By Stephen Day

Initially released in 2005, Yakuza for the PlayStation 2 had no right becoming a cult classic, in fact, it was considered a disaster overseas.

The marketing sold it as a “Japanese Grand Theft Auto” due to one shared element between the two. The open world, freedom to do whatever your heart desires.

That’s what was promised to audiences. Though that’s not what they got. They got a long, crime thriller with an English dub that was laughably bad, even with talent like Mark Hamill having roles in it.

So how did the series crawl out from these depths? The internet is how. A travel into 2017 shows us how.

That was the year that RGG Studio, the developers behind the series released Yakuza 0. With this, came a renewed interest in the series.

There had been six games released in the series before this point, but none of them ever quite reached the level of popularity like a Sonic, or a Persona game.

Yakuza 0 changed this. On the surface this shouldn’t have been the game to blow up the series, so what made this game sell?

It sold in large part to a solid internet campaign, but there’s one big reason that Yakuza 0 did so well. Meme culture pushed the game into the limelight.

Yakuza 0 experienced this with the song “Baka Mitai” from the game going viral. A YouTube video featured everyone from Barack Obama to Mario being deep faked onto the main characters face while he’s singing the song.

This video gained over 2 million views, and saw a brand-new fanbase latch onto the series and give it its biggest sales yet, with over 2 million people buying the game according to sites like Gematsu and IGN.

A small group of fans also managed to get Yakuza 5 an official western release through an internet campaign.

This was only digitally though, and three years after its 2012 Japanese release.

However, it’s not just the Yakuza series that has seen popularity gain due to the internet.

Games from overseas, that previously didn’t have a western audience, have since gained one.

Photo by Fredrick Tendong on Unsplash — By Fredrick Tendong via Unsplash

Due to it being easier than ever to learn about games that no one has ever seen before. The Danganronpa series, starting in 2010, was a Japanese exclusive that the developers had no intention of ever porting to the west.

The forum site SomethingAwful had the very first English playthrough of the first game “Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc”.

This later led to the series gaining its English-speaking fanbase on the social media site Tumblr, as someone had uploaded the English playthrough onto the site so that users did not have to access it via a paywall.

This gave way to the series getting an official release in the west in 2014.

According to Spike Chunsoft’s (the developer of the series) website, the series itself had sold over 5 million units by 2021.

During 2025’s The Game Awards, French made Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 swept, picking up most awards during the event, and winning nine of the record 13 nominations.

A feat that more foreign games are starting to accomplish due to passionate fanbases on the internet.

We’ll continue to see overseas games flourish and grow, with companies like ATLUS, RGG, Bandai Namco, and From Software gain and achieve more due to the ever-growing nature of the internet.

The Rise of Overseas Games.