Shenmue was a 2000 Dreamcast game from Sega that emphasized open-ended adventuring and a very Zen approach to gameplay. Which is a nice way of saying that the game was so Japanese that it confounded many American game players, who were bored silly by all the wandering around and long-ass conversations. Proponents of the game (and they were vocal) told non-fans that they simply didn’t “Get” the game, which only annoyed frustrated would-be players even more.

We were among them. Here is a list of all that we remember you could do in this miraculous free world that continued on in Shenmue II (which we adamantly did not play):

• Raise a turtle.
• Walk around. Like walk around a lot.
• Have long conversations with pre-teen girls and very old men.
• Think for hours about how much it sucks that your dad got iced by gangsters.
• Push buttons lethargically to simulate an exciting martial arts fight.
• Hey, is that a flower pot I can pick up?
• Go down to the docks.
• Talk to some dock workers.
• Return from your exciting adventure on the docks.
• Watch the weather change. Look at those clouds.
• Go to the arcade and play games that are more fun than Shenmue.