Cognition Dissemination: Like a Dragon Gaiden Is Very Important

Sega’s Yakuza/Like a Dragon series has included plenty of great features in the time since the series’ debut more than 15 years ago, far too many for me to recount here before veering far off topic. (Though maybe I should keep the idea around for another post.) One of my favorites is the prevalence of Club Sega arcades, replicas of the (unfortunately fading) real Club Sega arcades around Japan. (They were called Sega High-Tech Land in Yakuza 0, since the “Club Sega” brand didn’t exist in the late 1980s.) The locations are great for playing and replaying the arcade versions of classic Sega games.

This feels like a feature that has always existed in the current robust form, but Sega didn’t start including real ports of their classic games until Yakuza 5. The game featured the original Virtua Fighter 2 and, interestingly, Bandai Namco’s Taiko no Tatsujin. But the arcades really came into their own with Yakuza 0, which included classics Space Harrier, Fantasy Zone, OutRun, and Super Hang-On. Newer games have been introduced in the time since, with Yakuza 6 even featuring the arcade version of Virtua Fighter 5: Final Showdown and the 2011 rendition of Puyo Puyo.

Now, Sega and Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio are proceeding to the next step for Club Sega. The upcoming Like a Dragon: The Man Who Erased His Name will include two titles that Sega hasn’t otherwise released in retro collections and separate digital releases.

One such title is Sega Racing Classic 2, an alternate rendition of Daytona USA 2. Daytona USA 2 was originally released in arcades worldwide in 1998, but hasn’t been playable anywhere else outside of downloading the rom for play on a Model 2 emulator. A Dreamcast port of the game was planned, according to game magazines from the late 1990s, but it never surfaced. An updated version of the original game called Daytona USA 2001 was released instead. The game will now will be available officially on a home console for the first time, albeit stripped of the “Daytona” branding for licensing reasons. Whether additional modifications will be made is unknown, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there were other minor changes. It’s fine when the core experience will be available.

Another title will be Fighting Vipers 2, the second game in what existed as a sister fighting game series to Virtua Fighter in the 1990s. It was another installment in a short-lived and underappreciated fighting game franchise, this sequel being far more niche than its predecessor. The original Fighting Vipers was at least made available on Sega Saturn worldwide after enjoying time in arcades, and was rereleased for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in 2012. It was later made available in Judgment and Lost Judgment. (This is a hilarious twist, considering Fighting Vipers character Tokio was based off Takuya Kimura circa the mid-1990s, who lends his current likeness to Judgment series protagonist Takayuki Yagami.) Fighting Vipers 2, however, was only ported to Dreamcast after its arcade run, a port that was cancelled for the US after Sega made their decision to pull out of the hardware market. LaD Gaiden will mark the first official port since the early 2000s.

The Master System versions of Galaxy Force and Flicky will also be included. But these are much easier to find compared to the previous two.

LaD Gaiden will be host to two games previously lost outside emulation, two not preserved by Sega themselves. One is getting a home console release for the first time, while the other will get its first in more than 20 years — and its first console release in the United States. When these games have not been preserved, LaD Gaiden should be preserved itself. So, it’s great that this is the first Yakuza/LaD title that won’t get a physical release in the US and Europe.

Sure, it’s good that the Asian physical version will have English options, currently available for preorder on places that sell Asian titles to westerners like Play-Asia. It’s also good that the game will be on Steam, which should help with preservation. This isn’t good enough. The game should be given a thorough physical printing on PlayStation and Xbox platforms worldwide. Even if this will only be a “Gaiden” game, and thus not as robust as a mainline title, it should still get a physical copy for this reason. From my impression, this game will be more than a mere appetizer for Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth, the next mainline game.

If a wider physical release is too much: Throwing Sega Racing Classic 2 and Fighting Vipers 2 on separate collections or giving them separate releases would be nice, especially through GoG.com. LaD Gaiden could also receive an eventual release on the platform, as previous Yakuza/LaD titles have.

Every game should be preserved. But companies should make doubly — perhaps triply — sure that unique renditions of classic games and others that haven’t been ported in decades should be preserved. I hope Sega has already been thinking of ways to provide single releases for the two new arcade games in LaD Gaiden specifically. They’ve undoubtedly heard the criticism about the game itself being a digital-only title in the west, which gives the impression that they won’t budge on that decision. Separate releases will suffice.