The Yakuza / Like A Dragon / RGG franchise certainly stands on its own merits as a characteristically Japanese vision for open world games. But it’s somewhat infamous for something else.
And that would be being the host of several classic SEGA arcade games. The in-game arcades Kazuma Kiryu, and later, Ichiban Kasuga would enter, would be filled to the brim with SEGA’s onetime video game legacy.
Of course, it’s great to get to play those classic games again. But these in-game arcades would grow to be controversial because, as many fans would point out, SEGA wouldn’t bother to rerelease the same games on their own, even if fans wanted them.
One can argue the merits of classic games being rereleased this way, but the final straw that broke the camel’s back was Virtua Fighter 5: Final Showdown appearing in Yakuza 6: Like A Dragon in 2018. And yes, that led Sega to the new journey towards Virtua Fighter 5 finally appearing on Steam after 18 years.
Sega hasn’t extended that courtesy to many of the other arcade games they’ve recreated in these games, but they just added a new one. The RGG Studio Twitter account made this reveal today:
“Underwater shooter, The Ocean Hunter makes its console debut in Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii’s arcade. Dive into the stunning underwater world that awaits you at the ocean’s depths.”
Once again, this is one of those announcements that can be simultaneously exciting and frustrating. But we do have to ask before anything else, what is The Ocean Hunter?
This was a lightgun shooting gallery game released in 1998, and also known as The Ocean Hunter: The Seven Seas Adventure. Much like Sega’s later lightgun arcade games, it came with a seated cabinet that could also be covered up to immerse you, as if you and a second player were in a mini-theatre, shooting up sharks and giant fish with mounted turrets.
And just like those classic lightgun games of yore, The Ocean Hunter isn’t a long play, but it’s designed to hit quick cheap thrills, the kind of dopamine rush you used to get before it was constantly, unhealthily available at your fingers.
If you needed convincing, here’s a picture of what The Ocean Hunter’s arcade looked like. It may be unfair to demand it, but obviously this PC port can’t really fully recreate what it feels like to play this game on the cabinet in person.
But even if that’s too prohibitively expensive and impractical, one would hope that Sega would put serious consideration in bringing back these and their other arcade games in another form. We did just get the announcement of The House of The Dead 2 Remake last month, but clearly Sega can try harder than this.
Maybe Sega needs consoles like Nintendo’s Switch 2, or perhaps VR headsets like Meta Quest 3 to popularize light gun games at home again. What they should really be doing is making a collection of these games to make buying them with potential custom controllers worth it.
Regardless, there’s something to be said about debuting on home consoles after 27 years in the arcade. You can look forward to playing The Ocean Hunter in Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii this February 20, 2025, on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and Steam.
