Sega’s organized crime epic blends high-stakes drama with goofy humor and absurdly in-depth minigames. The latest installment, Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth, launched in January 2024.
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Yuzuki Aikawa made her name as a pin-up model, appearing in glossies. The curvy bikini model also worked as a race queen, before joining an idol group and releasing a CD. Then she did something unexpected. She got her ass kicked. Aikawa made the leap to Japanese female wrestling. As a rule of thumb, Japanese…
Last night, one of the biggest celebrities in Japan, Shinsuke Shimada, abruptly stated he was leaving the entertainment industry. Shimada, a comedian and talk show host, is the Japanese equivalent of a David Letterman or a Jay Leno—if either of them appeared on six prime time shows and produced music albums. The country’s collective jaw…
People have sex. It’s a natural and normal part of being a human being. Famous folks have sex, too. (They also take craps and put on pants one leg at a time). In Japan, even pure idols snog and screw. Mind blowing, isn’t it? The most recent issue of tabloid Bubka purports to have indecent…
Now that Yakuza: Of the End has moved 400,000 copies, Sega has shipped over 5 million copies of the Yakuza games worldwide since it debuted on the PS2 in 2005. [ファミ通]
It’s not every day that you see a bottle of booze stamped with “licensed by Sega”. But this isn’t everyday. It’s Tuesday, May 31. Yakuza, Sega’s games about… yakuza, is once again collaborating with a Japanese liquor maker for its latest game, Yakuza: of the End. The last couple of Yakuza games got their own…
Japan is getting a new custom PS3, a limited Tales of Xillia one. This isn’t the first limited PS3 for Japan. There have been others. For example, Metal Gear Solid 4 got a “Gun Metal” PS3, while Yakuza got a yakuza-y one. Final Fantasy XIII got a white and pink job, and Gran Turismo 5…
Demian Smith had the (mis)fortune to get a job working as a translator on the very first Yakuza game for the PS2. If you haven’t played it, know that for a game set in Japan and called Yakuza, it wasn’t that Japanese. Instead, Sega decided that, to try and sell the brawler to the Western…
Yakuza: of the End is Sega’s zombie parody game that was originally slated for a March release. Then the earthquake hit, and the game was delayed to June. Yakuza producer Toshihiro Nagoshi said the June delay was the result of numerous reasons: “Cash flow, correcting the poster, buying new ad time, and the manual labor…
Back before Sega game designer Toshihiro Nagoshi turned golden brown, he was just another kid from rural Japan, moving to Tokyo, trying to make it big. Originally, Nagoshi wanted to make films. “I graduated with a film degree,” Nagoshi tells website ZakZak, “but at that time the Japanese film industry was in a shambles and…
After the Tohoku Earthquake struck, Sega decided it would be inappropriate to release Yakuza: Of The End and delayed it. The game is a zombie parody, setting in a ravaged urban center. The game finally has a new release date in Japan: June 9. A portion of the profits will go to the disaster relief…
Nintendo, the world’s family-friendly video game maker, formed under less virtuous auspices. Before Nintendo made video games, they made playing cards for gangsters and ran their own love hotel, which some assert their own president frequented—during work. Saucy! It’s deathly quiet. I can hear my footsteps as I trundle down a small side-street, where the…
Back in 2010, Sega held a competition to promote Yakuza 3 with a very dedicated prize: a full back tattoo like the one Yakuza character Kazuma Kiryu sports. Somebody actually won that prize and got the tattoo. The winner was 46-year-old Australian Fari Salievsk, a MMA trainer from New South Wales. The process took six…
Ping pong with zombies? Fishing for zombies? S&M with zombies?! Parody Yakuza: Of The End brings its familiar zombies and dignified deaths to survival horror.
Sega’s Yakuza crime games are infected with zombies (and zombies from other games). In the game’s fictional Kamurocho, schoolgirls and business ladies are turning into the walking dead. But when you finally kill them, they don’t exactly end up lady-like. Then again, trying to eat people isn’t very lady-like, either. Funny, that. A whole bunch…
Survival shooter Left 4 Dead features a whole cast of memorable zombies. So does upcoming zombie game Yakuza: Of The End. Thing is, I remember them being in Left 4 Dead first. The demo for Yakuza: Of The End shows some of the zombies that appear in the game. They seem to be either homages…
Never one to shy away from real world cross promotions, Japanese crime game Yakuza: Of The End lets gamers belt out tunes that feature two of the game’s characters in the cheesy sing-a-long music video. Main character Kiryu Kazuma will appear and sing along to MachineGun Kiss, a tune he sang in Yakuza 4 as…
On February 22 (NA) and February 23 (EU), a Yakuza 4 demo will punch the PlayStation Network in the face then smash a bike over its head.
Esper Ito, above, is actually less creepy-looking as a video game zombie. No, really. But that still doesn’t take away his position as Japan’s bravest (and craziest?) comedian. The Yakuza crime series of games is not only famous for its take on the Tokyo underworld, but also the absurd amount of Japanese celebrity cameos the…
Jun Komori started out as a fashion model, appearing in magazines like Popteen. There are tons of magazine models. So Jun started to be different by making stupid faces. At a press conference today in Tokyo it was revealed that Komori will be the Yakuza franchise’s latest massage “therapist” in the forthcoming Yakuza: Of The…
There’s a delightful little saying we have here in Australia, which goes a little something like (NSFW) “glass the c#@t“. It’s not pretty, but there you have it. Anyway, it features in this new trailer for Yakuza 4. This is the second in Sega’s new attempts to try and package the notoriously fickle Japanese crime…
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