The latest in the Like a Dragon series of Japanese crime drama is taking an improbably nautical turn – but its makers want you to know that it’s still got heart
In May last year, an anonymous forum poster shared details of what they claimed would be the next game in the Like a Dragon series, the Japanese gangster drama with a unique spirit of melodrama and ridiculousness. It would star the series’ most theatrical, violent villain, Goro “Mad Dog” Majima, as a pirate with amnesia, and it was called Project Madlantis. This leak went under the radar, quite possibly because it sounded so silly that nobody would believe it. But then, at 2024’s Tokyo Game Show in September, Sega surprised everyone by announcing exactly this. It is called Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii. That’s it. That’s the game.
Madlantis sounds like a theme night at a noughties student bar, but is in fact the game’s pirate hub, a nautical Vegas where captains battle and bet on each other in coliseum face-offs. Ships are outfitted with cannon and pistols, but also machine guns and rocket launchers. Sailing the seas around Hawaii, avoiding lightning strikes during storms, Captain Majima can let go of the wheel of the ship and heft an RPG on to his shoulder to blow up an enemy craft. Boarding another vessel results in a fight between crews, which, given all the tricorn hats and outlandish costumes, looks like a punch-up between a bunch of extras from an 80s music video.
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