Among the many games on the February 2025 videogame calendar is Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii, a Like a Dragon spin-off featuring fan favorite Goro Majima dressing as a pirate and fighting his way across Hawaii. Yet, as wild as that idea seems, we could have had an even stranger spin-off.
"During the end of the Infinite Wealth development," RGG studio director and series executive producer Masayoshi Yokoyama told the PlayStation Blog, "we began percolating the idea of a spin-off that stars characters who are not Ichiban Kasuga. It was almost as if we were creating a blown-up sub-story for Infinite Wealth. For quite some time, I wanted to make a game called Like a Dragon: Tuna, where Kazuma Kiryu, as a tuna fisherman, sets off to sea to fight against fishing boats."
What an amazing almost-was. I'm imagining a game somewhere between Dave the Diver and Dredge, only starring the Dragon of Dojima. While Like a Dragon: Tuna sadly did not eventuate, the ideas behind it inspired the spin-off we're actually going to get—one in which an amnesiac Majima learns who he really is, in-between a whole bunch of real-time brawling in the style of the classic Yakuza games rather than the turn-based menu combat of the more recent Like a Dragons.
Also it has jumping. In a first for the series you'll have a jump button, an idea RGG decide to add because, as Yokoyama explained, "the character Majima looks good while jumping." Another new addition is the Sea Dog fighting style, which lets Majima dual-wield short swords as well as a variety of "tricky pirate tools" as the store page puts it.
The Like a Dragon series is famous for its substories—side quests with a much goofier tone than the main storylines. Its spin-offs let the games dedicate themselves to that kind of silliness, and at a runtime Yokoyama calls "perfect in size for adults. The Like a Dragon series is like an all-you-can-eat restaurant where you can choose from meat, seafood, and anything else you want and eat however much you like. But as you mature, you start to appreciate well-balanced, good-proportion meals. Spin-offs are like that."
Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii will be out on February 27, 2025 on Steam.
