OSR Commentary - The Long Shadow of The Zaibatsu rpg by Paul Elliot From Zozer Games

 "As the street soldiers of the world’s most powerful corporations (the Japanese zaibatsu) you become expendable and deniable employees fighting for profits, power and your lives. You’ve been recruited from the dark and murky Japanese underworld to carry out illegal terrorist activities on behalf of that employer and have one foot in the stylish corporate-minded boardrooms of the zaibatsu, and one foot in the filth and squalor of the criminal underworld."

The Zaibatsu rpg by Paul Elliot remains one of my all time favorite's by Zozer game. This is a game that springs deep into the Cyberpunk genre & it all dives into the world of the Hostile rpg. The Hostile rpg has a ton of snakeheads and gangs that surround this criminal underworld.  This criminal underworld is rife with unscuplious character. The PC's are totally the street scum and criminal elements. The PC's are working for the very corporations that they are making war & combat on. 

Why?! Because of the fact that the PC's are prisoners who have to give back to the corporate society. They are sent on missions by thier corporate sponsors. This way they get so many years off thier sentences. If this sounds like the classic Cyber City Oedo 808 anime? That's because it's because that anime is such a classic to our players and family. This was a classic anime element that we added into our own Zaibatsu rpg campaign. 
Many of the classic elements here are excellent because they connect right back into the Earth of 2225. Zaibatsu is perfectly aligned with the burnt out husk that is Earth. 

The PC's could find themselves on the border between Texas and the rest of the states dealing with the cartels for the corporations. Then moved into the slums of Tokyo and the underbelly of Japan's criminal underworld. Because the party are agents of the corporations there's lots of flexibility to a Zaibatsu. 
And the enterprise zones are begging for agents and mercs to help them take control. There's plenty of work for agents and mercenaries who work for the corporations. And this is where are players come in and thier rather desparate PC's. The fact that they work for the very people that they hate is both iconic and very dangerous. They may find themselves hunting the very people that they once called friend.