Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealthis full of callbacks to previous games, what with it being Kiryu’s swan song and a celebration of all that the character has done and been through over the years. It’s gotneat little cameos from characters in past and current games, though one such cameo seems to have brought a major villain from Yakuza 3 back from the dead.
At some point in Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth, you’ll encounter a bar called Revolve, which is essentially Hawaii’s version of Survive Bar in Yokohama. At this bar, you may sing karaoke, chat with your pals, and do pretty much everything else you could do in Survive, yet the similarities don’t stop there. Just like in Survive Bar, the place is run by a character from Yakuza’s past, that being major Yakuza 3 villain Andre Richardson.
If you need a refresher or haven’t played Yakuza 3 yet, Andre Richardson is the secondary antagonist of the game alongside the main antagonist Yoshitake Mine. He’s a CIA agent that is sent to secure land in Okinawa for an American military base, eventually coming to blows with Kazama Kiryu as his orphanage Morning Glory sits on that land. He’s eventually defeated by Kiryu and company, and is dragged off of the roof of Touto University Hospital by Mine, after having a change of heart.
While Infinite Wealth never actually tells you his name, instead choosing to call him “Bartender”, he looks identical to Richardson and was found in Hawaii, which is part of the US. He also explains to Kasuga that he was once “involved in a shootout at a hospital” and “took a fall off the roof” as a result. Quite how he managed to survive a fall from what must have been a sixty-story building will remain a mystery, but Richardson does state that he was “touch-and-go” at the time. Falling off a building will do that to you.
If you’re now sitting there thinking that this could mean Mine is still alive too, I’m about to crush your dreams. In late December last year, a memorial took place in which Ryu Ga Gotokupaid tribute to all the popular Yakuza characters that have died throughout the series, and Mine was part of that lineup, alongside the likes of Ryo Aoki from Yakuza: Like A Dragon and Kiryu’s brother Akira Nishikiyama. Maybe it was all the extra bullets in Mine that did the job.
