While Sega and their Ryu Ga Gotoku studio just announced Yakuza 7 in a big press conference, the series creator, Toshihiro Nagoshi, almost missed the show – and for a pretty big reason.

“I think I would get angry if I was watching this,” Nagoshi said to Japanese outlet Oricon, who noted a recording of the event would be published later. He was speaking in regards to a major heart surgery he revealed, a surgery he has spent three weeks recovering from, at home.

Nagoshi said the surgery stopped his heart for five hours, and he is still recovering from the ordeal – he even has to avoid standing up too much, and most especially working. “I was grateful that I was able to report the announcement of the new game with my own mouth,” he said.

Despite his progress to recovery from the surgery, Nagoshi is still dealing with some pretty debilitating pain.

“It hurts when I laugh. I broke my ribs during the surgery, so the bones are not yet attached,” he said. “I really shouldn’t have come out of the hospital.” And yet, Nagoshi braved the odds and made an appearance at the reveal for the next big game from his studio.

Nagoshi is currently the chief creative officer at Sega – we spoke to him at this year’s E3 about his design philosophy, and the games he’s currently overseeing at the company, as well as his beginnings at the company.

He started his career at Sega back in the 1990’s in their arcade division, where he helped work on designs for Virtua Racing and Daytona USA. He eventually became the head of their subsidiary Amusement Vision, and oversaw Super Monkey Ball, and the F-Zero GX/AX games.

Since then, Nagoshi has been mostly overseeing the wildly popular Yakuza series, which has sold over 10 million copies to date. The latest game in the franchise, Judgment, is particularly fantastic – you can find our review for the game here.

Niche Gamer wishes Nagoshi a speedy recovery, and that he is back to doing what he loves best – making amazing video games.