Yes, I know most of you probably know about a certain simulator launching the same day as Assassin’s Creed: Shadows. Blame my posting schedule, but I make up for it by letting you know about the other ones on Steam. Indeed, there are more. While Shadows has a lot of controversy behind it, which I already went over earlier this week, you can either get mad or you can get even. Someone went for “even”.
Yasuke Simulator is the talk of the net. This “historically accurate” game at least isn’t hiding the fact that it’s lying. You’ll see what I mean when you watch the trailer, if you haven’t seen it already. No lady ninja in this one. It’s all Yasuke kicking all the butts of the Takeda Clan, using your swordsmanship, your skill with firearms, and your sweet ride. I was just going to make this a Daily Video post for Monday but when I went to look up the link on Steam, I found it’s not alone. Four other games/downloadable content also came up by searching “Yasuke”. Of course one of them is Assassin’s Creed: Shadows, but let me show you the rest.
Sorry for those of you on the homepage who think this intro is too short. I didn’t know what else to talk about, so here’s a random music video voicing Japan’s issues with the game. It’s in Japanese, so turned on closed captions for English lyrics.
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Yes, the people who made the video are Japaneses. Right…on to the trailers!
No joke. This is a legitimate game, a parody by a developer going by “HistoricallyAccurateDevelopers”. It’s up on Steam right now. No price listed as I write this on Friday and it’s set to launch the same day as Historical Appropriation: Japanese Destruction. March 20th will be an interesting day. Here’s their description from the Steam page:
In a land where samurai roam and power is defined by the sword, Yasuke—the only African warrior to rise to the ranks of the samurai—steps into the pages of history like a walking plot twist. It’s 1579, and Yasuke’s arrival in Japan alongside Jesuit missionary. Join Oda Nobunaga and help him unite all of Japan.
Features
Play as Yasuke
Embrace your unique heritage as you navigate feudal Japan in a fight for survival and dignity.
Master Epic Samurai Combat
Wield your katana with style, precision, and flair, slashing through waves of adversaries.
Unleash Your Inner Warrior
Tap into your ancestral power to perform devastating moves and awaken the latent strength that transcends time.
Find Secret Gear across the Map
The map is full of secret gear that you can find and use against your enemies
Historically accuracy
The Yasuke simulator team has done its research and went above and beyond to provide a totally historically accurate depiction of Feudal Japan with Yasuke the Samurai.
While they’re clearly pushing back against the other Yasuke game, let’s hope they also created a fun game with good gameplay. It would be a shame if they skimped on that, which is the other complaint with a lot of AAA games more interested in “representation” than “presentation”. Now that’s not enough for you, there’s another game about Yasuke’s descendant in the future. YASUKE: A Lost Descendant is clearly trying to market based on the controversy without actually going into it. Instead, the player is off to the far future year of ???? as you play as…guess. Swearing in this one.
YASUKE: A Lost Descendant is a diverse high speed hack ‘n’ slash action anime game, featuring immersive parkour movement that allows the player to enjoyably traverse the environment and defeat enemies with the playstyle of their choice. This story oriented game will partake you through the trials and tribulations of our protagonist “Tanaka Yasuke” and his mission to end the tyranny over N10N-KOKU, which is currently in the hands of the ODA Clan.
This in-depth story will introduce characters from the past to present, ranging from multiple cultural backgrounds and regions across this new original world.
Join alongside the fight against Nobusora Oda, and learn more about this extensive world that begins with YASUKE: A Lost Descendant.
“Diverse” is up for debate as that word’s meaning is heavily altered in the 2020s along with a lot of other ones, but this isn’t as bad as UbiSoft lying about history to please a group who won’t play the game anyway and pissing off an entire nation in the process. Maybe that’s what they were really fighting over in Captain America: Brave New World; not antamandium off a dead deity but Yasuke’s depiction. Sure, you could make the case that it’s still buying into the false narrative, but if Afro Samurai didn’t bother you, why should this? Tanaka apparently comes with numerous fighting styles to employ.
From DLC land we have a Beer Runner skin with Yasuke to get in on the hype. Yasuke a samurai is just a reskin of the regular game and is the biggest blatant cash-in on the list.
I know nothing about this game.
Speaking of downloadable content, this one is not cashing in on a trend because it’s a DLC from 2021 for Samurai Warriors that has a Yasuke mission. Samurai Warriors 5 is one of those games where you can mow down tons of enemies in a single hit just for the fun of it. You aren’t playing this for deep and meaningful stories or challenging gameplay. You just want to wipe out floods of dudes for the hell of it. I can understand that. You’ll need the original game to play this if you can’t wait for your Yasuke fix. I don’t have a trailer for this one, but our final video shows off his moveset in the game.
Who wants to be they’ll all do better than Assassin’s Creed: Shadows? Granted, one of them has a head start.
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