Mahjong minigame confirmed for Yakuza 4 (PS3)

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Excellent news!

Sega released Yakuza 3 for the Playstation 3 earlier this year, a localised version of the Japanese game Ryū ga Gotoku 3. Sadly they chose to cut a lot of the content including over twenty of the side-missions and four of the many playable minigames, including mahjong.

A March 2011 US/Euro release for Yakuza 4 was announced some time ago but now Sega have given confirmation that the mahjong game will be retained this time.

http://kotaku.com/5656944/sega-yakuza-4 ... l-be-minor

Shōgi too.

http://forums.sega.com/showpost.php?p=6 ... stcount=13

You might have to wander through a beautifully detailed model of a bustling Japanese city and beat up/down some thugs to get to it, but there will be a virtual mahjong parlour in the game and in that parlour you will be able to play modern Japanese mahjong - with riichi and dora - and it should be presented in the English language.

This should attract a lot of new players to mahjong both in America and Europe. An English-language MJ minigame was previously featured in Yakuza 2 on the PS2 and that's where I learnt to play.

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Here's a video of someone playing mahjong in the Japanese version - and completing the Seven Pairs trophy requirement in some style too!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsxc_tu0cJ0

[Ignatius]

And will this game have all the missions uncut?

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Well, you'll see from the Kotaku article that this has not been confirmed.

I guess there might be a few minor changes or deletions, but hopefully nothing too severe this time.

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Yakuza 4 was released in Europe and America this week.

I'm playing Japanese mahjong in English on my PS3, oh yus.

yakuza4.jpg (27.82 KiB) Viewed 19239 times

The cuts were very minor this time - they just removed the quiz machine in the Sega arcades (and changed the title music I think).

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I managed to get my mahjong guide for Yakuza 4 prepared quite quickly. It went live on GameFAQs a few hours ago and has had over 200 hits already. Makes a nice change for me to write a guide for a game that people are actually playing!

Since a lot of them will be new to mahjong, the guide includes the full Japanese rules - although admittedly ASCII plain-text isn't the idea medium for this.

Anticipating that some folks might buy Yakuza 4 especially for the mahjong, I've also included a detailed walkthrough that will get you from the start of the story to the mahjong parlour. If you skip everything you can do it in under a quarter hour, but otherwise it shouldn't take more than an hour. Then you can save so you can go straight to it in future.

If you have any general interest in modern Japanese culture then you will love the game - it's set in "Kamurochō" which is based very heavily on the Kabukichō entertainment district in Shinjuku, Tokyo. You can see the level of detail in the city model in this clip of the original Japanese game. (The Euro/US version retains the Japanese speech but all the menus and captions are in English.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rK492eV9OCI

Also I forgot to mention there's a big Kindai Mahjong / Akagi poster in the parlour.

http://blog-imgs-46.fc2.com/g/h/o/ghost ... GP1847.jpg

[xKime]

"Penalty Arakawa" "Broke Kengo" "Ron Call Yasuo"... haha, translated names?

If I only had a PS3. Do invite me over to play Yakuza 4 if I'm ever in Europe.

>Also I forgot to mention there's a big Kindai Mahjong / Akagi poster in the parlour.

It says the link is broken. ;_;

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"Penalty Arakawa" "Broke Kengo" "Ron Call Yasuo"... haha, translated names?

Heh, I think they must be! I bet they were Chombo and Dobon in Japanese, and they added "Call" so you don't think it's Ron short for Ronald.

If I only had a PS3. Do invite me over to play Yakuza 4 if I'm ever in Europe.

I wouldn't come over especially for that, but of course.

It says the link is broken. ;_;

Really? It still works for me... hmmm. Try these ones!

http://bbal1791.blog66.fc2.com/blog-entry-829.html
http://ameblo.jp/muisan/image-105175890 ... 79054.html

Washizu is certainly a "colourful" character. Heh!

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This is kinda weird - the underground fight club* in Yakuza 4 is sponsored by the Ameba Pigg people! There's a big Ameba logo on the canvas of the fighting arena.

*(It's a fighting fight club not a mahjong fight club.)

[Referee]

So, wasn't that what they said in Hill Street Blues? Ron Call 8:03 am

[Shirluban]

This is kinda weird - the underground fight club* in Yakuza 4 is sponsored by the Ameba Pigg people! There's a big Ameba logo on the canvas of the fighting arena.

*(It's a fighting fight club not a mahjong fight club.)

Ahhh!!!!!
You're breaking the first and second rules of Fight Club at the same time!

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I've been helping several people with mahjong queries on the GameFAQs forum and my Yakuza 4 mahjong guide has had well over a thousand views now.

There are a lot of new people out there learning this game of ours!

So, wasn't that what they said in Hill Street Blues? Ron Call 8:03 am

Heh! Almost...

You're breaking the first and second rules of Fight Club at the same time!

Ooops! But it's easier than breaking them separately.

[Torgo]

Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw of Escapist Magazine reviews Yakuza 4:
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/ ... uza-4?spam

Enjoy

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His weekly rants on ZP have been the highlight of my Wednesdays for several years now.

That's actually a pretty positive review by his standards!

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The next game in the Yakuza series has just been confirmed for an English release next March.

Released in Japan for the PS3 in June 2011 under the name Ryū ga Gotoku: of the End, it's another quirky un-numbered spin-off from the main series. It has a modern setting and features the regular characters in the usual Shinjuku map but it's primarily a third-person shooter and the city's full of zombies.

The Japanese version includes the usual range of over twenty playable minigames though (including riichi mahjong) and it seems likely that the English version, which will be entitled Yakuza: Dead Souls, will include these too.

http://www.sega.co.uk/games/yakuza-dead-souls