Summary
There was a brief moment there where it looked like the newYakuzagame getting announced this month was a mobile title no one seemed all that excited about. Thankfully, that wasn’t the announcement RGG Studio was building towards. Announced during the RGG Summit,the next game in the series will be Like A Dragon: Yakuza Pirate In Hawaii, and its reveal has brought one of the most unexpected collabs of the year along with it.
As if a new Yakuza game in which you are Goro Majima fighting pirates isn’t enough to tide us over until February, RGG also revealed some physical merch to go along with it, headlined by a special edition of the tabletop game, Pop Up Pirate. For those unfamiliar with the premise, the game centers around a plastic pirate in a barrel, and players must take turns to insert swords. Whoever’s sword makes the pirate pop up is eliminated.
Since the Like A Dragon spinoff of Pop Up Pirate has been made in conjunction with Tomy, the creators of the original version of the game, all of the hallmarks are there. Even though the pirate’s design has been tweaked to look like Majima as he will appear in the next game, those familiar with Pop Up Pirate will be able to tell elements of the original character’s design remain. A toy that combines Goro Majima with the pirate from Pop Up Pirate - there’s a sentence I never thought I’d write.
Just When You Thought There Was No Improving On The Pop Up Pirate Formula
Someone Has Gone And Stuck Majima In The Barrel
Pop Up Majima’s likeness also appears on the label at the top of the barrel, and the brightly colored swords included with the original Pop Up Pirate have been replaced with gold, silver, and black ones. RGG’s Pop Up Pirate announcement was paired with reveals of a Pirate Majma print, and a real-life version of The Mad Dog’s eyepatch. All of the information is in Japanese for now, so it’s unclear whether these items can be bought separately, as a bundle, or if they’re exclusives that will be included with special editions of Pirate Yakuza In Hawaii. It’s possible that one or all of them will be pre-order bonuses. If you can read Japanese, you’ll already know.
While it might have come as a surprise to most that Like A Dragon’s next adventure will be a pirate-based one, considering the wacky nature of the series combined with the shift to Hawaii inInfinite Wealth, maybe we should have seen this coming. Not to mention Majima’s eyepatch. I know eyepatches aren’t exclusively a pirate thing, but it was really only a matter of time until Majima leaned into the eyepatch stereotype and took to the high seas.
