Thread by @TriggerRedd

Was talking to some folks last weekend who were genuinely curious about why they see "the Yakuza font" in so many places, which led to the question "Why does Yakuza use that font in the first place?"

I promised the long answer this week, and by the skin of my teeth... A thread.

For starters, no sense hiding it, the font is called Edo SZ and it's uh, really easily acquired. You didn't start to see it in the game until I took over as loc producer for the series in Yakuza 0, but its Yakuza history goes back way further - this is the original Y3 trailer!

Generally speaking, marketing materials have an easier time using free fonts, because you can kinda argue that what you're slapping it on isn't for sale; it's ephemeral non-product, even if it advertising. So this has been Yakuza's marketing font ever since Yakuza 3!

But after Yakuza 2, the games stopped using 2D fonts altogether. Which is how you ended up with, imho, hot messes like this in Y5. Like, where are you supposed to be looking in this freeze frame of a ~1 second clip? The title? The sweet kanji? The subtitle? Standards, people.

Enter me. Well, enter Sam and I. He brought me in for Yakuza 0 after Yakuza 5 hobbled out the door, and we said if Y0 is gonna be our fresh start, we're gonna go big - craft localization, bring back 2D text, honorifics, and a 30 page mahjong tutorial. Let's go.

But what font to use? WELL we sure dug into it with creative and legal. We looked at Yakuza 1 and 2 for inspiration. We looked at other Western/Asian media. We got some looks going. And boy did I greenlight the wrong font for a hot second

(water mark mine) But I looked at this longer and I was like, oh my god what I have done? It's illegible. Kinda outta options, I looked at the marketing team and I saw the dream. A unified front of marketing materials and in-game fonts! And the rest is history! But...

...I admit that I didn't have much of an idea of just how "free" that font was. The only place I'd seen it was in like, a fan hack of Smash Brothers and one TV show. Now, like you, I see it everywhere, and I can't help but feel a little conflicted about that.

But at the same time, things like FIND A PAYPHONE and GET SOME MILK made it become "the Yakuza font" to me, and to many of you. While the future is never certain, I consider it part of the series DNA now: Not so easily replaced. The end. Thank you.