that great rarity: an almost wholly new gaming experience.

Suzuki calls his new genre FREE (Full Reactive Eyes Entertainment). Almost everybody else has called it the best console game ever and bought it like mad (it’s been on top of the Dreamcast sales charts for four weeks). FREE basically means that an entire functioning world – specifically the town of Yokosuka during the year 1986 – has been created for Shenmue. Time passes; the sun rises and sets; days, weeks, and maybe even months go by surprisingly quickly. Hundreds of people have lives that seem to go on with or without you, in all kinds of weather, all beautifully rendered. You can buy stuff in the market, gamble in the casino, help a neighbor raise an orphan cat, or even go to the arcade to play a couple of Suzuki classics, Hang On and Space Harrier. You can practice your kung fu or just wander around, talking to passersby. Admittedly, this last is pretty limited; but the kung fu, based on a stripped-down version of Suzuki’s Virtua Fighter, is not, and that more than makes up for it. It’s possible, and even surprisingly enjoyable, to waste days in the game just wandering around, totally ignoring what you’re supposed to be doing.

Which is, in fact, seeking bloody revenge. Shenmue's plot will be familiar to anyone who's ever seen a kung-fu movie or an action film: You take on the identity of Ryo Hazuki, a teenager on the vengeance trail, looking to unravel the mystery of who killed your father and break his head in return. All the classic kung-fu tropes are here, all in the classic style. There’s the mysterious man with a scar, the love interest, the goofy sidekick, and most importantly, the huge, climactic fight scene where the hero takes on wave after wave of opponents.

As much fun as all that is, it pales next to the real accomplishment of Shenmue: bringing the day-to-day existence of a Japanese teenager to vivid life. It’s the steady accumulation of little things that make the difference. The way Ryo stammers and gets even more inarticulate than usual when he talks to girls; the way he can’t make up his mind about the girl who loves him, endlessly saying "uhh right" whenever she tells him to take care; the way he barely makes it home for curfew everyday; even the classic game-play trick of having his world start out with his tiny home-town and gradually expand from there, until finally it’s not big enough to hold him anymore -- all of it comes together to make a world you can lose yourself in. Shenmue 2 comes out in the fall of 2001; one can hardly wait to see in which direction Suzuki's world -- and the medium -- grows next.