Ninja Gaiden: The Essential Interview

Itagaki: Yeah, we'll have an online time attack, like a leader-board, so you can compete with other people. [confers with Saito] Right now we're thinking about how you'll be able to enter in your name for the leader-boards so people will recognize you. And I think we should have flags too, like we had in previous Ninja Gaidens for leaderboards, so you can see at a glance... The very first game we did it was Dead or Alive Ultimate, which was the first online fighting game. So basically you could look at the rankings or people who were playing and immediately tell their nationality. You know, just good natured fighting. Now everyone's copied that idea. That's fine; I'm happy for everyone to copy that if they think it's a good feature, but at the time it was against Microsoft's regulations to do that, so we had to break that barrier. They were worried about people who didn't want to select their own flag, they said it would put undue pressure on people who chose not to have a flag. And so what I did is I included the United Nations flag instead, you know, "This should be good enough, right?" And then they said "Oh, OK, that works."

Kikizo: World peace through martial arts.

Itagaki: Yes.

Kikizo: So, there is a new female character in this game...

Itagaki: [in English] Yeah, of course.

Kikizo: Can you reveal any details about her?

Itagaki: She's really cute. [In English] Very cute! [In Japanese] So this is kind of the third female ninja character that we've done, after Kasumi and Ayane. Kasumi and Ayane of course are beautiful girls that are done in three dimensions, right? But this new character named Momiji is done through 2D illustrations. But I think that the sense of beauty that you get from seeing her in the illustrations is equal to Kasumi. But this is the first time I've said anything like this since we started Team Ninja.

Kikizo: You said you wanted to make a touch action game for the DS. What do you think at the moment are the best action-based, non-fruit-picking-based games on the DS?

Itagaki: [In English] You're a good guy! [laughs]

Kikizo: Thank you...!

Translator: He's just saying you have a very good way of speaking; you kind of brighten up the room, so it's making him feel a little less hungover this morning!

Kikizo: You're welcome.

Itagaki: So, one of my strengths and also one of my weaknesses is that I really don't pay a lot of attention to competitors' titles. I mean I've played New Super Mario Bros, which was more of a platformer, but that doesn't necessarily need to be on the DS-you just use the buttons. So I don't think there are any other titles out there right now that are doing what we're doing in 3D, you know, with the stylus. And to be honest, I don't really pay much attention to other games.

Transator: He's pointing to me and saying that I know first hand that he doesn't really do much research into games, because he's always asking me "Who is our competitor right now?" or "What are the good games out there on the market?" I can certainly vouch for the fact that he, for better or for worse, doesn't get himself too caught up in what other developers are doing.

Page: 1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  10 

NEXT PAGE >>