Yakuza 5 Message Board

Yakuza 5 was first released in Japan in December 2012. It is now January 2014 and there's still no word on a Western release. Fix this, Sega. Read more...

Sega Sammy CCO Toshihiro Nagoshi recently told Edge that the Yakuza development team is focusing on their Japan-exclusive PS3 and PS4 launch title, Yakuza Ishin, rather than localizing 2012's Yakuza 5 for Western audiences. Ishin is a spin-off set in the late Edo period in Japan and will feature some form of Vita Cross-Play.

Nagoshi explained that due to the Yakuza team's size, they decided to pass up working on a port of Y5 to focus solely on Ishin. Nagoshi feels that he and his team "owe it to PlayStation fans" for Ishin to be a PS4 launch title, "even if it means a bit of pressure."

Nagoshi expressed interest in localizing Ishin for other territories, provided the Yakuza team finds the manpower and money to do so. Yazuka: Dead Souls was the last game in the series to be launched outside of Japan.

The Yakuza games are some of the very best on the PS3, so Sega's silence on a possible localisation of Yakuza 5 is killing me. The publisher has since broken that silence, however, responding to a Yakuza fansite. In haiku. Like every single Japan-related PR communication should be. The poem, sent to Yakuza Fan, reads: I cannot comment.Stay tuned to the Sega site.Good information. E3 is close. Let's keep our fingers crossed for E3, OK? Yakuza Haiku [Yakuza Fan]

Hey. Sega. Yeah, you. We're still waiting for our Yakuza 5 localisation.

#yakuza I know it has flaws. Some of them completely alienating for most people. But damn it, I don't care. The Yakuza series is just about my favourite thing on the PS3. More »

#importpreview Until I sat down and played Yakuza 5, my knowledge of the Yakuza series was limited, to say the least. I knew the characters and some of the story (from wikis, friends, and the movie), but when it came down to playing the series, the most time I had spent with it was in playing the demos of Yakuza 3, Yakuza 4, and Yakuza: Dead Souls. While I don't have particularly bad memories of playing those demos, none inspired me to go out and buy the full games. More »

#christmas The Christmas season is upon us once again (as was frightfully apparent from the Christmas songs that started playing sometime around, oh, November 1st… (seriously, at least wait for Thanksgiving to be over)), and soon gifts will be piled under the Christmas tree for all to see and wonder at what goodies are contained within. More »

#yakuza Yakuza 5 is scheduled for release in Japan next week and the developers at Sega are in full PR mode. Executive producer Toshihiro Nagoshi and producer Masayoshi Yokoyama spoke to Weekly Famitsu in a pre-release interview to talk about the latest in the Yakuza franchise. More »

#yakuza Kazuma Kiryu. The "Dragon of Dojima" and one of the main protagonists of the Yakuza series. This walking powerhouse of violence has come a long way from his youthful days of beating up biker gangs through the seedy underbelly of Japan's criminal world and to prison and back. More »

#yakuza To mark the release of crime saga Yakuza 5, Sony is putting out a special (tacky—sorry!) PS3 bundle, complete with a gold colored PS3 controller. The controller is just gold—kinda ho hum. Know what can jazz it up? Stickers. More »

One of the arcade games available within Yakuza 5's Club Sega game centers is Virtua Fighter 2, available in both revision 2.0 and 2.1 of the arcade game. The tenuous link to Virtua Fighter makes the Yakuza series even more Shenmue-like!

Meanwhile, the lascivious table tennis of past games has been replaced with an equally humiliating air hockey game, with the goal of staring at hostesses' cleavage, basically. It's a good thing these activities are fully optional.

Other minigames within Yakuza 5 include river fishing, snowball fights, and batting cages, along with ... chicken races? Taiko Drum Master is also available in arcades.

The first special-edition releases of the new toploading PS3 have been revealed for Japan, and they're ... uh ... different, and made in honor of two games that definitely won't have special-edition hardware elsewhere. The Yakuza 5 "Emblem Edition" (above) features gold emblems of the virtual crime families featured in the series around the edges of the 250GB system, and a gold controller to match, along with a special themed USB drive. It's due in Japan December 6.

The Fist of the North Star: Ken's Rage 2 "Legend Edition" has character art in white along the periphery of the black system, with a controller that is supposed to feature a Big Dipper design, but which looks a lot like it's been pooped on by birds. It'll be released on December 20.

#ps3 Hello tacky! Sony is readying two PS3 super slim specials (one for Yakuza 5 and the other for Ken's Rage). Both are shockingly unattractive. More »

New trailers for Yakuza 5 introduce all the protagonists, the new locations (based on real Japanese cities), and the storyline. Oh, and a bunch of crowds being beaten with random objects.

#yakuza5 The Yakuza series of games have always been serious, testosterone-filled stories about hard men kicking each other's asses, broken up sporadically by mini-games, activities, and general fooling around. The latest game, Yakuza 5, is no different. As previously reported, Namco Bandai's Taiko no Tatsujin appears as a fully playable game within the Yakuza 5 game. So what's it like, playing a video game within a video game, a la Inception? More »

One of Yakuza 5's subplots is about series hero Kazuma Kiryu's adopted daughter, Haruka, trying to find success as an idol. The usual street combat would be an odd fit for this storyline, so instead Haruka will have dance-based battles, according to leaked Famitsu info.

Haruka's "battles" take the form of a rhythm game in which you compete against rival dancers. As you perform, you'll build up a gauge, much like the "Heat Gauge" in the series' non-dance fights. And, like in those fights, you'll be able to perform special moves when it's full - in this case, Dance Heat moves.

There's even a parallel RPG mechanic, in the form of "expression power," which is awarded at the end of every battle by spectators.

#yakuza Celebrity chef Tatsuya Kawagoe is young, handsome, and an internet meme in Japan. The 40 year-old seems to have become an online gag because he's a good-looking successful guy and sports what the Japanese call a "doyagoa" ("self-satisfied look"; ドヤ顔). More »

#yakuza It's not uncommon for video game companies to reference their own games in...their own games. But Yakuza 5, never one to turn down a tie-in, is something else: Yakuza 5 features another company's game. More »

Yakuza games are packed with odd minigames that have you hitting baseballs, playing darts, romancing hostesses, and even fishing for zombies. Yakuza 5 adds a new, but familiar distraction, according to a leaked Famitsu article reported on by Andriasang: a Taiko Drum Master minigame.

Namco Bandai's arcade game will appear in-game as an arcade machine, with a variety of songs. This is kind of fun news, but also a potential roadblock for localization, as Sega and Namco Bandai would have to coordinate rights for a western release.

#yakuza Sega's Yakuza series of crime games always pride themselves on top-notch voice acting and realistic faces. The games continually get some of the biggest names in Japan to lend their voices (and mugs) to the games. More »

#yakuza In the Yakuza series, the protagonists do many things: Lead mobs, beat each other up, meet porn stars in clubs… Now, in Yakuza 5, it looks like we'll be offered another perspective on the multiple protagonists where they'll partake in other activities while they don't pursue suspects, solve mysteries, or uncover conspiracies. More »

#yakuza Sega's Yakuza gangster games and porn stars are no strangers. A few years back, adult film star Rio made it to the final selection process to see which hopefuls would appear in the game. Then, there was the Yakuza hostess who starred in an adult movie after appearing in Yakuza 4... More »

#yakuza With the announcement that Yakuza 5 will feature 5 main characters in 5 major cities across Japan, and a new game engine to upgrade the outdated look of the series, Sega has released a teaser site and revealed the back story of the new chapter. More »

Yakuza 5, as revealed in a leak from the latest Famitsu magazine, sounds like it's expanding significantly on its predecessors, spreading out into five Japanese cities (Tokyo, Sapporo, Nagoya, Osaka, and Fukuoka) with one protagonist in each - for a total of five, one more than any previous game.

Those protagonists include Kazuma Kiryu, who is now a cab driver in Fukuoka (but will certainly get back to solving everyone's problems with violence), Yakuza 4's escaped convict Taiga Saejima, once again in prison, loan shark Shun Akiyama in Osaka, and Kiryu's daughter Haruka, playable for the first time. Why, we remember when she was just an NPC in a PS2 game, cheering for us as we showed off in the batting cages ... they grow up so fast.

According to the summary of this Famitsu interview, Yakuza 5 has had double the development time of previous games, and features a new engine, allowing the game to move from battle scenes to adventuring "seamlessly." The game is reportedly set for a Japanese release this December.

#sega Sega's Yakuza games (above) are wonderful. They have great dialogue. Great cutscenes. And cool combat. Yet, they feel like PlayStation 2 games. They're not—they are PS3 games. But they feel so last gen, due to the tech that powers them. More »

According to Japanese blog Andriasang, information circulated out of Famitsu magazine that Yakuza 5 will indeed launch on the PlayStation 3, as has been the case with previous Yakuza games...