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Thread: Yakuza 1-4 Reprints for PS2 and PS3

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    Default Yakuza 1-4 Reprints for PS2 and PS3

    I love when this happens! The hype about rarity and overpriced games crushed easily by simple reprints! Sega decided to reprint the 4 games which were sold up to $150 used in the last couple of years.

    Yakuza and Yakuza 2 for the PS2 just got reprints, and so did Yakuza 3 and 4 for the PS3. Each game can be had new for $45 to $50 on Amazon. I'm always warning about an early hype about rarity which in rare cases come true.

    Currently Limited Run games, or Devils Third (WiiU), and so many examples of the past (Firefighter FD 18, which I bought last year for a measly $15 complete in box after it was bought around 2006 already for $100).

    Games which are estimated as rare shortly after release are hardly rare because they are perceived as that. The hunt for the new Stadium Events or Suikoden II or EVO is reenforced by not very knowledgeable youtubers who speculate -well- with not a lot of knowledge; and unfortunately, a lot of collectors fall for it in this age of rarity hype and overpriced games.

    Patience pays off. Big time. It is hard to tell which games are 'rare' or 'pricey' in the future. My guess is: games which are overlooked and fly under the radar like always. (Kuon, Haunting Ground and so many others) If you are lucky you get them, if not -- you'll survive without them.
    Last edited by lendelin; 02-21-2017 at 10:25 PM.

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    I agree with you overall (and it's great that the Yakuza series is getting reprints), but Limited Run Games is a bit of a special case. Their company policy is not to reprint games. All rights revert back to the developer after a print run, which means they could do another print run of a game with another company (which has occurred with Eastasiasoft's Soldner-X 2), but you will never see any more copies from LRG, thus, even if a game is reprinted, their variant will always be as rare as whatever print run size they shared publicly. There is also the fact that some LRG releases were developed by their parent company Mighty Rabbit. These games (Breach & Clear, Saturday Morning RPG, Breach & Clear: Deadline) are all but guaranteed to never be reprinted period, not by LRG, not by anybody else. So if anyone is banking on the chance to get something like Breach & Clear for cheap down the road, I wouldn't recommend holding your breath.

    That's not to say there aren't and won't be rarer games, ones that nobody ever expected, and certainly games in higher demand that pull in bigger values. I mean, the physical Vita release of Shovel Knight got a print run smaller than many LRG Vita runs, and there wasn't nearly the rush and perceived rarity, since it had open preorders. But Breach & Clear at 1500 copies is pretty damn rare. I'm curious what that'd be on the old DP rarity scale.

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    I have wanted to try Yakuza so I ordered the reprints from a vendor on Amazon.

    I would prefer "Yakuza Collection" on PS4, but this is pretty cool, too.

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    There's the remake of the first Yakuza, as Yakuza: Kiwami, coming to PS4. I personally would recommend that over the original PS2 release, if only because the first game was dub-only with terrible acting and comically excessive f-bombs. That release also clashes with Yakuza 2-5 and Dead Souls, which are all sub-only (which is more appropriate for a series so heavily steeped in its Japan setting anyway; also, the Japanese actors in Yakuza are fantastic).

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    Pretty cool. I don't know how big the demand is for the series, they could easily reprint more copies and sell them for 20 o 30 usd like many Atlus (a SEGA company) reprints. It's great to know that there is still a market for Yakuza but it's only a matter of days to have the same prices like before because there are less than 15 copies in stock in Amazon ...
    Las calles no son basurero, POR FAVOR TIREN LA BASURA EN SU LUGAR !!!!

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    Quote Originally Posted by eskobar View Post
    Pretty cool. I don't know how big the demand is for the series, they could easily reprint more copies and sell them for 20 o 30 usd like many Atlus (a SEGA company) reprints. It's great to know that there is still a market for Yakuza but it's only a matter of days to have the same prices like before because there are less than 15 copies in stock in Amazon ...
    I wouldn't worry about these selling out soon. You can get them places outside of Amazon. Reprints like this usually last more than a few days.


    If anyone wants them all in a bundle for a bit of a discount, you can buy them here:

    https://www.videogamesplus.ca/advanc...yakuza&x=0&y=0

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    Quote Originally Posted by Aussie2B View Post
    I agree with you overall (and it's great that the Yakuza series is getting reprints), but Limited Run Games is a bit of a special case. Their company policy is not to reprint games. All rights revert back to the developer after a print run, which means they could do another print run of a game with another company (which has occurred with Eastasiasoft's Soldner-X 2), but you will never see any more copies from LRG, thus, even if a game is reprinted, their variant will always be as rare as whatever print run size they shared publicly. There is also the fact that some LRG releases were developed by their parent company Mighty Rabbit. These games (Breach & Clear, Saturday Morning RPG, Breach & Clear: Deadline) are all but guaranteed to never be reprinted period, not by LRG, not by anybody else. So if anyone is banking on the chance to get something like Breach & Clear for cheap down the road, I wouldn't recommend holding your breath.

    That's not to say there aren't and won't be rarer games, ones that nobody ever expected, and certainly games in higher demand that pull in bigger values. I mean, the physical Vita release of Shovel Knight got a print run smaller than many LRG Vita runs, and there wasn't nearly the rush and perceived rarity, since it had open preorders. But Breach & Clear at 1500 copies is pretty damn rare. I'm curious what that'd be on the old DP rarity scale.

    Of course Limited Run is very different from Sega which decides to reprint more than ten year old games. I mentioned LRG because this is a company which represents to me an aspect of videogamecollecting today I heavily dislike: The hype about rarity and the attempts to cash in on that hype. Limited Run's business model is based on the hype of rarity: Get this game now before it is too late! Soon this game will be rare and pricey! And their business model works very well, I give them that! There is no question in my mind that a run of 5000 for these kind of games would never ever sell out within 24 hours if it weren't for the hysteria about the upcoming rarity AND -- this is the worst part -- the ebay and Amazon scalpers who profit from it.

    I guess (and this is really just merely a guess) that one-third of the sales just go for eventual resales in the future and immediate resales for outrageous prices. A business model which is tailored towards the hype about rarity for collectors and the profit-greed of ebay scalpers? Thanks, but no thanks. I don't have one Limited Run game, and I do not need them!

    There are great smaller publishers out there which release physical games from small developers -- companies like Soedesco, Rising Star, 505 games and so many others without the Limited Run-nonsense. Games like Lumo, Gianna Sisters, Toki Tori, Earthlock, Ziggurat (the DP thread about these games provides a long list) which are cheap, available, and not based on a questionable businessmodel which guarantess the sell-out of the entire production run. In particular I respect and love Soedesco, a company in the Netherlands (Rotterdam) which is run by two guys and brought us a lot of fantastic games.

    The list of these games by smaller developers is so long, not hyped and provide such a variety that I heavily suspect that a couple of them will be in the upcoming 'rarity'-list because they are easily overlooked; and the LRG-games are already in the hands of guys who really truly absolutely want them!


    Btw, there was today a very nice and important announcement for gamers who like these kind of modern 'retro'-games. AXIOM VERGE, the little Metroid-like adventure that could and I'm really looking forward to play, will get a physical release by Badland Games for the PS4, PS Vita, and WiiU. Great, and all of that without the Limited Run-nonsense and without the ebay scalping greed.

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    So rarity is the appeal with the Limited Run thing? No matter if the game is any good or not? A bunch of indie mobile games ported to consoles. Awesome.

    Yakuza 1 was a letdown to me. The combat seemed too clunky. Weird they would reprint ps2 games
    Last edited by FieryReign; 02-23-2017 at 09:08 PM.

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    Was searching for Disaster Report related threads and this original Yakuza 4 thread came up from 2009 - in case anyone wants to review

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    Quote Originally Posted by lendelin View Post
    Of course Limited Run is very different from Sega which decides to reprint more than ten year old games. I mentioned LRG because this is a company which represents to me an aspect of videogamecollecting today I heavily dislike: The hype about rarity and the attempts to cash in on that hype. Limited Run's business model is based on the hype of rarity: Get this game now before it is too late! Soon this game will be rare and pricey! And their business model works very well, I give them that! There is no question in my mind that a run of 5000 for these kind of games would never ever sell out within 24 hours if it weren't for the hysteria about the upcoming rarity AND -- this is the worst part -- the ebay and Amazon scalpers who profit from it.

    I guess (and this is really just merely a guess) that one-third of the sales just go for eventual resales in the future and immediate resales for outrageous prices. A business model which is tailored towards the hype about rarity for collectors and the profit-greed of ebay scalpers? Thanks, but no thanks. I don't have one Limited Run game, and I do not need them!

    There are great smaller publishers out there which release physical games from small developers -- companies like Soedesco, Rising Star, 505 games and so many others without the Limited Run-nonsense. Games like Lumo, Gianna Sisters, Toki Tori, Earthlock, Ziggurat (the DP thread about these games provides a long list) which are cheap, available, and not based on a questionable businessmodel which guarantess the sell-out of the entire production run. In particular I respect and love Soedesco, a company in the Netherlands (Rotterdam) which is run by two guys and brought us a lot of fantastic games.

    The list of these games by smaller developers is so long, not hyped and provide such a variety that I heavily suspect that a couple of them will be in the upcoming 'rarity'-list because they are easily overlooked; and the LRG-games are already in the hands of guys who really truly absolutely want them!


    Btw, there was today a very nice and important announcement for gamers who like these kind of modern 'retro'-games. AXIOM VERGE, the little Metroid-like adventure that could and I'm really looking forward to play, will get a physical release by Badland Games for the PS4, PS Vita, and WiiU. Great, and all of that without the Limited Run-nonsense and without the ebay scalping greed.
    I can understand finding hype, of any kind, really, off-putting. It's part of the reason why I don't have much interest in AAA games and why I often save playing more popular games for months or years past their release, after the hype has calmed down. But emphasizing rarity is really the only way to make something like LRG work. It's specifically designed to appeal to collectors, and collectors are interested in rarity. But this is all secondary to the goal of preserving games that would otherwise remain digital-only and giving collectors the option to buy physical instead of digital. I absolutely guarantee you that most of the games LRG has and will release would never get a physical print run without them.

    Open preorders just plain don't work for this stuff. Like with the aforementioned Vita physical release of Shovel Knight, that's one of the most popular indie games out there, yet it couldn't even move as many copies as most LRG Vita releases. If you don't like the print run cap and the mad dash to buy, LRG has even done a couple open preorders themselves. As a result, The Silver Case is the second smallest print run of any LRG release (only more than Breach & Clear, LRG's very first game, when they were very cautious about the print run size). Skullgirls also sold fewer copies on Vita than most of LRG's other Vita releases. And that's after preorders were open for weeks, versus LRG selling out a larger print run in one day. Gaijinworks has also done open preorders and seen pitiful sales as a result, for games that are arguably of better quality than many LRG releases. The physical release of Class of Heroes 2G almost didn't happen. It failed to hit the modest preorder goal, and it was only produced by increasing the price per copy. Personally, I'd rather deal with rarity hype than higher prices.

    So, I mean, sure, if you want these publishers to see worse sales, release fewer indie and niche games physically, and probably fold in due time, they can do totally open sales and not emphasize rarity at all. Personally, I'd rather support more games coming out physically. Hype and scalpers are easy enough to ignore. It's not hard to buy LRG's games. Be there when sales open, make your purchase, close the window, wait for your package, and enjoy the game, simple as that. I've bought every LRG release on at least one platform, with the exception of The Silver Case, and I have never had a problem placing an order. I've never had to have any contact with any scalper, and I think that's dying off anyway, as LRG print runs get larger and the releases more frequent. I mean, look at the prices on, say, Octodad: Dadliest Catch or Thomas Was Alone. Hardly worth anyone's time to flip.

    It's also worth pointing out that it's only relatively recently that LRG can fund multiple games at once. Mighty Rabbit was on the verge of folding in 2015, and LRG was a last ditch effort to keep the company afloat. For a while there, all of the money from one release went into funding the next. So, sure, they could've done much bigger print runs and sat on a ton of copies as people bought at their leisure......and gone out of business immediately. Also note that LRG releases don't have ESRB ratings, a cost cutting measure that can make the difference between small print runs for low-demand games being viable or not. This prevents the games from being widely available, as GameStop and Amazon and the like won't carry games without an ESRB rating on the box, but that's a concession made to let these print runs be possible in the first place.
    Last edited by Aussie2B; 02-24-2017 at 12:33 AM.

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    Quote Originally Posted by FieryReign View Post
    So rarity is the appeal with the Limited Run thing? No matter if the game is any good or not? A bunch of indie mobile games ported to consoles. Awesome.

    Yakuza 1 was a letdown to me. The combat seemed too clunky. Weird they would reprint ps2 games
    Thankfully Kiwami (the Yakuza 1 remake) fixes the clunkyness of the original. The combat is lifted out of Yakuza 0 (the latest English Yakuza release) so you have tons more moves, fighting styles, heat moves etc. to use with much better controls, a lock on system that actually works and a better camera. Plus the remake just has a ton more in game content. Unless your a completionist there's really no need to get the original PS2 game since its fairly dated now, the PS3 HD remaster is a better choice since it fixed the load times (which are awful on the PS2 version) and added a few little options here and there to make the game more pleasant to play (didn't fix the control/combat issues though!).

    Yakuza 2 is a different story though. They improved the combat and controls significantly from the first game, so lock on works way better plus you have a ton of heat moves at your disposal. The game is still really playable even now. Plus the game (especially in America) goes for a ton of money before the reprint so it was an excellent move to reprint the second game for fans. That said, with how great Kiwami was as a remake of the first game, and how great the game engine for Yakuza 6 is, I'm hoping a Yakuza 2 remake (for PS4) isn't too far behind, playing perhaps the best entry in the series with the excellent new game engine would be a match made in heaven (well, it will be if they iron out the issues I had with Yakuza 6's gameplay).

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    Quote Originally Posted by Aussie2B View Post

    So, I mean, sure, if you want these publishers to see worse sales, release fewer indie and niche games physically, and probably fold in due time, they can do totally open sales and not emphasize rarity at all. Personally, I'd rather support more games coming out physically.
    ...
    So, sure, they could've done much bigger print runs and sat on a ton of copies as people bought at their leisure......and gone out of business immediately.
    I understand your position. You accept the disadvantages (hype about rarity, outrageous ebay prices) because a company provides physical releases of formerly digital-only games. I'm all for physical releases of games by smaller developers/publishers. I asked for it and waited for them during the last ten years and was very glad that we finally get them.

    I would agree with you if the Limited Run-way would be the only way possible; but a lot of other publishers prove otherwise. It is certainly true that smaller publishers have in this cut-throat business which is our hobby a very difficult stand. However, a lot of publishers survive obviously very well. I don't know the specific financial situation of Soedesco, 505 games, Rising Star, THQ Nordic and so many others (!), but there are indicators that these companies do well without the Limited Run-nonsense. Soedesco published in the last two years around 20 to 25 games, more publishers give us a long list of indie-games on physical disks, so the market is certainly there without the hype about rarity as a marketing- and sales-strategy.

    I dislike the rarity-nonsense for games which are not even released and is purely put in place to sell more games. Recently the Tales of Berseria collector's edition and the NES-mini, and the dozens of Limited Run-games all go the way of ebay scalpers with outrageous prices. Maybe I'm just too old and just hate it to run with the crowd if someone points the finger and says 'get it now before it's too late!'. It certainly is true that I could have easily gotten all the LR-games if I wouldn't mind feeling manipulated and sitting at a certain time in front of my laptop praying that there is no bloodbath like among women on a black friday-shoe sale; but I just dislike this business model and don't like to support it.

    I might get Dariusburst though as my first Limited Run game; but then, I might also just get the Asian release for the same amount of money or cheaper.

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    I'm seeing people report that the reprint of Yakuza 2 has disc read errors on real PS2s. What's ya'lls experiences been?

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    Quote Originally Posted by Edmond Dantes View Post
    I'm seeing people report that the reprint of Yakuza 2 has disc read errors on real PS2s. What's ya'lls experiences been?
    I wonder if its related to cutscenes stuttering/not playing leading to the DRE's? Yakuza 2 is a dual layer game (the Japanese version comes on two disks while the American/Euro version comes on 1 dual layer disk) so maybe some peoples PS2 lasers are worn out? Simply a guess, as I had the exact same problem when I played it (along with GOW2 and Forbidden Siren 2 - also dual layer disks). Had to get a brand new PS2 Slim in the end, that fixed the issue for me.

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