Sega and Sony recently ran an interesting surprise Valentine’s Day promotional activity for Yakuza Kiwami. Here’s the setup: actors dressed as yakuza thugs menacingly approach an unsuspecting traveler going about on some business at Shinjuku Station and direct them to a carpet walkway. Or maybe they are real yakuza…? Anyway, the bewildered citizen then traverses the carpet, congratulated with shouts of “thanks for your work!” and a reverential bow, as he or she ultimately makes it forward to a woman at the top who hands them a mysterious gift.
There’s love for everybody – young men weren’t the only recipients of the gift, but women (and an older woman) and a young boy, too. That particular poor young yakuza-in-training might’ve had a rough go of it, it seems. I’m just happy to see the bewildered expressions of the people who were approached, but it’s equally fun to see the approached people who really got into the whole stunt too.
These antics were also covered by 4Gamer and Famitsu.
Check out the videos that were uploaded to PlayStation Japan’s YouTube account below. Doesn’t this make your heart flutter? And want to play Yakuza games?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJlhBqGSPPY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgZll-6CCNw
Yakuza Kiwami is already out in Japan; the current major Yakuza project for Asia in development is Yakuza 6.