For more than a decade, between the late 80s and the dawn of the 21st century, Sega was one of the coolest video game companies on the planet. Its arcade games, from Golden Axe to Virtua Fighter, were blockbuster successes; the Mega Drive brought a punk rock attitude to the home console scene, challenging Nintendo's family friendly approach with eye-pummelling TV commercials and censor-baiting games such as Mortal Kombat and Night Trap. Arguably though, it was later, in the Dreamcast era, that Sega's studios were producing their most innovative and extravagant work. The likes of Jet Set Radio, Crazy Taxi and Space Channel 5 were hypercolourful celebrations of Tokyo pop culture. Now, the man who managed Sega Japan's developers at that time, Shuji Utsumi, is the CEO of Sega America and Europe – and he has a plan to restore the company to its creative heights.

With the benefit of hindsight, it was always going to be television and not film where the first genuinely authentic video game tie-in would happen. The format of the ongoing drama series, with its capacity for multiple character and narrative arcs, as well as its extended running time, aligns much more closely with how games actually function. Even so, I am surprised by just how brilliant episode one of The Last of Us (HBO in the US, Sky Atlantic in the UK) is. It beautifully weaves the conventions of both TV and games into one gripping experience, using subjective camera shots to put us into the viewpoint of characters (like a game), while also toying with depth of field in a very televisual way to blur out background details for thrilling effect (oh god, the shaking granny!). Ever the optimist, I'm thinking that maybe – maybe – this series (pictured below) has unlocked a new set of multidisciplinary tools that will enable other TV and game makers to collaborate on exciting dramas.

It sounds like the set-up for a violent revenge movie. Low-ranking yakuza Ichiban Kasuga takes the blame for an inter-clan assassination and does 18 years in prison to protect the organisation's patriarch. But, on his release, the gang disowns him and the boss, who he considers a father figure, shoots him and leaves him for dead. Surely, the stage is set for bloody retribution? Kasuga is not that kind of protagonist.

The promise of immersive, sharp and dense worlds to explore feels real when roaming the streets of Yokohama in "Yakuza: Like a Dragon." The characters and city explode in color and detail in ways I had never seen in past "Yakuza" titles and locations. The series struggled to hit both high-resolution, high framerate gameplay in the last console generation. That is now achievable on both Series X and S; both versions feature "performance" and "fidelity" modes, offering 60-frames gameplay under the "performance" option. There's parity in the "Yakuza" experiences not found in "Valhalla," and that's some comfort when comparing the X and S.

Playing a mob boss in a video game might not seem all that serious for a veteran actor who has appeared on feature films and television. For George Takei, however, performing the role of Masumi Arakawa in "Yakuza: Like a Dragon," is akin to his life coming full circle. Takei was only six years old when he was first introduced to the concept of "benshi" -- Japanese performers who narrated for silent films. It was a discovery that happened to coincide with a dark period in American history. At the time, Takei and his family were staying in Arkansas, part of some 120,000 Japanese-Americans who were gathered into internment camps after Pearl Harbor was bombed on Dec. 7, 1941.