RPCS3 emulator breathes life into Yakuza Kenzan on PC

With Yakuza 0 and Yakuza Kiwami coming to PC, now feels like the right time to get into Sega's enduring action beat 'em up series. Released exclusively in Japan on PS3 in 2008, series spin-off Yakuza Kenzan has now also made its way to western desktops (though untranslated) courtesy of the RPCS3 emulator. PCG's in-house Yakuza aficionado Phil "Kazuma Kiryu" Savage bows his head in appreciation.  

Alongside work-in-progress clips of God of War Ascension, the Sly Cooper series, and The Darkness among others, check out the Kyoto samurai-era fighter in motion below.

"Over the course of June RPCS3 saw a great deal of improvements to rendering and compatibility," explains the video above's description. "By rewriting RPCS3's MSAA implementation kd-11 managed to fix outstanding issues with games which suffered from scaling issues or displayed garbage. 

"Other developers have also greatly helped to improve RPCS3's compatibility even allowing for the whole Sly Cooper trilogy and Final Fantasy XIII trilogy to go ingame for the first time."

When we've posted about on the RPCS3 emulator in the past, we've often focused exclusively on its footage trailers. There's also a tonne of interesting behind the scenes information housed in its monthly progress reports—on scaling issues, anti-aliasing techniques and the status of its in-development projects.

Read Wes' words on the ethics of emulation: how creators, the community, and the law view console emulators. A number of these games also exist on Sony's Netflix-like PS Now streaming service. I took a look at launch back in 2016.