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.