This Week In Retro: Yakuza (2005) (Patreon)

December 8, 2005: "When you don't pay your debts, I'm what you get"

by Diamond Feit

Crime and video games go together like french fries and (blood red) ketchup. Whether players assume the role of a hero or a villain, a cop or a robber, an invader or an invadee, they'll always end up taking a side in a conflict drawn across moral lines. Who is Mario but a crusader against injustice, a man who stands up to abductors and says "It's-a me, comeuppance."

Furthermore, since video games exist as portals to worlds other than our own, they let us indulge in habits we would normally condemn. Think of all those titles that operate on a "good or evil" binary, allowing players freedom to abide by the rules or violate them. I know I've committed all manner of atrocities in games purely because of their consequence-free nature; the boundaries of right and wrong look quite porous when you can always reload your last save file.

This aspect of self-expression through malfeasance became a hot topic around the turn of the millennium, an unresolved bullet point from the "violence in video games" kerfuffle of the early 90s. As graphical technology improved and games grew in complexity, developers began to push new boundaries in terms of taste. For all the blood spilt in Doom or Mortal Kombat, those games still depict a kill-or-be-killed struggle between two sides of equal murderous intent. What happens when players control a protagonist unbound by such restrictions?

Those of us who lived and breathed this medium in the early 2000s know exactly what happened: Grand Theft Auto III. Suddenly a video game served up an entire city full of ordinary people on a platter to players and said "have fun." Not only did the main story hinge upon an escaped convict engaging in organized crime, he also had carte blanche to commit burglary, solicit sex workers, and steal anything on four wheels. It shocked a lot of parents and politicians but it also sold seven million copies so it led to a lot more titles just like it in the following years.

Across the Pacific where PlayStations were made, publishers took a more conservative approach to depictions of abhorrent behavior. Lots of Japanese games featured violence and gore, but only against monsters, zombies, or other less-than-human opponents. Few companies dared to test the local Computer Entertainment Rating Organization guidelines regarding adult material, instead preferring to seek the largest audience possible by avoiding an 18+ rating.

20 years ago this week, one major player in the Japanese market took a big chance by targeting grown-ups with a new game featuring criminals, guns, murder, alcohol, convenience store food, arcades, massage parlors, host clubs, and plenty more. Sega originally titled the project Ryū ga Gotoku or "Like a Dragon," but outside of Japan, they cut to the chase by calling it Yakuza.

For those unaware, the yakuza are Japan's homegrown mafia, an organization that grew out of the rubble of World War II when the nation and its people struggled to survive. Like the Italians, the yakuza group their members into families who operate under a patriarch. Each family has connections to and rivalries with other families. Both the mafia and yakuza use violence as a tool to intimidate and advertise their own strength while also professing to represent society's outcasts.

The story of Yakuza begins in 1995 and stars Kazuma Kiryū, a soldier making a name for himself in the Japanese underworld. We see this in every interaction he has with others as those around him all predict he'll have his own family soon, even if Kiryū himself remains humble. The game starts with Kiryū aiding a fellow member with a routine debt collection; the younger man expresses his gratitude for the help while Kiryū insists it's no big deal.

As one might expect, any outfit that owes money to the yakuza won't pay up without a fight, so this errand turns into a combat tutorial. Yakuza operates like a beat-em-up in many ways, as Kiryū can string together light and heavy attacks into combos, pick up items off the ground to wield as weapons, or grab his opponents and toss them around. Battling builds up a Heat meter that, when full, unlocks powerful, situational moves that deal extra damage and look sick as hell.

Yet even though players use Kiryū to take down an entire office full of loan sharks, his basic humanity shines through. When the deadbeats grovel for their lives and assume Kiryū has come to kill them, he almost takes offense at the implication. Time and again, Kiryū gets into fights solely because someone else wants to throw down; like so many great silver screen tough guys, Kiryū is a reluctant bad-ass who only lays people out who won't take no for an answer.

In between these scraps with ruffians and street punks looking for trouble, we meet Kiryū's friends along with a few enemies. He drops by his favorite bar for drinks with Akira Nishikiyama and their mutual pal Yumi; the three grew up together in the same orphanage and remain close as adults. Kiryū returns to the family headquarters to drop off the money he collected to his boss and mentor Shintarō Kazama. A chance encounter with a visiting underling from out-of-town has Kiryū chat with Gorō Majima, a one-eyed lunatic from a rival clan who respects Kiryū yet also looks like he'd love to slit his throat.

Everything comes to a head when Kiryū learns that the Dōjima family patriarch snatched Yumi and took her back to his private office. He runs over to intervene—against Kazama's advice—and discovers that Nishikiyama has shot the old man dead. Out of his deep concern for Nishikiyama and Yumi, Kiryū tells them to flee the scene before the cops arrive. Caught red-handed with the murder weapon, Kiryū takes the fall, losing both his standing in the family and his freedom as he spends the next ten years in prison.

The bulk of Yakuza thus unfolds in 2005 with Kiryū back on the outside and trying to reconnect with anyone still alive from his past. The yakuza view him with contempt since they believed he killed not only a member of his own clan, but a high-ranking one. Kazama writes to Kiryū in prison and expresses his sympathy while also admitting that his position prevents him from meeting Kiryū in person or even sending anyone to pick him up after his release. Nishikiyama evaded suspicion for his crime and successfully rose in power to establish his own family. Yumi, however, seems to have vanished.

As a narrative-heavy game, Yakuza keeps players reined in pretty tight during the initial chapters. This loosens over time, gradually allowing Kiryū more leeway in exploring the fictional red-light district of Kamuro-chō where most of the important events take place. This detailed stretch of about 12 city blocks—modeled after the real-life Tokyo neighborhood of Kabuki-chō—serves as a character unto itself with densely-packed alleyways, crowds of pedestrians roaming the streets, and a number of businesses that Kiryū can patronize.

This means that should players ever need a break from investigating the main story, they can spend an infinite amount of time just hanging out around town. A decent number of passerby will just look to tussle, the Yakuza equivalent of an RPG random encounter, but others will seek Kiryū's help. Completing these side-quests not only nets in-game rewards, they add a tremendous amount of personality to an already charming experience. There are also restaurants, batting cages, crane games, casino games, pachinko parlors, and an entire system for dating women who work at hostess clubs.

With a gangster protagonist, a contemporary urban setting ruled by organized crime, and an open-world structure, Yakuza drew immediate, knee-jerk comparisons to the Grand Theft Auto series. Yet the two have less in common than you'd expect. For starters, given the small scale and heavy foot traffic of Kamuro-chō, no one's stealing any cars—least of all Kiryū who might not even know how to drive.

More importantly, Yakuza holds players to Kiryū's own high standards and does not allow for any civilian casualties; pressing the attack buttons outside of sanctioned combat has no effect. Anyone hoping to play Yakuza like it's Grand Theft Auto: Tokyo Drift will come away disappointed. Kamuro-chō offers plenty of adult entertainment but you can't engage in wanton destruction or gun down cops.

If anything, Yakuza plays like a darker version of Shenmue, Sega's groundbreaking Dreamcast adventure game. Both titles let players explore a realistic facsimile of modern Japan at their leisure with shops to peruse and the occasional street brawl. Both feature plenty of mini-games within the game for players to enjoy outside of advancing the critical path. If Shenmue star Ryō Hazuki moved to Tokyo and fell in with the wrong crowd, he might have traded sparring with sailors for cracking skulls in Kamuro-chō. 

It should come as no surprise that Toshihiro Nagoshi, the driving creative force behind Yakuza, got his start designing 3D games under Yu Suzuki at Sega in the 90s which included working on Shenmue. Nagoshi actually studied film at university and ended up using his knowledge of basic cinematography to better inform his coworkers about camera placement within virtual environments. 

After Sega withdrew from the console business in the early 2000s and restructured the company accordingly, Nagoshi found himself in an executive position in charge of multiple teams now fused into a single department. Beyond the usual brainstorming sessions inside the office, Nagoshi also made a habit of inviting his subordinates out drinking after hours. In a 2021 interview with Game Informer, he explained, "[it] was a much easier way for me to communicate with especially the younger team members and have them feel like it was easier to speak out with courage.”

Nagoshi's go-to destination for bar hopping was—you guessed it—Kabuki-chō. His choice of watering holes would lead to a conversation that changed his life and Sega's fortunes. Again from Game Informer, "When we were drinking and talking about it, someone, and it wasn’t me, someone mentioned, ‘What if there was a game where we can go to all of the places here? What if there was a way to do that?’ That really stuck and eventually led to the Yakuza series."

Despite the burgeoning popularity of open-world crime-em-ups, Nagoshi's pitch to the top brass met with heavy resistance. Management felt a game full of thugs and booze would only appeal to a niche audience, even though Nagoshi pointed out that movies and television had already made the yakuza famous around the world. From his point of view, this was an untapped market for a video game that Sega could pursue instead of chasing the success of a pre-established hit.

Once Nagoshi managed to convince his bosses to give him a green light, further problems arose from Sony and CERO. Both the platform holders and the ratings boards balked at a game featuring normal people fighting and killing one another, even in a title sold exclusively for players 18 or older. The yakuza tradition of cutting off a pinky as an act of atonement became a sticking point. In a 2006 interview with 1up.com, producer Masayoshi Kikuchi explained "We originally had such scenes, but we had to remove them because of rating issues."

Ultimately, Sega released Ryū ga Gotoku in Japan in 2005 for the PlayStation 2 and found immediate success with domestic audiences; the first game alone would eventually sell one million copies. An international release the following year, now called Yakuza, shipped with a full English dub featuring known actors like Mark Hamill and Michael Madsen in supporting roles. While this version never caught on in quite the same fashion as the original Japanese release, Sega had already committed to continuing the story, debuting Ryū ga Gotoku 2 in December 2006.

Ryū ga Gotoku/Yakuza/Like a Dragon now stands as one of Sega's biggest tentpoles, a franchise with fans in all territories. At least part of that success comes from regular re-releases of older games with updated graphics and additional material. Sega remastered the first two games in high-definition and sold them in a bundle for the PlayStation 3 and Wii U before producing a full remake called Yakuza Kiwami; today Kiwami remains available on all modern platforms in multiple languages.

As for me, I initially wrote off Yakuza as behind the times when I first saw it, probably because I made the mistake mentioned above and assumed it was Japan's take on GTA. It didn't help that the series came into being while I was relocating to another continent, a process that meant a lot less time for any video games not in handheld form. As the sequels came out I would always download a demo, mess around with it for an hour, and then shrug my shoulders.

Today I remain a Yakuza novice in that I've only played two of the many entries and never came close to finishing either one. Kamuro-chō may not take up much space but each one of these games ships with so much stuff packed inside that I'm honestly intimidated at the prospect of playing one to completion.

I did sit down with both the PS2 original and Kiwami to prepare for this column; the latter looks fantastic and greatly expands the battle system of its predecessor but it also feels overstuffed at times with new subplots and extended dialogue. The former has its share of rough edges—there's no camera control and Kiryū has a tendency to whiff his attacks—but I do think the very first game holds up quite well.

Sadly, Sega doesn't see things that way, as the company is in the midst of delisting older versions of Yakuza from digital storefronts in favor of newer editions and fans are rightly crying foul. For a series with such cinematic roots and traditions, it's ironic that the Yakuza games now struggle with the same preservation issues as popular films beset by endless remasters.

Even though I live in Japan now, I still view Kiryū's antics in Kamuro-chō as escapism. Sure, I could take a train or plane to Tokyo and spend an entire night in Kabuki-chō, but it would cost a hell of a lot of money and I'd probably pass out on a curb. No, I'll stick to the digital version and enjoy the fantasy of being a hot guy who can win every fight, eat unlimited meals, drink whiskey like it's water, and still have enough wits to hit a home run or nab a stuffed animal in a claw machine. 

Writer/podcaster/performer Diamond Feit lives in Osaka, Japan but xer work and opinions exist across the internet.