SEGA lets Takeshi Kitano(Beat Takeshi), the comedian, actor and movie director appear in their new game for PS4/PS3 Yakuza 6(龍が如く 極) as a character. His 3DCG movie is here(from 13:20)
However, this is not the first time that Takeshi Kitano engages video game. He supervised game for Nintendo Entertainment System(NES) released from Taito in 1986. The title is "Takeshi no Chōsenjō(たけしの挑戦状: Takeshi's Letter of Challenge).
In Japan at the time, a lot of NES games that featured celebrities were developed. It just resembles the current Western mobile game market. In actuality, celebrities did not participate in those games, and they merely only lent their name and portrait to games. However, Takeshi Kitano thought about the story of the game by himself. He was absorbed in NES in those days and wanted to adopt unprecedented original ideas for this game. Besides, Taito employed all his ideas. As a result, the most Absurd game in Japanese game history was developed.
The story of Takeshi no Chōsenjō is this... "The businessman who does not get on in the world left the company and divorced a wife and decided to go to island of the South Pacific for the trip of the treasure hunt". Well, the leading role is not Takeshi Kitano and he does not appear for this game at all. He is right a director of this game.
The businessman had a wife and a child, but he was neglected from a family, and he was scolded in the company by the boss, and he wanted to escape from that life. One day, he was called by the president of company and was scolded. "Your recent business results are bad. Therefore there is little your bonus". He went postal at last and submitted the resignation.
When he got the small retirement bonus from the company and went home, his serious wife was waiting. His wife quarrelled with him at once, but he became the desperation and offered a divorce and held out the retirement bonus and a house to her.
He got tired of all, accepted a going drink in frustration to suburban bar, sang a karaoke and was going to forget his woes. However, he sang by force intoxicated by consecutively three times, and a quarrel was picked with yakuza. Usually, he was afraid of yakuza, but he nearly killed him by the fight by force intoxicated. Then a mystery old man approached him and said to him. "you have guts. You may solve the mystery of this treasure map..."
This is the opening of this game. In other words, you leave the company, get a divorce, are helplessly drunk in suburban bar and fight with yakuza to begin a game. Such an action game was unprecedented. Besides, Japanese games did not have rating in those days. Even primary schoolchildren played this game without any problem. By the way, I bought this at the age of 8 years old, but cannot yet clear it.
In addition, for an epoch-making point, players were able to hit every characters such as children, women, elderly people, yakuzas etc... They were able to hit even a character displayed by a password screen of the continue. But it is retaliated and killed for him when players hit him.
The scenario which becomes the game over before reopening a game is unprecedented.
The view of the world of the game is impressive, too. The town is decadent, has only dirty buildings such as illegal loan office, suburban bars, pinball parlor, and the movie shown in worn-out movie theater is "Yakuza vs. Yakuza".
The evaluation for this game is a pro and con now. Generally, this is representative of Kusoge(Shit game), but it was chosen as hall of fame in Retro Game Award 2007 of Tokyo Game Show 2007.
I think that Takeshi Kitano hit on a game such as Grand Theft Auto earlier than Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto series. In addition, the view of the world of this is common to the view of the world of Takeshi's movies. By the way, he showed first movie Violent Cop three years after the release of this game.
Takeshi no Chōsenjō was Takeshi's movie No. 0. Please check English Wikipedia first of all if you want to know detailed information about this.
