Yokoyama once had a wild idea for a game called Like a Dragon: Tuna.
During a chat with the PlayStation Blog (as noted by PCGamer), he spilled the beans on how this quirky concept came about. Around the middle of 2023, the team started tossing around ideas before the launch of Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth, which hit the shelves on January 25, 2024. Originally, they imagined Kazuma Kiryu, not as a pirate but as a tuna fisherman battling against fishing boats in the open sea.
“Long story short, it never came to fruition, but keywords like ‘ship,’ ‘sea,’ and ‘fighting,’ which had since then been engraved in my head, evolved into the concept of pirates,” Yokoyama said. The idea was always to feature someone other than Ichiban Kasuga, so Majima emerged as the best choice for the lead role.
Majima’s unpredictable nature is key, and they wanted to keep that vibe. But the problem was making sure players wouldn’t feel confused if Majima acted differently from what they expected.
“To avoid that, we would need a neutral character who could act the way players anticipate from a protagonist,” Yokoyama said. “But the downside is that we’d end up with a boring protagonist. We gave Kiryu and Kasuga additional personalities to build them into protagonists, but if we did that to Majima, he’d turn out to be a boring guy. To make him a protagonist, we only had two options: amnesia or travel back in time. Without amnesia, Majima wouldn’t have worked as a protagonist.”
People often wonder why some ideas never come to life, and sometimes it’s just the way things go.
Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii will be sailing onto PCs and consoles, old and new, on February 28, 2025. You can already preorder it, and there are discounts and even a special Collector’s Edition with cool stuff included!
