Yakuza Of The End: A Zombie Game with a Message?

Ryu ga Gotoku Of The End, perhaps the goofiest idea for a game to come from Sega since The King of Route 66, comes out March 17 in Japan. "It's a relief, first and foremost, that we were able to get this out into the world on schedule," series director Toshihiro Nagoshi told Japan's Famitsu magazine this week. "This is true with every game, but I really want to thank everyone on the team for giving so much to the project in such a short time. Kenzan! was a tough game because the visuals and gameplay system changed so dramatically, and this was very much along the same lines in terms of workload, especially on the programming side."

Of The End is the first Yakuza title to be produced by Yasuhito Baba, a longtime Nagoshi associate who -- up to now -- has mostly worked on Super Monkey Ball and assorted Japan-only baseball sims. "I'm glad that I got to oversee a title that deliberately sets out to be different from the rest of the series," he told Famitsu. "It was scary, certainly, but for a creator, there's nothing more fun than the chance to break something down and rebuild it into something new. One of the duties of a producer is to control the speed at which the development team is working, and for me, a lot of that work in this project was me groping in the dark -- a lot of hard work, and a great feeling of accomplishment."

What was the biggest team concern for this project? For Baba, it was striking just the right balance between accessibility and familiarity. "The battle system switched over to guns for this game, and there was some concern that the gameplay would be too much for people who aren't used to action games," he said. "We spent a lot of time ensuring the game could be enjoyed by anybody -- not that we wanted it to be too easy, of course."

Jennifer Morrison Adrianne Palicki Amanda Righetti Michelle Branch Melissa Howard