This is a companion piece to my other thread, “A history documentary for the Yakuza Endurance Run”.
Yakuza features a lot of cross-promotion with many other Japanese companies. As a tie-in for both Yakuza 0 and Yakuza’s tenth anniversary, Sony released a special Walkman with a playlist of theme songs from the series.
There is also a soundtrack of Japanese pop and rock hits from the 80s, along with bonus versions of Kiryu and Majima singing “ANGEL” and “Runner”, respectively. Using the included code, you can unlock the Walkman item in Yakuza 0 which lets you replace the BGM with one of the songs. Unfortunately it doesn’t look like that part made it overseas...so I went looking for some videos. ^^ Here are all the songs included on the soundtrack.
矢沢永吉 (Eikichi Yazawa) / SOMEBODY'S NIGHT (1989)
(Eikichi Yazawa also sang “Loser”, the ending theme of Yakuza 3.)
氷室京介 (Kyosuke Himuro) / ANGEL (1988)
TM NETWORK / GET WILD (1987)
Here's the Dailymotion link in case it doesn't work here...
(“Get Wild” is the end theme to the anime City Hunter and probably TMN’s best-known song. There’s an official video of TMN performing this live several times here. The keyboard player is Tetsuya Komuro, who became Japan’s biggest producer during the 90s and possibly of all time.)
プリンセス プリンセス (Princess Princess) / DIAMONDS (1989)
郷ひろみ / 2億4千万の瞳 -エキゾチック・ジャパン-
(Hiromi Go / 240 Million Eyes - Exotic Japan) (1984)
REBECCA / フレンズ (Friends) (1985)
BARBEE BOYS / 目を閉じておいでよ (Keep Your Eyes Closed!) (1989)
爆風スランプ (BAKUFU-SLUMP) / Runner (1988)
浜田麻里 (Mari Hamada) / Return to Myself (1989)
中村雅俊 / 恋人も濡れる街角
(Masatoshi Nakamura / Lovers and Wet Street Corners) (1983)
P.S. A bonus: while checking my music library, I found a song from 1988 that I hadn’t listened to in a long time - “Dance If You Want It” by Toshinobu Kubota, a pioneer of Japanese Soul.
P.P.S. One last thing - here’s “STAR LIGHT” by Hikaru GENJI. Their big thing was performing on roller skates. Depending on how much time Alex and Dan spend doing non-story things, this may or may not be relevant...I’ll say no more. ^^ Thanks for reading!
(The song starts around 2:30.)
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