Various discoveries I've made in the videogaming space as of late. These mostly focus on "texture matching" for now, but I will add anything else I find during miscellaneous research.
The majority of Yakuza/Like a Dragon games feature karaoke minigames. Each playable song begins with its own "title card" akin to actual karaoke machine displays. These title cards show the title of the song, lyricist, and composer, with stock image photographs used as the background. Most of these images are sourced from the much-used Datacraft Sozaijiten (素材辞典) series of royalty-free media asset discs, which have also been utilized in many Japanese videogames (other SEGA titles among them) and Pokémon Trading Card Game artwork. A cursory search online reveals that the use of these photos in the Yakuza/Like a Dragon series has not been documented. I have been able to match a handful of these karaoke title card backgrounds to their original source from Sozaijiten. These are presented below. I haven't found matches for every title card but will update this section when I find more! I also hope to share this information more widely soon.
Side note: I have listed these games in chronological order, not release order. The karaoke minigame first appeared in Yakuza 3, but was retroactively added to the first two games of the series in the remakes Yakuza Kiwami and Yakuza Kiwami 2.
| Game | Song Name | Title Card | Background Image | Volume || Image ID |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Yakuza 0 | x3 SHINE |  |
[Not yet found] | [Not yet found]
[Not yet found] |
| Yakuza 0 | 24-hour Cinderella |  |
[Not yet found] | [Not yet found]
[Not yet found] |
| Yakuza 0 | Bakamitai |  |
[Not yet found] | [Not yet found]
[Not yet found] |
| Yakuza 0 | Heartbreak Mermaid |  |
[Not yet found] | [Not yet found]
[Not yet found] |
| Yakuza 0 | Judgement -Shinpan- |  |
 |
Sozaijiten Vol. 26: Forests & Groves
AA189 |
| Yakuza Kiwami | Tonight -restart from this night- |  |
 |
Sozaijiten Vol. 45: Tokyo
AV111 |
| Yakuza Kiwami | Iji Sakura (Fighting Sakura) 2000 |  |
[Not yet found] | [Not yet found]
[Not yet found] |
| Yakuza Kiwami | As Long As You're Happy |  |
 |
Sozaijiten Vol. 22: Food & Cooking Image Edition
SW188 |
| Yakuza 3 | I Wanna Change Myself |  |
 |
Sozaijiten Vol. 20: Flowers in Clusters & Cherry Blossoms
SU042 |
| Yakuza 3 | Saturday Night☆Lover |  |
 |
Sozaijiten Vol. 75: New York
DB043 |
| Yakuza 3 | Shooting Star |  |
[Not yet found] | [Not yet found]
[Not yet found] |
| Yakuza 3 | Summer Memories |  |
 |
Sozaijiten Vol. 100: Sky & Iridescent Clouds
EC071 |
| Yakuza 3 | Where Has Your Touch Gone? |  |
 |
Sozaijiten Vol. 119: Water Image Edition
EX197 |
| Yakuza 4 | Get to the Top! |  |
 |
Sozaijiten Vol. 100: Sky & Iridescent Clouds
EC076 |
| Yakuza 4 | I Wanna Change Myself |  |
 |
Sozaijiten Vol. 20: Flowers in Clusters & Cherry Blossoms
SU141 |
| Yakuza 4 | Machine Gun Kiss |  |
 |
Sozaijiten Vol. 75: New York
DB040 |
| Yakuza 4 | Otomeiro My Life (Love is Changing My Life) |  |
[Not yet found] | [Not yet found]
[Not yet found] |
| Yakuza 4 | Raindrops |  |
[Not yet found] | [Not yet found]
[Not yet found] |
| Yakuza 4 | Shooting Star |  |
 |
Sozaijiten Vol. 70: Starry Skies & Space
CW014 |
| Yakuza 4 | Summer Memories |  |
[Not yet found] | [Not yet found]
[Not yet found] |
| Yakuza 4 | Where Has Your Touch Gone? |  |
 |
Sozaijiten Vol. 119: Water Image Edition
EX195 |
| Yakuza 5 | Baka Mitai (I've Been a Fool) |  |
 |
Sozaijiten Vol. 214: Drinks & Alcohol
JW056 |
| Yakuza 5 | Because I Have You |  |
[Not yet found] | [Not yet found]
[Not yet found] |
| Yakuza 5 | Loneliness Loop |  |
[Not yet found] | [Not yet found]
[Not yet found] |
| Yakuza 5 | So Much More! |  |
[Not yet found] | [Not yet found]
[Not yet found] |
| Yakuza 5 | Ring |  |
[Not yet found] | [Not yet found]
[Not yet found] |
| Yakuza 5 | Rouge of Love |  |
 |
Sozaijiten Vol. 10: Flower Edition
SJ197 |
| Yakuza 6: The Song of Life | BRAND NEW STAGE |  |
 |
Sozaijiten Vol. 182: Beach & Girls
HN152 |
| Yakuza 6: The Song of Life | Fork In The Road |  |
 |
Sozaijiten Vol. 83: Road Scenery
DK156 |
| Yakuza 6: The Song of Life | Today is a Diamond |  |
 |
Sozaijiten Vol. 40: Sea & Southern Islands
AQ018 |
| Yakuza: Like a Dragon | Spring Breeze |  |
 |
Sozaijiten Vol. 146: Seasons - Japanese Flowers & Trees
GA057 |
| Yakuza: Like a Dragon | The Future I Dreamed Of |  |
 |
Sozaijiten Vol. 83: Road Scenery
DK108 |
| Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name | Sayonara, Silent Night |  |
  |
Sozaijiten Vol. 48: Christmas & New Year
AY188 & AY199 |
| Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth | Honolulu City Lights |  |
 |
Sozaijiten Vol. 154: Okinawa - Churaumi
GJ081 |
| Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth | If I Could Love the One I Love |  |
 |
Sozaijiten Vol. 155: Living Space & Interior Accesories
GK097 |
After finding some of the above source image matches for the Yakuza/Like a Dragon karaoke title cards, I decided to look further to see if any other images from Datacraft Sozaijiten are used in the games. I have only ever seen the fact that Sozaijiten images are used in these games mentioned online by two other individuals:
From the first mention, I did not see documented where the image of this elusive white man appeared in the game, or which volume of Sozaijiten his photo came from. I booted up my own copy of Yakuza 0 to do a little investigating, and found a conspicuous image of a white fellow with relative ease (within a couple minutes of roaming around the Premium Adventure mode). His mug was plastered all over posters in Theater Square. I will detail this first match and any others I find below. This will likely be a slowgoing project as I will probably have to gather my own screenshots to properly document the matches. It will also be difficult to determine which game a source image first appeared in, as the Yakuza games reuse many assets for subsequent installments. I suspect a great deal would naturally first appear in Yakuza 3, the first HD game of the series, but Yakuza 0 also presents a helpful starting point due to its time period.
I am also certain that many of the "textures" in the game likely also come from Sozaijiten. Documenting this could be several magnitudes more laborious! Maybe I'll get to it someday.
| Game || Context | Photo from Game | Photo Source | Volume || Image ID |
|---|---|---|---|
| Yakuza 0 On a poster for "Space Alliance 2" in Theater Square |
Photo from Game |  |
Sozaijiten Volume 30: People - Male AE034 |
| Yakuza 0 On a poster for "Space Alliance 2" in Theater Square |
Photo from Game |  |
Sozaijiten Volume 30: People - Male AE055 |
| Yakuza 0 On a poster for "Twilight ni Yoroshiku" in Theater Square |
Photo from Game |  |
Sozaijiten Volume 31: People - Women AF024 |
| Yakuza 0 On a poster for a "Ocean Adventure 2" in Theater Square |
Photo from Game |  |
Sozaijiten Volume 30: People - Men AE194 |
| Yakuza 0 On a poster for "Memories of Marie" in Theater Square |
Photo from Game |  |
Sozaijiten Volume 50: Dogs & Cats CA093 |
| Yakuza 0 On a poster for "Miracle Trouble Story 3" on Taihei Boulevard |
 |
  |
Sozaijiten Volume 62: Impressive Small Animals CA093 & CN154 |
| Yakuza 0 On an Akaushimaru restauarant poster |
 |
            [2 not yet found] |
Sozaijiten Volume 22: Food & Cooking Images & others to be added |
| Yakuza 0 On a Smile Burger standee; it's blurry and low quality |
 |
 |
Sozaijiten Volume 22: Food & Cooking Image Edition SW027 |
| Yakuza 0 On cigarette machines; the "JCC" has been added to the image |
 |
 |
Sozaijiten Volume 79: Sports & Dynamics CX089 |
| Yakuza 3 Image shown during news segment for proposed resport; same dock that's used in the "Today is a Diamond" karaoke photo |
 |
|
Sozaijiten Volume 79: Sports & Dynamics CX089 |
| Yakuza 5 On an electronic billboard in Fukuoka; might be my favorite... so cutie!!! |
 |
 |
Sozaijiten Volume 50: Dogs & Cats CN154 |
This is another incredibly minor discovery, but it is about a videogame event that I have a great deal of affection for. Pokémon HeartGold and SoulSilver Versions feature an area known as the Sinjoh Ruins, conceptualized as a site where the two ancient cultures of the Sinnoh and Johto regions meet. This area is only accessible by satisfying the following conditions:
From here, the player will then encounter Cynthia in a cabin, who guides the player to a ruined temple. Inside is the Mystri Stage, which bares a glyph of a triangle, encompassed by concentric cirlces, and surrounded by smaller circles at the corners.. Cynthia explains that three of the smaller circles represent the legendary Pokémon Dialga, Palkia, and Giratina. The player is instructed to select one of them before bringing Arceus to the center of the stage. Once Arceus takes its place on the stage, Unown surround it, and an infamous video begins to play which shows Arceus and its glyph overlaid on top of stock photographs of the real world. These have all been identified as coming from Datacraft Sozaijiten. However, there exist eight additional stock photos in the files of final versions of the games that went unused; owing to recent developments, it has also been discovered that in earlier builds of the games, there are even more additional photographs that were removed in later builds. All of these photos are thus unused content.
As indicated on The Cutting Room Floor, these extra images do not come from Sozaijiten, and are as-of-yet unsourced. I have managed to track down what I thought were possible origins for some of these; some of them are currently being sold on the stock photo website Bigstock (formerly BigStockPhoto and currently owned by Shutterstock). I was able to confirm, however, that these were not uploaded to the site until well into the 2010s. Though, the site has been around since 2004, this discrepancy makes Bigstock an impossible source unless they were taken down at one point and reuploaded. I will catalog their current availability here, and will update if I find the true origin of these images. It is possible that the developers just pulled them from Google Images at the time for testing purposes, before swapping them out with royalty-free photos. Or maybe they came from a royalty-free media collection that hasn't been searched yet. It's hard to say. Details are below.
| In-game File Name | Version of Game Present | Photo from Game | Current Source | Full Photo Name | Sourced Image ID Link |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| culture01 | VER20090602 |  |
[Not yet found] | [Not yet found] | [Not yet found]
Link |
| culture02 | VER20090602 |  |
[Not yet found] | [Not yet found] | [Not yet found]
Link |
| culture03 | VER20090602 |  |
|
"Car engine part - Close up image of an internal combustion engine." | 1452703
Link |
| culture04 | VER20090602 |  |
[Not yet found] | [Not yet found] | [Not yet found]
Link |
| culture05 | VER20090602 |  |
[Not yet found] | [Not yet found] | [Not yet found]
Link |
| culture06 | VER20090602 |  |
[Not yet found] | [Not yet found] | [Not yet found]
Link |
| culture07 | VER20090602 |  |
 |
"Close-up of a computer microchip from a HDD" | 1874381
Link |
| culture08 | VER20090602 |  |
 |
"A photo inside a library" | 13576631
Link |
| disaster01 | VER20090602 | [Not yet found] | [Not yet found] | [Not yet found] | [Not yet found]
Link |
| disaster02 | VER20090602 | [Not yet found] | [Not yet found] | [Not yet found] | [Not yet found]
Link |
| disaster03 | VER20090602 & Final |  |
 |
"A Bolt Out of the Blue" or "shot of lightning bolt surrounded by brilliant blue glow" | 533219
Link |
| disaster04 | VER20090602 | [Not yet found] | [Not yet found] | [Not yet found] | [Not yet found]
Link |
| disaster05 | VER20090602 | [Not yet found] | [Not yet found] | [Not yet found] | [Not yet found]
Link |
| micro01 | VER20090602 | [Not yet found] | [Not yet found] | [Not yet found] | [Not yet found]
Link |
| micro02 | VER20090602 |  |
 |
"Blood Cells" or "3d rendering of blood cells" | 662385
Link |
| nature01 | VER20090602 | [Not yet found] | [Not yet found] | [Not yet found] | [Not yet found]
Link |
| nature02 | VER20090602 | [Not yet found] | [Not yet found] | [Not yet found] | [Not yet found]
Link |
| nature03 | VER20090602 & Final | [Not yet found] | [Not yet found] | [Not yet found] | [Not yet found]
Link |
| nature04 | VER20090602 & Final |  |
 |
"Misty Forest" or "through the trees - hazy forest morning" | 229301
Link |
| nature05 | VER20090602 & Final | [Not yet found] | [Not yet found] | [Not yet found] | [Not yet found]
Link |
| nature06 | VER20090602 & Final | [Not yet found] | [Not yet found] | [Not yet found] | [Not yet found]
Link |
| nature07 | VER20090602 & Final | [Not yet found] | [Not yet found] | [Not yet found] | [Not yet found]
Link |
| nature08 | VER20090602 & Final | [Not yet found] | [Not yet found] | [Not yet found] | [Not yet found]
Link |
The official Twitter account for the cellphone game Pikmin Bloom regularly shares promotional images for upcoming events. These feature models of the Pikmin transposed onto real-world photos. I suspected these were also stock photos rather than bespoke images. So far, I've found matches for them on Shutterstock and Alarmy, and I believe this to be where they originated. Details below.
| Context | Promotional Image | Image Source | Original Photo Name | Sourced Image ID Link |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Debut of Snow Decor Pikmin on 12.23.2023 |  |
 |
A small melting snowman in a clearing with melting snow and sun spots. The coming of spring. Warming. | 2259994909 Link |
| 3 Billion Flowers Planted on 4.23.2024 |  |
 |
Many acorns on green moss in forest, space for text | 2217651631 Link |
Making a note of this here because I'm not sure where else to do so. Might find a better spot on the site at some point. This is also such an obscure thing I don't even know how/where to share it. The Japanese PlayStation demo disc series "Play-Play" sometimes featured original games (as seen in Vols. 5 & 6, possibly later installments as well). A whimsical song accompanied these games which featured various interjections and screeches. The song can be listened to below. The "achoo" sound heard right at the start and at 57 seconds is a sample taken from the first disc set of the Gu-Mantan series, which were Japanese CD-ROM sets featuring royalty-free samplings of various media, including clip art, photo, fonts, and sounds. The sample in question is labeled as "SND024," and "アチョー" within the program menus (meaning "achoo," so it's basically meant to be a sneeze sound). I stumbled across this completely randomly but thought I'd document it. I've shared it with the "VGM & Other Instrument Sources" community, which is trying to catalog one billion different musical sound fonts at a time and is also engaged in a similar number of ongoing conversations. The majority of their information is kept in a Discord server and innumerable private spreadsheets. I did learn that the sound was possibly made with the Roland SC-55 sound module. Regardless, there's no real place to properly make note of this as of yet because it's pretty insignificant. It's of course also possible this has been discovered already, but I have found almost zero information about the "Play-Play Original Game" online to begin with, including the Japanese side of things. I am guessing the other samples contained within the song are on alternate Gu-Mantan discs.