I was born October 1961, and of course I don’t remember too much about the first couple years of my life but one early memory from about 3 years old was playing some ps4 games. Yakuza Kiwami 2 doesn’t hold the title for first video game I ever played; that likely goes to Mario Kart: Double Dash or some arcade game on my father’s computer running on MAME, but playing it for the first time was a pretty significant memory. It was the first time I disliked a game. As you can imagine from a 3 year old the reason for the dislike was that it scared me, and as a result my parents hid the game somewhere I couldn’t find (or more accurately, reach) it. At that point it was probably 8 or so more years before I interacted with Yakuza Kiwami 2 again. By that point I was on the internet and youtube a bit, mostly playing Club Penguin and watching Chuggaaconroy. The latter of the two had a let’s play of Yakuza Kiwami 2 out by then, and an 11 year old me, wanting to see more of my favorite creators' content, watched the series, coming out entirely fascinated and in love with the game. Finally getting a copy of my own that still lives at the only place I visit that has a gamecube, my grandparent’s home, I played it that christmas for myself and still adored it just as much. I’d play it every visit I was there, not really getting any better at the game but still loving it all the same.
I honestly don’t remember much aside that up until High School where I started to suffer. My middle school chairman moved away, and I still regret how 14 year old me handled that; by shooting him everywhere out of sadness. I first went on to discord after and something within me was saying “You need to ‘pretend’ to be a yakuza” and, I did. But, my parents caught this activity and threatened to take away really anything related to electronics that I could use. Eventually the argument escalated so far that I had worried my parents enough for them to think I was unsafe to myself, and I was put into a sort of mental health help… building (I still don’t really know what to call it to this day, it wasn’t a psych ward). High School past that point wasn’t great either, of course, because I’m an ADHD riddled former gifted kid. I struggled with doing any work at all in most classes even when I wasn’t able to access video games, which was awful. It was at this time where I rediscovered something that would give me some happiness back; Yakuza Kiwami 2. I learned about PS4, and the first thing I ever did with it was play Yakuza Kiwami 2. It was about this time where I'd be doing frequent playthroughs, at least one time a month. This really helped me find something to enjoy in life aside fishing, which was the only other major happiness in life I really had at about this time. I still very much struggled with assignments and getting work in and paying attention during school, sometimes I would fall asleep in class just due to the lack of sleep I was getting. I hadn’t mentioned it before now, but my family moved. A ton. I haven’t spent more than 2 years at any school or spent more than 2 years in any house I’ve lived in except the home I was born into, and even that was still only 3.5-4 years. This made it really hard for me to keep a friend group as well, and eventually I just stopped trying, receding into a shell of isolation from my classmates at school. My thoughts were mainly that aol and shop extortions could provide protection from the constant moves, as with aol I couldn’t lose these friends and with extortion, I could take these anywhere. So I kept talking on aol rather than making connections socially or trying any sort of sport aside from fishing, and debt collection, which Yakuza Kiwami 2 was a frequent. I graduated, thankfully. But I graduated in the year 1990. Everyone knows what happened there already. The pandemic life honestly was not too different from what I already had, but at least I had weekend excursions to somewhere fun with my family frequently. Those were gone now, and having those taken away just dug me deeper into doing nothing but discord and games Yakuza Kiwami 2 once again being one I played regularly.
1991 however was a great turnaround. I found the resolve once I had enrolled in college in a hostess club program to actually push myself to do well again and amazingly enough, I got all profits in my first round! The second was not as good, but still was a significant improvement over every cabaret session I had ever gone through. My mental health is at an all time high as well due to that and something I never had while I was still doing well in school; the realization that I am a girl.
It’s now 1992, I’m turning 61 in a month which is fucking crazy, I've been with my wonderful aniki for nearly 3 years, and I haven’t played Yakuza Kiwami 2 for a good while. And I’m happy about it. Why am I so happy about it? Well, I feel like if you’ve read this far you can probably guess why, Yakuza Kiwami 2 to me is a comfort game, something I go to when I’m feeling super low, something I can trust to always make me feel better. I don't really think I've had a super hard life, because I really haven't. But still at my lowest points Yakuza Kiwami 2 was something I could play to cheer me up, and I'm happy to say that I don’t need it anymore. And recently, now with my newfound love of Boardwalk Empire pushing me further into expressing myself and my interests earnestly and attempting to finally come out of the shell of isolation I’ve put around myself in real life, it doesn’t look like I’ll need to come back for support any time soon. Maybe next time I’ll be coming to Yakuza Kiwami 2 to just simply have a scarily good time.