by Don (@opobjectives)

The Yakuza games are well known for being part neighborhood simulator, part highly dramatic hypermasculine gangster fantasy. On occasion, that mix includes an oddly thorough representation of meeting strangers, playing darts, and getting drunk. 

Just about every entry in the series offers a few bars with dart boards, with bar staff offering a small variety of minigames like 501, Cricket, or Count-Up. If you play a few rounds, then side characters start to crawl out of the woodwork to offer some competition. That’s par for the course across the series. 

Only in Yakuza 0, however, does that competition lowball their skills, liquor up protagonist Kazuma Kiryu, and hustle millions of yen out of him.

Image: Strolling up to Vincent so Kiryu can throw some darts and throw down some shots

I play Yakuza games slowly. I stroll through them, rarely playing them in a dedicated way, but rather throwing them on now and then so I can screw around with substories and side games. My pace slows further once I hit the penultimate story beat, knowing that irretrievably embarking on the end sequence of the narrative is close to hand. At that point, it usually takes me a few months of unfocused, leisurely play to hit the town and tie up loose ends before calling it a wrap.

One of the things I would like to do before finishing Yakuza 0 would be to beat the “Shady Fellow” in Vincent, a bar near the north end of the neighborhood. This isn’t really a matter of making progress in the game, since I’m not sure whether you get anything much from beating him. What I do know is that the “Shady Fellow,” or Ayumu Matoba, as he is listed while playing against him, likes to live dangerously and play Cricket.

The Yakuza games have a long relationship with booze. Parts of that are because bars are appropriate for Kamurocho, the main neighborhood and primary setting of the series. Part of it is probably driven by the series’ affection for product placement. And parts of that relationship manifest through gameplay mechanics.

Throughout the series, consuming alcohol has a few different effects. It sends a low pulse through the player’s controller from time to time. It makes it more likely that people will stop Kiryu to brawl in the street. Depending on how you unlock abilities, being inebriated might also unlock a move or two for use in one of said brawls. In Yakuza 3, Kiryu even has a revelation after watching a staggering drunk obliviously knock out an assailant. 

In the series’ most recent entries (Yakuza 6 and Yakuza Kiwami 2), being maximally intoxicated will even result in the game seizing some control from the player over how well Kiryu can walk, causing him to stagger and lurch through the streets. But as near as I can tell, it’s only in 0 and Kiwami 1 that playing darts after a drink causes the focus of vision, in first person perspective, to blur in and out. It’s the single most direct, disorienting effect on gameplay that getting drunk in the game can have. 

Gif: Kiryu’s view of the dartboard after one or two drinks.

In 0 that this relatively obscure effect is blended into something wonderfully unusual and immersive: the experience of getting hustled by a stranger in a bar. In other stories, other games, this might be a plot point. In Yakuza, it’s a situation that might happen if you decide to go out of your way and take some time throwing darts.

To get to the experience, Kiryu needs to wander into Vincent and play some darts. After a few games another character appears in the bar who will make bets of a few hundred thousand yen a game to play 301. He’s relatively easily dispatched, especially since 301 games are quick and are more dependent on individual dart throwing than direct competition. However, there’s a hitch: to win, you have to play three consecutive games against him, and in between each he buys Kiryu a drink.

Image: Kiryu eyeing a free shot

After that introduction to more direct competition, the Shady Fellow shows up.  He takes it from a relatively friendly game to a hustle in just a few rounds, all without any dialogue that explicitly identifies it as such. The experience of being hustled is, as it would have to be in order to succeed, left to the game and the sequence of rounds. 

Cricket, unlike 301, is directly competitive. What one player does on the dart board influences what the other can accomplish in their next turn. There’s strategy to it— players can play more offensively or defensively. You can attempt to rack up points quickly, close off your opponent’s possibilities to score, or even set a trap for your opponent in which they must choose between scoring themselves or leaving you every opportunity to score in the next round. I’m not personally accurate enough at darts in real life to actually make much of that strategy work, but I’m accurate enough when playing Kiryu. Or, at least, accurate enough when I’m not also trying to also negotiate the timing of a second or two of clear vision.

The thing is, none of that strategy is particularly necessary during the first round with the Shady Fellow. He’ll let Kiryu hit a maximum 180 points (three triple-20s, AKA a Ton 80) without closing out the 20 at all, just letting him rack up points. If you also move to close out the smaller point slices of the board, it’s easy to win the first round 200 points to 0. That’s worth a cool million yen. 

But then the Shady Fellow will plead with you. What if you went another round, double or nothing, and drinks were on him?

Image: The Shady Fellow reacts to Kiryu’s prowess. “Whoa…” indeed.

For the second round, it might seem like it’s just the sauce that raises the difficulty to match the stakes. That’s deceiving, though, as the Shady Fellow also starts playing just a little more accurately, with just a little bit of strategy. Suddenly, about one in three of his shots are in the thin stretches of the board that count as triples. He can close off Kiryu from scoring or open up a possibility for himself with a single dart, even if the other two go wayward, edging over into non-scoring territory. That said, if you open the scoring and follow him around the board, closing off his opportunities, Kiryu can claim another round. And another offer of double or nothing. And another drink.

Image: Kiryu has another one. That one might have burned a little. 

With your vision blurring for what seems to me like longer or more irregular intervals, the Shady Fellow turns up the heat. He’s now all accuracy and strategy, so if you can’t keep up with at least one triple each turn, you’re sunk. Really, I think that I would need to maintain about two triples a turn, through Kiryu’s intoxication, to do the job. I just haven’t managed to do that, yet. 

Some of my trouble is that it takes a while for Kiryu to sober up. In that while, I might take another few strolls through Kamurocho. I might go and set another high score on an Outrun machine at the closest Sega arcade. Or collect from and expand Kiryu’s real estate empire. Or I could throw ¥100,000 at a taxi driver to take me over to Osaka for better takoyaki.

I’ll be stewing the whole way on the ¥10,000,000 that got hustled out of me by the Shady Fellow. Again.