Nonetheless, it was significant in some ways as it was the first game to feature Sonic properly modelled in 3D, and even much of his moveset was implemented for his character in Super Smash Bros Brawl and subsequent entries. Credit: Segaĭid you know the blue blur had his own fighting game? Preceding Super Smash Brosby a few years, Sonic The Fighters (also known as Sonic Championship) was a cartoony low-poly fighting spin-off pitched by none other than arcade maestro Yu Suzuki himself, though this was far from hitting the bar of Virtua Fighter. Oh, and before you wave it off as something that’s just “bizarre Japan”, the UK apparently has a few similar interactive urinals, and the whole concept was actually introduced in a British online magazine called Yanko Design One has you competing against the previous player’s score (ghost pisser?), represented on screen as two players blowing milk out of their nose and seeing who will get blown out of a sumo ring, and the other uses the force of your urine to mimic the force of a naughty wind attempting to blow off a woman’s dress. Obviously Yakuza Kiwami 2 only simulates this via QTE-style controls but it still incorporates two real mini-games. Around 2011, the company trialled ToyLets, a collection of interactive mini-games installed in public urinals – in other words lads, a game that’s controlled by the power of your piss. On the subject of Sega mining its history, here’s one of its weirdest. You’d be forgiven for only just hearing of Motor Raid since it never got a home port when it released in arcades back in the late 90s, so thank goodness Sega chose to preserve it and delight new audiences, not to mention let detective Yagami blow off some steam. Besides racing against the clock, where you finish also affects where you end up racing, with only the very best able to race on a secret planet under the eyes of a large Sonic statue. Think Road Rash with a Tron aesthetic and you’ve got Motor Raid, a futuristic neon-soaked racer quite unlike Sega’s more realistic racers like Sega Rally and Manx TT Superbike, not to mention the fact that you can smash into opponents or knock them out of your way with melee weapons. Nonetheless that addictive Puyo gameplay remains intact. Its inclusion in Yakuza 6 was just shortly after the puzzler began gaining more international attention after the release of puzzle mash-up Puyo Puyo Tetris, and so features the same modern visuals rather than the classic look of the Puyo Puyo 2 cabinets you’re more likely to find in a Japanese arcade. Tetris may be the puzzler known the world over but in Japan, Puyo Puyo is king, a drop puzzler built with competition at its heart as you aim to pop as many of the titular bean-shaped things, setting off a dizzying chain of combos that sends more garbage Puyo over to your opponent’s screen. Also, a fun fact: the big Club Sega in Kamurocho’s Theatre Square (pictured above) is actually the site of the Humax Pavilion Shinjuku complex in real life, so who’s to say Club Sega can’t live on in virtual fiction? Out Run While we don’t know what these new developments mean for future Yakuza games, here are just some of the best arcade games you should play in the Yakuza series, if only to get a taste of Sega’s good old blue-sky coin-op days. By also including Club Sega arcades, I guess you could say they’re also preserving that history. Besides being known for its gritty melodrama, bone-crunching action and wacky humour, these games have always offered an authentic slice of Japanese culture for virtual tourists, the streets of Kamurocho evolving with the times as much as its real-life counterpart of Kabukicho. Nonetheless, if that’s got you pining for Sega’s arcade yesteryear, those times fortunately live on through Yakuza series, as well as its spin-off Judgment. ![]() Ultimately, the impact of this news will be far more visible in Japan where the big blue Sega logo has adorned arcade centres across the country for decades, which are all set to be renamed to GiGO – at least whichever ones new owners Genda intend to keep open. ![]()
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