Game Creator: Toshihiro Nagoshi of Nagoshi Studio
Memorable Games
The industry's first yakuza game, targeting a specific audience by going against the trend
From the end of the 1990s onwards, overseas titles began to stand out among the top-selling games. This led to game companies trying to create games that would sell equally well, but they began to focus on a wider demographic, thinking that these games wouldn't sell overseas or that casual gamers wouldn't play them. I was faced with a dilemma: if "making games" meant simply pandering to the masses, then there's nothing more boring than that.
"Yakuza" is a game born from going against this trend. We abandoned overseas markets and didn't consider popularity among women or children. We thought that by narrowing our target audience, we could create something that no one else could. Even if the overall numbers were to decrease, if the game was supported by people who truly wanted to play it, we would still have a decent number. We wanted to prove that there are many different options for games depending on how you target them. As a result of continuing to create in this way, the number of overseas users and female fans has increased.
People often ask me, "You like gangster and violent movies, don't you?" But actually, that's not the case. I like warm movies with happy endings (laughs). But I feel like the worldview of Toei's gangster movies is imprinted in the DNA of Japanese people as a taste for entertainment. The only thing missing was games, but it's a genre that exists in TV dramas and manga as well.
So I figured it wouldn't be a huge flop. However, I couldn't make it based on Toei's worldview, so I made "Yakuza" feel more modern. The setting was the same year as the release, and I threw in social phenomena and incidents that were happening at the time as material. The town has a Don Quijote and a convenience store, and it's built with great attention to detail.
Furthermore, real-life actors such as Beat Takeshi, Sho Aikawa, and Shinichi Tsutsumi also appear. We wanted to create a mysterious gap between the world that is connected to reality and the gameplay, while still having the feel of a proper game.
I didn't play many games before I entered the industry, but the first hit I made with my own hands was the arcade game "Daytona USA." It was a simulator that allowed you to relive races, so even though it wasn't a game-like concept, I was able to translate the experiences and emotions I felt in real life into a game. Even now, I want to turn the things I feel in real life into games.
Nagoshi's masterpiece
