Yakuza

Yakuza, released in Japan as Ryū ga Gotoku, is an action-adventure game developed and published by Sega. It debuted for PlayStation 2 in Japan on December 8, 2005, then reached North America and Europe in 2006. The game introduced Kazuma Kiryu, a former yakuza lieutenant from the Tojo Clan’s Dojima Family. At the opening, Kiryu accepts responsibility for the murder of his patriarch, Sohei Dojima, although he did not commit it. His ten-year prison sentence removes him from Kamurocho, Sega’s fictional Tokyo entertainment district modeled chiefly on Kabukicho. When he returns in 2005, ten billion yen has vanished from the Tojo Clan’s accounts, destabilizing its leadership.

Kiryu’s search links him to Haruka Sawamura, a young girl pursued because of her connection to the missing money, and to Goro Majima, the volatile manager of the Majima Family. The narrative also centers on Kiryu’s old friend Akira Nishikiyama, who has changed dramatically during Kiryu’s imprisonment, and detective Makoto Date, one of Kiryu’s uneasy allies. The Japanese version used an all-star voice cast including Takaya Kuroda as Kiryu and Koyuki as Yumi Sawamura. Mark Hamill voiced Majima in the original English dub, while Michael Madsen voiced Shimano. A later PlayStation 3 and Wii U remaster retained the Japanese audio rather than producing a new English dub.

Unlike many open-world crime games, Yakuza combines hand-to-hand street fights with a concentrated urban setting and a melodramatic crime story. Its combat lets Kiryu strike, throw, grab enemies, use dropped objects, and perform Heat Actions after building his Heat Gauge. Between story chapters, players can eat in restaurants, visit bars and arcades, gamble, play batting cages, and undertake substories. Sega’s in-house arcade games appear in venues, and the setting includes fictionalized versions of real chains. The original game’s design was led by Toshihiro Nagoshi, who created the Ryū ga Gotoku Studio team after Sega backed his proposal for a mature drama about Japanese organized crime. Hase Seishū, a novelist known for crime fiction, contributed to the scenario.

Yakuza became a long-running Sega game series. Its direct sequel, Yakuza 2, arrived on PlayStation 2 in Japan in 2006. The first game later received Yakuza Kiwami, a 2016 remake built using the engine of Yakuza 0. Kiwami expanded Nishikiyama’s story substantially, added Majima Everywhere encounters, and updated combat with Yakuza 0 mechanics. Kiryu’s debut established Kamurocho, the Tojo Clan, allies, and codes that subsequent Like a Dragon games revisited.