[wk_end]

The tl;dr (though you should read!) of the "oversight" is that there's a constant used to adjust the sun's position that's seemingly based on latitude; in the first Shenmue, it's set to 22, and in Shenmue II - which uses much of the same code - it's set to 35. This is odd, because Shenmue I takes place at latitude 35°, and Shenmue II at 22° - precisely the other way around.

If that's what's going on, it's sort of hard for me to wrap my brain around how that might've happened. I could see them "fixing" the Shenmue I code base and then forgetting to "unfix" it for Shenmue II, but I can't - even knowing that there were already plans for where the sequel would be set - come up with a story for how they would've accidentally used Shenmue II's latitude for the original game.

[chickenzzzzu]

Maybe the code was written at the early onset of the game, and originally the locations were flip flopped in super early development. Then later they decided on the locations that became permanent, and nobody bothered to fix that part of the code?

[ac2u]

I wonder if it has anything to do with the default cutscene that plays on the start screen if you don’t progress. That cutscene would have been set in China as its Shenhua reciting the games central prophecy

[boudin]

I wonder if it could be linked to the original development on the Sega Saturn, if I remember well the video of the prototype, Shenmue on Saturn was spanning across both Shenmue 1 and 2

[gpderetta]

Wild guess: they set it wrong on the first game (possibly by looking up the wrong parameter). On the next game, when they went to fix the sun position for the new location they realized the mistake and changed it to the original location as an easter egg.

The coincidence of the wrong position matching the location of the next game is strange though.

[mook]

Maybe they realized the bug early in Shenmue II's planning and decided to just move the game to where the bugged value was correct, not knowing that it was fixed in code in the mean time.

(This has an approximately zero chance of being correct.)