Yakuza character Masks for your iPhone.
Load them up turn your phone sideways and you’re ready to hit the underworld!
Fantastic Persona Burning Up shots from the Yakuza cast by @sinomanope Really love how Haruka turned out!
I’m surprised the yakuza series has not received an anime series or at least an OVA.
Next Nagoshi-raw announced where they will be playing the Ryu Ga Gotoku 1&2 HD WiiU version live for the first time!
Watch it live here next Monday at 9PM JST.
They will also be answering questions from the audience and discussing the mascot contest entries. It’ll be in complete Japanese but it’s Nagoshi-san hanging out and drinking while playing video games!
Sega’s Consolidated Financial Statement is out and Ryu Ga Gotoku 5 has sold 590,000 units!
Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio have outdone themselves with this release selling 30k more than RGG4 in less amount of time!
Let’s pore over previous fiscal year numbers:
Ryu ga Gotoku 5: Yume, Kanaeshimono | Japan | PS3 | 590k
Yakuza: Dead Souls | (Japan / Europe / US) | PS3 | 550k
Ryu ga Gotoku 4: Densetsu wo Tsugumono | Japan | PS3 | 560k
Kurohyo: Ryu ga Gotoku Shinsyo | Japan | PSP | 250k
We’re 153 days since the release of Ryu Ga Gotoku 5 in Japan.
So it’s not the longest time in between releases but still no news from SEGA yet.
Trust me as soon as we know I’ll be writing about it!
Sega’s Free to Play PS Vita card battling RPG Samurai and Dragons All Star Character pack!
I can only hope this game eventually makes its way to the west.
Amazing Yakuza genderswap art by @ToReMa7
I figured it was time for an update on our Facebook campaign.
We’ve stagnated a little bit on our bring yakuza 5 West Facebook campaign but on the bright side we do have Sega’s attention. They know it exists and are watching!
Over the last month or so we’ve had a couple of shares from smaller news sites and even operation rainfall gave us their support. To all of you I say thanks!
Now for the next part. We need to go mainstream! We’ve got a campaign here with nearly 3000 Likes, not a small number by any petition standards, but we can do better! Remember to share the image encourage your friends to like and share.
Tweet the editors of major video game news sites (Polygon, Destructoid, Kotaku, IGN, Joystiq, Gamespot, The Escapist, et al) and let them know what we’re trying to do. That page has been seen by over 100,000 people yet only a little under 3000 have Liked it!
Most of all I want to say a simple Thank You to the fans who have already help spread the word.
Long time Yakuza fans may remember DragonofDojima17. This guy was instrumental in bringing Yakuza 3 to the west. Campaigning to Sega for a long time before we got anything.
He was well known on the forums and in Yakuza fan communities and even got interviewed on Sega’s official blog! For being the most tenacious fan and supporter of Yakuza in the west.
He was more than a little disheartened when Yakuza 3 was released with all of its cuts but after Yakuza 4/Dead Souls making their way out over here he’s back to campaign for Yakuza 5 claiming it to be the “best game in the series”. Bold statement that is shared by a lot of the fans that have played the Japanese version.
How can you get involved with his campaign? If you’re a YouTuber create a video response and add tags “yakuza, sega, gaming, bringyakuzawest”.
Basically get talking about it!
Here are some amazingly hi-res screenshots of Kazuma Kiryu in Hot Shots Golf 6 via DengekiOnline.
The DLC should be released today on the PSN in Japan and cost ¥500
If this is released internationally I may reconsider my want to buy this game.
Takaya Kuroda posted images from the Famitsu 2012 awards where he received an award for his voice acting of Kazuma Kiryu!
Along with game director Masayoshi Yokoyama getting an award for Ryu Ga Gotoku 5.
Congrats guys!
Happy Birthday Takaya Kuroda!
Kazuma Kiryu’s seiyu is 48 years old today (April 17th JST)!
Want to wish him a happy birthday? Here’s how:
Send him a tweet (or retweet us)
or
Here’s how to leave him a comment on his blog:
- Scroll down to the bottom of this article
- Click the button that says コメントをする
- A popup window will open
- From top to bottom the fields you can fill out are:
- Comment Title
- Comment
- Captcha (Just copy the numbers)
- Your username (Don’t need to sign up any will do)
- Your website URL (if you have one) - Next click the 投稿する button
- An admin needs to approve your comment so it could take some time to show up!
We’ve had hundreds of entries so it may take a couple of days to choose and contact winners. All entrants will receive the digital content, which includes official wallpapers and a PS3 theme!
9 winners will be chosen at random and then placement will be chosen at random from those 9.
Big thanks to all of our partners SegaBits, RadioSega, Sega-Addicts, Sega Driven, and Sega! When I came up with this idea for a multi-site key scavenger hunt I wasn’t sure I could pull it off. These guys jumped at the opportunity to help and were awesome!
To all of the Yakuza Fans that entered. I just want to again give a big thank you for making this site a success and giving me a great year! The reason this blog exists is to reach a community that is often overlooked. Mission Accomplished. Now, in the coming year our plan is to get the word out about this series and draw even more people into our little slice of Tokyo.
Looking at our traffic we’ve had an amazing year. Ryu Ga Gotoku 5 was announced and released. My 2nd daughter was born (on Ryu Ga Gotoku 5’s release day!). Our campaign to get Sega to bring Yakuza 5 to the west has been a decent success and we’ve expanded the community exponentially from where we started. Since starting this site I’ve seen at least 5 new Yakuza fan sites start up in multiple languages and the Sega community has welcomed us with open arms.
The stories/pages below were our most viewed. This is what you guys loved the most in the last year. A mix of serious stories, silliness, crafts and information. Thank you dear readers for giving us such a great first year.
Lego Kamurocho
This started as a passion project for me. The idea was to use the Lego creation kit to design a piece of Tokyo. My original designs for this were a massive chunk of Kamurocho that was way too cost prohibitive to build. The design was streamlined and parts number reduced until it was a small playset that still managed to capture the feeling of the game.
Yakuza animated PS3 theme
This one was my first time using the PS3 theme creation toolkit. Since I wanted to make something that could be passed off at a glance as an official theme I put a ton of attention to detail in to it. Not many people realized when they first installed the theme that the light changes based on the time of day!
Ryu Ga Gotoku 5’s minigames
The giant list of minigames playable in Ryu Ga Gotoku 5 is insane! Back when they were announced I got the scoop early and, with the help of some fans on our twitter got them all listed. Turns out you guys love your minigames as this was our 3rd most viewed article in the last year!
5 changes I love in Kurohyou 2 that need to be in Yakuza 5
After picking up the completely Japanese Yakuza PSP spinoff and fumbling my way through the menus and story these were the things I came to appreciate most about it. A portable title with a different producer than the main series they were free to experiment and made a ton of wonderful changes that are unique to the title!
Sega’s Official stance on Yakuza HD & 5; No plans.. yet
An off handed comment about localization of Yakuza 5 and HD collection by a Sega employee got Yakuza fans mad. We reached out to Sega to clerify their comment and they let us know that Yakuza 5 and HD are japan only, for now. But as mentioned if there is a fan outcry we could see them in the west.
What’s new in Yakuza 5
We ran down the biggest changes to the series ever to give readers a taste of what they can expect in Yakuza 5.
Bring Yakuza 5 West
The post that rallied multiple communities. What started as a grass roots campaign soon over 75,000 people with nearly 2,500 likes and over 1000 shares! I don’t think we’ve ever seen such a concentrate of Yakuza Fans in one place before. We showed Sega there is an audience and every day it continues to grow.
Yakuza Demake
An 8bit demake of Yakuza for the NES. Before I checked our stats I had no idea this would be on our most popular list!
Valentines Day 2013
This set of Valentines day cards were the perfect gift for Yakuza lovers on that special day.After card number 4 coming up with phrases proved tricky. Kudos to Hallmark’s writers it’s a tough job!
Senior Producer, Yasuhiro Noguchi, Leaves SEGA of America
Yas was the lead on the localization team for Yakuza 4 and Dead Souls. He was passionate and always tried to provide the best the series had to offer in its most complete form. It’s thanks to him nothing was cut from Yakuza 4 and Dead Souls was released in the west at all. It was a sad day for us all when he left the studio.
YakuzaFan.com is 1 year old!
To celebrate we’re giving away a bunch of prizes to all of our readers! We’ve partnered up with some of the best sites in the Sega community to have a little fun!
Click here to go to our anniversary page and enter to win some great Yakuza prizes!
This contest will run for 2 days so start finding keys right away!
Big thank you to all of the sites who have helped us with this contest and Sega of America for providing some of the exclusive prizes! We’re glad that over the last year we’ve grown to become the number one English Yakuza source on the internet. The Yakuza fans are the best, most loyal video game community we’ve ever had the privilege to be a part of!
