Sega is sweetening the pot for Yakuza 0 day-one purchasers– and giving them some more context for the game at the same time.
The newly-announced Business Edition will include a stainles-steel business card holder with protagonist Kiryu and Majima’s tattoo designs on it, as well as bilingual business cards for several plot-important locales. They’ve also included a “Hostesses” card. The reason? To quote Sony directly: “Because Yakuza.”
If you digital pre-order you’ll receive a static PlayStation theme featuring Kiryu and Majima.
There are two new trailers for the game that give some context as well. The writeup on it is pretty spectacular:
“In Yakuza 0, Tokyo circa 1988 is the stomping grounds of our boy Kazuma Kiryu — just 20 years old — who’s just joined the ranks of the Dojima Family. Y’know, one of the most powerful yakuza crime syndicates in all of Kamurocho, the most prominent red-light district of Tokyo.
One cold December night, he gets handed a job befitting a newcomer to organized crime: go collect this measly 300 grand debt (That’s in Yen, mind you… that would have been around $2,450 in 1988 or just shy of $5k today, adjusting for inflation) from this sad sack of a dude, and deliver the money to the loan shark waiting for it. Pretty standard fare when it comes to that “first-day-on-the-job” task for yakuza.
So, put yourself in Kiryu’s shoes. You do the job, hand off the money, and afterwards, you call — er, page (It’s 1988, remember!) — your best bud and you hit the town. You unwind a bit by sobering some drunks up with your fists, you have a few drinks yourself, you hit the karaoke machine, and you end the night where any good night ends — a little ramen joint. All in all, a good day’s work, right? Right.
Wait… what’s that news on the TV? That guy you just worked over has turned up dead? Uh oh. Your pager starts beeping like crazy. It’s a message from headquarters — the crime family you work for. And it’s got the little code for “urgent” in front of the number. That ramen in your stomach is starting to feel real heavy because now the police and others are going to start poking their noses in your crime family’s business, and take a wild guess how much the head of the family likes having to answer police questioning. That’s where players find themselves when they start off in Yakuza 0. As for Kiryu? He’s going to have to work exceptionally hard if he wants to be alive for lunch.
Oh yeah — that place where they find the dead body of the guy Kiryu worked over? It’s called “The Empty Lot.” Capital “E,” capital “L.” It’s smack dab in the middle of a massive redevelopment project underway in Kamurocho, and let’s just say it’s…pretty valuable.”
Yakuza 0 is available for preorder now. It will release January 24th.